China locked in AI mind games with the United States
But President Trump appears more interested in pushing ‘tariffs’ and fighting ‘woke wars’
President Donald Trump’s chaotic administration is sleepwalking into an AI Superintelligence War with China. What risks becoming a nightmare scenario was spelled out at the Alibaba Cloud conference in the technology-obsessed city of Hangzhou last month.
Mapping out a brave, or grave, new world, the chief executive of one of China’s colossal multinational tech companies delivered a 23-minute keynote address. Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu spoke of a future held together by DNA strands of artificial intelligence.
Not the AI of today or the artificial general intelligence (AGI) of tomorrow. But an era of artificial superintelligence (ASI) “with an intellectual scope beyond” human intelligence.
“Achieving AGI – with general human-level cognition – now appears inevitable. Yet AGI is not the end of AI’s development, but its beginning,” Wu said.
“It will march toward ASI – intelligence beyond human, capable of continuous evolution. [It] will drive us into an unprecedented age of intelligence,” he added.
As America fumbles, China races ahead.
Political commentator Fareed Zakaria
AI ambitions:
- Wu’s comments appear to underline the ruling Communist Party of China’s AI push to become the world leader in 2030.
- Such advanced technologies would also be used to bolster its economic and military capabilities, according to tech site QUE.com.
Delve deeper: A Washington Post opinion piece by political commentator and CNN host Fareed Zakaria was scathing. “As America fumbles, China races ahead,” it read. “Xi is building the future while Trump pushes tariffs and fights the woke wars.”
Between the lines: In January, the World Economic Forum released a white paper pointing out that Beijing aims “to boost related AI sectors to US$1.4 trillion in value” by 2030.
Big picture: Still, the China Talk podcast reported that even Alibaba’s massive funding plan “pales in comparison to the Western hyperscalers’ buildouts.”
China Factor comment: In short, Alibaba dominates China’s cloud computing market, and AI will only hot-wire the group’s revenue. Yet, it would be misguided to write off CEO Wu’s address or Beijing’s artificial intelligence goals.