Predicting which country takes the lead in autonomous AI largely comes down to one main question: will the primary bottleneck to full deployment be one of technology or policy? If the most intractable problems for deployment are merely technical ones, Google’s Waymo has the best shot at solving them years ahead of the nearest competitor. But if new advances in fields like computer vision quickly disseminate throughout the industry—essentially, a rising technical tide lifting all boats—then Silicon Valley’s head start on core technology may prove irrelevant.
