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

by Kai-Fu Lee

But the greatest riches of this new Chinese tech world have yet to be realized. Like the long-buried organic matter that became fossil fuels powering the Industrial Revolution, the rich real-world interactions in China’s alternate internet universe are creating the massive data that will power its AI revolution. Each dimension of that universe—WeChat activity, O2O services, ride-hailing, mobile payments, and bike-sharing—adds a new layer to a data-scape that is unprecedented in its granular mapping of real-world consumption and transportation habits. China’s O2O explosion gave its companies tremendous data on the offline lives of their users: the what, where, and when of their meals, massages, and day-to-day activities. Digital payments cracked open the black box of real-world consumer purchases, giving these companies a precise, real-time data map of consumer behavior. Peer-to-peer transactions added a new layer of social data atop those economic transactions. The country’s bike-sharing revolution has carpeted its cities in IoT transportation devices that color in the texture of urban life. They trace tens of millions of commutes, trips to the store, rides home, and first dates, dwarfing companies like Uber and Lyft in both quantity and granularity of data. The numbers for these categories lay bare the China-U.S. gap in these key industries. Recent estimates have Chinese companies outstripping U.S. competitors ten to one in quantity of food deliveries and fifty to one in ...