AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee

The way things stand today, China already has the edge in entrepreneurship, data, and government support, and it’s rapidly catching up to the United States in expertise. If the technological status quo holds for the coming years, an array of Chinese AI startups will begin fanning out across different industries. They will leverage deep learning and other machine-learning technologies to disrupt dozens of sectors and reap the rewards of transforming the economy. But if the next breakthrough on the scale of deep learning occurs soon, and it happens within a hermetically sealed corporate environment, all bets are off. It could give one company an insurmountable advantage over the other Seven Giants and return us to an age of discovery in which elite expertise tips the balance of power in favor of the United States. To be clear, I believe the odds are slightly against such a breakthrough coming out of the corporate behemoths in the coming years.