Let’s be clear-eyed. China is a serious, a very serious, competitive threat to the United States in artificial intelligence. While the most powerful AI systems are still being built in America, China is not far behind. Moreover, and of paramount importance, is that while China’s systems might be less impressive, they are also less expensive.
Affordability matters not just at the level of households but at the level of organizations. Therefore, business leaders from around the world will be massively attracted to AI systems that are, maybe not better than America’s, but cheaper. If you don’t think this represents a threat to some of the most prominent of American tech companies – OpenAI and Anthropic, for example – think again.
Once again leadership does – or it should – surface as an issue with which Americans must contend. As indicated in my previous post, up to now the development of American AI has been Wild West-like. A leaderless enterprise in which political leaders cannot lead and in which business leaders, specifically tech leaders, will not lead. The result is chaos – far more competition than cooperation when cooperation between and among tech companies, and between and among interested parties including government and business, is largely lacking.
President Xi Jinping has, predictably, had a strong hand in the development of China’s tech industry. First, state control is integral to the communist playbook. Second, after more than a decade as president, Xi’s appetite for dominating everything and everyone has only grown greater. Ironically, then, it is he, not America’s president, who is calling for international cooperation in just this realm. Last week Xi delivered a speech in which he specifically called for “a symphony of international cooperation” on AI development.
Even more to the point is that while American AI models are proprietary, their secrets fiercely protected by the companies that develop them, at least some of China most competitive AI models are the opposite. They are open source – they are freely shared and distributed. Which is to say that they can be used by anyone at any time anywhere in the world.
How this does not threaten what has been up to now American dominance in AI technologies escapes me. What does not though escape me is the urgent need for collaborative leadership in a domain in which up to now it has been lacking. In fact, America’s tech leaders are so obsessed with beating each other that beating China is secondary.
My previous post suggests a way forward. I am open to other suggestions.