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

by Kai-Fu Lee

intelligence: tremendous social disorder and political collapse stemming from widespread unemployment and gaping inequality.

Tumult in job markets and turmoil across societies will occur against the backdrop of a far more personal and human crisis—a ...

They called him The Cloner. Wang Xing (pronounced “Wang Shing”)

Wang made no apologies for his mimic sites. Copying was a piece of the puzzle, he said, but so was his choice of which sites to copy and his execution on the technical and business fronts.

was a second phase—Chinese startups taking inspiration from an American business model and then fiercely competing against each other to adapt and optimize that model specifically for Chinese users—that

that turned Wang Xing into a world-class entrepreneur.

For these gladiators, no dirty trick or underhanded maneuver was out of bounds.

around-the-clock work ethic that would send Google employees running to their nap pods.

The dramatic transformation that deep learning promises to bring to the global economy won’t be delivered by isolated researchers producing novel academic results in the elite computer science labs of MIT or Stanford. Instead, it will be delivered by down-to-earth, profit-hungry entrepreneurs teaming up with AI experts to bring the transformative power of

deep learning to bear on real-world industries.

Over the coming decade, China’s gladiator entrepreneurs will fan out across hundreds of industries, applying deep learning to any problem that shows the potential for profit. If artificial intelligence is the new electricity, Chinese entrepreneurs will be the tycoons and tinkerers who electrify everything from household appliances to homeowners’ insurance. Their knack for endlessly tweaking business models and sniffing out profits will yield an incredible array of practical—maybe even life-changing—applications. ...

mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations.

Chinese companies are first and foremost market-driven. Their ultimate goal is to make money, and they’re willing to create any product, adopt any model, or go into any business that will accomplish that objective.

While Socrates encouraged his students to seek truth by questioning everything, ancient Chinese philosophers counseled people to follow the rituals of sages from the ancient past. Rigorous copying of perfection was seen as the route to true mastery.

Combine these three currents—a cultural acceptance of copying, a scarcity

mentality, and the willingness to dive into any promising new industry—and you have the psychological foundations of China’s internet ecosystem.

The most valuable product to come out of China’s copycat era wasn’t a product at all: it was the entrepreneurs themselves.