Every evening as our children eat dinner, my phone notifies me that our 3-year-old\u2019s teacher has uploaded photos taken during the day at school. An artificial intelligence facial recognition feature puts a red square around his face, letting me know which photos to look at. It\u2019s kind of creepy, but kind of helpful, too.<\/p>\n
In China, surveillance technology and A.I. surround our everyday life. It\u2019s built into the way we order food delivered to us from online apps; almost nobody I know here in Shanghai buys groceries at a grocery store, so we rely on A.I.-powered technologies to keep us fed. It\u2019s visible in the infrastructure we use to go to work and school, from trains using facial recognition in lieu of physical tickets to self-driving taxis. China\u2019s technological system offers an unparalleled convenience, and A.I. is such a huge part of it.<\/p>\n
Many American leaders believe the United States cannot overcome its adversary China unless it beats the country in the A.I. race. Every new chip that President Trump approves for sale to China<\/a>, every visit by Nvidia chief\u2019s executive, Jensen Huang, to Shanghai<\/a> and every Chinese A.I. breakthrough<\/a> strikes terror into the hearts of America\u2019s China hawks. Hardware, rare-earth metals, revamped power grids and human talent could all dictate which side ends up creating the first superintelligence. The upcoming summit between Mr. Trump and China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, may lead to a few policy changes, but this belief is more fixed.<\/p>\n The reality is that China and the United States are racing in different directions, because the two countries conceptualize A.I. very differently. Americans want to create the most powerful technology humans have ever known. In the quest for superintelligence, the U.S. government is encouraging private firms to move full speed ahead, regulation be damned. Under the very tightest regulation, by contrast, the Chinese want to make A.I. more practical and embedded in society, more carefully selecting how it is deployed and used by the population. If the Chinese achieve their A.I. goals, they may take a lead in the larger geopolitical contest between the two nations.<\/p>\n Most Chinese policymakers don\u2019t believe A.I. superintelligence is arriving any time soon. Instead, the Chinese strategy is about advancing a government-directed strategy<\/a> referred to as \u201cA.I.+\u201d<\/a> that treats A.I. as if it were infrastructure. This includes government-coordinated plans, local subsidies and national computing-power programs to diffuse cheap, capable A.I. tools into every public service. Chinese people encounter A.I. as a natural part of their day-to-day lives. Sometimes it\u2019s visible and palpable, like the \u201csmile to pay<\/a>\u201d terminals used in many shops. Sometimes it\u2019s invisible, like Hangzhou\u2019s City Brain, which uses A.I. to analyze massive amounts of data for urban management needs like regulating traffic and environmental protection.<\/p>\n Unlike in the United States, where most people remain wary<\/a>, A.I. seems to have had less of a backlash in China. The Chinese A.I.+ strategy is practical and comprehensible to the local population in a way that the U.S. strategy simply is not, which may explain why the Chinese appear so much more optimistic about A.I. than Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chinese leaders are trying to maximize the country\u2019s resources. The country\u2019s chief resource is not oil, soybeans or pork bellies, but Chinese people. As of the 2020 census, nearly 40 percent of Chinese lived in rural areas<\/a>, including 110 million children. Even more are living without access to quality education and health care. For Chinese leaders, the fact that so many Chinese people are structurally denied access to their best lives is a crisis even bigger than the low birthrate. How many potential geniuses are there among those 110 million rural children? What if the gross domestic product per capita of all of them could be quadrupled?<\/p>\n A.I. may be the answer. Are the teachers in rural schools overworked and undertrained? A.I. agents can help teach students<\/a> with personalized instruction. Are the hospitals lacking in high-quality doctors? A.I. can diagnose diseases<\/a> by analyzing patients\u2019 health data. A.I. could make it easier to hire and train the caregivers needed for China\u2019s growing elderly population<\/a>, with robotic or digital companions supplementing the work of human nurses.<\/p>\n A.I. could also make it easier to predict and prepare for extreme weather events<\/a> that could set back local economies. It could further optimize the transition to green energy<\/a>. China has ports in which machines put containers on ships<\/a> with barely any human supervision.<\/p>\n