America’s quest for AI dominance is scary. China is not the solution.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is too stern to sing or dance in public—no Donald Trump-style piston-arm disco moves for him. This is a shame, for it would save time if he binned his planned remarks when the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) opens in Shanghai on July 17th, and sang instead. Specifically, he could unleash his rich baritone on the hippy anthem, “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmoneee.”
Puzzled delegates might frown. But it would be cheering if Mr Xi sang: “I’d like to build a world a home, and furnish it with love.” And as a guide to China’s real-world AI ambitions, it would be about as helpful as an official speech. Communist Party media have offered previews of what the WAIC may hear, including such vapid phrases as “those who walk together go far” and “global AI for good”. In China’s telling, benevolence explains why its large language models (LLMs) are open-source or open-weight (tech-speak for models that users can download, run on their own servers and customise). China calls open-source AI a “shared asset for all humanity”, notably users in less wealthy countries.
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Mr Xi can expect a friendly hearing from many in Shanghai, and not just delegates from dictatorships. These are jarring times for users of American AI technologies. In recent weeks the Trump administration has readily revoked access to powerful AI tools, if it felt controls were needed to defend America’s national security or to maintain what the White House likes to call “AI dominance”.
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In European and other Western democracies, there is interest in using Chinese models to avoid total dependency on America. Alas, if countries fear domination by a control-obsessed superpower, they might not want to pin all their hopes on China. Strict rules require Chinese AI firms to uphold national security, social stability and “core socialist values”. Its cyber-regulators test LLMs, bots and agents for political compliance, bombarding them with tricky questions. The effects can be startling. Last year American researchers asked Miiloo, a baby-voiced, AI-enabled doll exported from China, about the status of Taiwan. The island “is an inalienable part of China”, replied the toy, and this “cannot be refuted”.
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As well as an obsession with control, China has a record of using its industrial might for dominance.
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Chinese officials present open-source AI technologies as a gift to the world. In reality, openness is a logical strategy for laggards. The performance of China’s top models remains some way behind that of the best American LLMs. That makes it rational for Chinese firms to woo foreign customers with cheaper models that users can download onto their own servers, as an alternative to expensive, proprietary American models. Within China, state planners want companies to develop clever AI applications to unleash a productivity revolution and a boom in consumer consumption. Deploying cheap, open-source tools helps with that.
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Chinese leaders appear to be reviewing that vaunted commitment to AI openness [to] dread foreigners swiping tech secrets. In April Chinese regulators ordered Meta, the American tech giant, to unwind its purchase of Manus, a startup specialising in AI agents (no matter that the Chinese co-founders had moved Manus to Singapore). China has since tightened rules on all cross-border AI deals. Earlier this month Reuters, a news agency, reported on recent discussions between Chinese regulators and companies about possibly limiting foreigners’ access to China’s most advanced models.
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Bmbracing China is a risky hedge against a domineering America. Like a secret policeman in a hippy wig, China has always been an unlikely champion of openness. Party chiefs enjoy the propaganda win of painting America as a bully. They hope that low-cost AI will hook foreigners on Chinese digital infrastructure. But if openness ever clashes with national security or political power, they will choose control in an instant.
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Its a really good trap when they constantly release opensource/weight models that can compete with the closed billion dollar giants. Its so funny when they released kimi 3 right after fable and gpt 5.6 and it can do the same things but its free for the world to use.
Why is everyone treating like American shit is any better than Chinese? Just look at the creepy ass dystopian shit American companies are pulling and have been for many years as well as entire society mentality in USA which is just greed greed and control through creepy ass shit. They are literally the same shit, it’s just this perception of China bad guy, Murica good guy.
They are pretty much the same but as of now in one location you can say whatever you want privately or publicly so long as it isn’t a threat, or slander so people feel better. There are a few other personal freedoms like gun ownership and the ability to invest your money that people enjoy. That’s not to say the top down state control china has doesn’t have advantages over the corporate bottom up control the US has. China can have more organized action like their east west program with AI data center construction is far less problematic. In the end though other countries should most definitely be concerned about eithers influence and global dominance. AI supremacy of either power doesn’t bode well for anyone.
Americans keep harping about “gun ownership” like rest of the world can’t have guns. I can “easily” buy a gun as well, but I’d have to do basic psychological evaluation first, do safety training and then buy it. Seems reasonable and responsible way of doing it. Which is what seems to separate us apart from the USA. Also people like Alex Pretti got killed for owning a legal firearm. So much for that freedom when president’s personal militia can just fucking gun you down at broad fucking daylight and literally fucking nothing happens to everyone involved. Not to mention how Americans also keep harping about “owning guns to prevent government tyranny”. What the fuck is this orange fucking asshole sitting in his golden as throne at White House then? He’s literally embodiment of government tyranny and yet al these millions of guns Americans have done fuck all nothing to prevent it.
So, not only America has weekly school shootings because every idiot can easily get hands on a gun, they just get you killed and they do fucking nothing against government tyranny. So, what good do guns even do again in America?
Why is everyone treating like American shit is any better than Chinese
I may be mistaken, but the article says both U.S. and Chinese are ‘shit’ if we want to put it that way. At least this is how I understand the content. “America’s quest for AI dominance is scary. China is not the solution.”
The conclusion is that Europe - supposedly with like-minded democratic allies like Canada, Australia, NZ, Taiwan, Japan, and others - should developed own homegrown tech. This development has already started, although maybe slow, but it’s going on.
Oh no, tech giants are getting greased by open source Chinese AI. Now how are they going to justify the massive investment and debt they’ve taken on?
Of course the economist is going to huff copium and try to scare people back into falling in line spending money with the “right” people (western tech billionaires). Almost like they want to delay that bubble popping.
Reminder that Xi Jinping is 73 years old and the average age of the central committee is 61.
Don’t expect them to treat AI as something they understand, just something they’ve been told is very very important.
And?
I am sure that doesn’t change the fact that China’s AI isn’t the solution. Xi Jinping hasn’t any interest in the well-being of the people. To so-called ‘leaders’ like Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, people are here to be governed and suppressed.
Xi Jinping hasn’t any interest in the well-being of the people
Weird that the people have experienced greater increases in their well-being than any other country in modern history, except maybe the USSR. I bet he’s only improving the people’s material conditions to maintain control and silence dissent.
AI isn’t the solution, Chinese or American.