Leading scholars from countries including China and the United States have underlined the need for the international community to build consensus on and to implement a set of guardrails for responsible AI development and deployment.

The call was made at the launch of the "Building Global Consensus on AI Guardrails" research project in Beijing on Friday.

"Given our existing understanding of AI risks, the stakes are very high, and we have to address the challenges and risks AI poses so as to avoid ending up in a disaster unparalleled in history," said Jia Qingguo, professor and director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University.

"We also know that AI is a global phenomenon, and effective management of the AI risks poses a great challenge and also requires international cooperation," he said in a video speech.

The project aims to develop a policy and implementation blueprint that maps existing AI guardrails, identify key areas of convergence and divergence across these frameworks and proposes mechanisms to build global consensus on and to implement a set of guardrails for responsible AI development and deployment.

Wang Dong, professor and executive director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University, noted that there is still marked divergence among countries in risk assessment, boundaries for technology and the pathways for practicing governance.

"The global governance on AI is faced with fragmentation," he said.