Governments and companies worldwide are investing heavily in artificial intelligence in hopes of new profits, smarter gadgets, and better health care. Financier and philanthropist George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos Thursday that the technology may also undermine free societies and create a new era of authoritarianism.

“I want to call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes,” Soros said. He made an example of China, repeatedly calling out the country’s president, Xi Jinping.

China’s government issued a broad AI strategy in 2017, asserting that it would surpass US prowess in the technology by 2030. As in the US, much of the leading work on AI in China takes place inside a handful of large tech companies, such as search engine Baidu and retailer and payments company Alibaba.

Soros argued that AI-centric tech companies like those can become enablers of authoritarianism. He pointed to China’s developing “social credit” system, aimed at tracking citizens’ reputations by logging financial activity, online interactions, and even energy use, among other things. The system is still taking shape, but depends on data and cooperation from companies like payments firm Ant Financial, a spinout of Alibaba. “The social credit system, if it became operational, would give Xi Jinping total control over the people,” Soros said.

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Soros argued that synergy like that between corporate and government AI projects creates a more potent threat than was posed by Cold War–era autocrats, many of whom spurned corporate innovation. “The combination of repressive regimes with IT monopolies endows those regimes with a built-in advantage over open societies,” Soros said. “They pose a mortal threat to open societies.”

Soros is far from the first to raise an alarm about the dangers of AI technology. It’s a favorite topic of Elon Musk, and last year Henry Kissinger called for a US government commission to examine the technology’s risks. Google cofounder Sergey Brin warned in Alphabet’s most recent annual shareholder letter that AI technology had downsides, including the potential to manipulate people. Canada and France plan to establish an intergovernmental group to study how AI changes societies.

The financier attempted to draft Donald Trump into his AI vigilance campaign. He advised the president to be tougher on Chinese telecoms manufacturers ZTE and Huawei, to prevent them from dominating the high-bandwidth 5G mobile networks being built around the world. Both companies are already reeling from sanctions by the US and other governments.

Soros also urged the well-heeled attendees of Davos to help forge international mechanisms to prevent AI-enhanced authoritarianism—and that could both include and contain China. He asked them to imagine a technologically oriented version of the treaty signed after World War II that underpins the United Nations, binding countries into common standards for human rights and freedoms.

Here is the text of Soros's speech:

I want to use my time tonight to warn the world about an unprecedented danger that’s threatening the very survival of open societies.

Last year when I stood before you I spent most of my time analyzing the nefarious role of the IT monopolies. This is what I said: “An alliance is emerging between authoritarian states and the large data rich IT monopolies that bring together nascent systems of corporate surveillance with an already developing system of state sponsored surveillance. This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even George Orwell could have imagined.”

Tonight I want to call attention to the mortal danger facing open societies from the instruments of control that machine learning and artificial intelligence can put in the hands of repressive regimes. I’ll focus on China, where Xi Jinping wants a one-party state to reign supreme.