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Understanding China’s pragmatic AI plan
While the US ecosystem has the edge in ground-breaking innovations, the Chinese one excels in execution.
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A Baidu driverless taxi (left) in Wuhan. “Good enough” AI interacting with humans via their cars will be popularised in China before anywhere else, says the writer.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Jen Zhu Scott
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The two most important artificial intelligence ecosystems in the world are from the US and China. Geopolitical tensions make it tempting to view the pair in opposition. Chinese AI has been described as both lagging and leading the US. In fact, the two countries are pursuing distinct strategies.
Admittedly, this is partly due to necessity. Since US start-up OpenAI launched chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has been consumed by a fevered race to build the large language models that fuel generative AI. China is handicapped in this race by two factors: lack of access to advanced US chips and censorship of information.
