At the request of Chinese colleagues, TANG Ziyuan and I helped the South China University of Technology organize a conference on Artificial Intelligence. Given the Chinese context, we intervened on behalf of the International Association of French-Speaking Sociologists, and not on behalf of USF.

The request was surprising; the Cantonese university has been known for a long time. It is very focused on digital engineering and now on artificial intelligence. The IPP, the laboratory from which the request comes, is a research center in economic and social sciences. The IPP has some difficulty existing in the face of the engineering schools that dominate the University. This research center has 32 members including an advisor to the first secretary of the party in Beijing, two or three administrative staff, and a cook. It primarily survives on the funding from two sponsors. The first is an automotive company that occupies three-quarters of the building where the IPP is located, the other is the municipality of Nansha, south of Canton. It is known that currently, municipalities are generally facing significant financial difficulties: Nansha is no exception and has several years of arrears in the payment of the IPP subsidy. Moreover, I have announced that the AISLF is not participating in the funding of the conferences it co-organizes. Therefore, the organizers are forced to seek funding elsewhere. The laboratory has turned to the School of Public Administration (EAP), which also has an economic, legal, and social focus.

We quickly understand that we will serve as a lightning rod in cases where the choice of themes or speakers may pose a problem. Local decision-makers could then shift the blame onto us. In recent years, there has been a shutdown of friendly ties with foreigners. The risks of espionage are well identified, but there is also a kind of growing paranoia about the risks of being influenced by the West. And the three-year break, linked to a particularly long and harsh anti-COVID policy in this country, has resulted in a loss of the habit of freely discussing social relations with foreigners in companies and administrations.

The theme has been chosen as: “Human Decisions and Artificial Intelligence: Choices and Governance.” The date is set for March 28 and 29, 2025. This academic event aims not only to strengthen scientific cooperation between China and the French-speaking world but also to contribute to the responsible development of AI technologies and their global governance.

We take a long time to understand the problems faced by the Chinese side. Indeed, due to the loss of habit in organizing international events, or out of concern to avoid trouble, the Chinese side somewhat confused the organization of a conference with a process of requesting administrative approvals. Each administration tended to impose its conditions, which often included a necessity to escalate to a higher level. As a result, the organizers regularly altered decisions that had already seemed to be finalized. In the order of appearance, these decisions were made by the management of the IPP and the school of public administration, the party committee of the university, the technology commission of the municipality of Canton which became a sponsor, and then the Ministry of Education in Beijing. The university treasurer will only agree to purchase the tickets for foreign guests about fifteen days before the conference, and the final decision to launch the conference will not be confirmed until the day before the conference, while the majority of French-speaking participants had already arrived. Finally, since no one wants to be suspected of foreign sympathies, the search for foreigners will be entirely delegated to us. All candidates approved by us will be accepted, except for one Malagasy who did not consider it appropriate to remove a paragraph defending freedom of thought in his conclusion.

Ultimately, our action will force Chinese decision-makers to allow a certain level of discussion between Chinese researchers and foreign researchers. The introductory French presentations will frame the conference; they will be explicit about the geopolitical risks that the race for artificial intelligence poses to the world. Moreover, they will highlight the obvious difficulty of introducing such tools without discussions with those who are supposed to use them. These presentations will resonate with a number of Chinese exhibitors. One of them, after speaking about the strong political support for AI applications in Chinese administrations, will mention very serious difficulties in effective implementation. Another, after praising the flexibility of the tool, will wonder if “to serve the people” using AI, it would not be appropriate to ask users what they think about it.

The current context has proven to be very restrictive for foreign participants. They never managed to have private conversations with their Chinese colleagues, nor to meet them outside of the conference. Currently, Chinese intellectuals are very afraid of being accused of sympathy with any foreigner. However, the conference ended with the impression of a strong willingness to continue working together on the part of most Chinese colleagues. And above all, the participants felt politically supported due to an article presenting the conference on the front page of ‘Clarity’, a national daily newspaper centered on culture.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any follow-ups. Since our return, we have not received any messages from China. But at the very least, this conference will have shown our Chinese colleagues that, on the foreign side, the door remains open for intellectual exchanges. And that alone justifies our efforts.