Confucius, cyberpunk and Mr. Science: comparing AI ethics principles between China and the EU

We propose a comparative analysis of the AI ethical guidelines endorsed by China (from the Chinese National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional Committee) and by the EU (from the European High-level Expert Group on AI). We show that behind an apparent likeness in the concepts mobilized, the two documents largely differ in their normative approaches, which we explain by distinct ambitions resulting from different philosophical traditions, cultural heritages and historical contexts. In highlighting such differences, we show that it is erroneous to believe that a similarity in concepts necessarily translates into a similarity in ethics as even the same words may have different meanings from a country to another—as exemplified by that of “privacy”. It would, therefore, be erroneous to believe that the world would have adopted a common set of ethical principles in only three years. China and the EU, however, share a common scientific method, inherited in the former from the “Chinese Enlightenment”, which could contribute to better collaboration and understanding in the building of technical standards for the implementation of such ethics principles.