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

by Kai-Fu Lee

to recreate human intelligence in a machine.

that of the copycat who lagged far behind the cutting edge.

I can tell you that Silicon Valley looks downright sluggish compared to its competitor across the Pacific.

Chinese urbanites began paying for real-world purchases with bar codes on their phones, part of a mobile payments revolution unseen anywhere else. Armies of food deliverymen and on-demand masseuses riding electric scooters clogged the streets of Chinese cities. They represented a tidal wave of online-to-offline (O2O) startups that brought the convenience of e-commerce to bear on real-world services like restaurant food or manicures. Soon after that came the millions of brightly colored shared bikes that users could pick up or lock up anywhere just by scanning a bar code with their phones.

Based on the current trends in technology advancement and adoption, I predict that within fifteen years, artificial intelligence will technically be able to replace around 40 to 50 percent of jobs in the United States.

To that end, how valuable would Uber become if in the span of a couple of years, the company was able to replace every single human driver with an AI-powered self-driving car? Or if banks could replace all their mortgage lenders with algorithms that issued smarter loans with much lower default rates—all without human interference? Similar transformations will soon play out across industries like trucking, insurance, manufacturing, and retail.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick blush.

The core motivation for China’s market-driven entrepreneurs is not fame, glory, or changing the world. Those things are all nice side benefits, but the grand prize is getting rich, and it doesn’t matter how you get there.

Americans treated search engines like the Yellow Pages, a tool for simply finding a specific piece of information.

Chinese users treated search engines like a shopping mall, a place to check out a variety of goods, try each one on, and eventually pick a few things to buy.

mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation”—became

turn online actions into offline services.

Building this alternate universe didn’t happen overnight. It required market-driven entrepreneurs, mobile-first users, innovative super-apps, dense cities, cheap labor, mobile payments, and a government-sponsored culture shift. It’s been a messy, expensive, and disruptive process, but

the dormitories turned off all their lights at 11 p.m. sharp, and so most of the student body headed outside to continue their studies by streetlight. I looked on as hundreds of China’s brightest young engineering minds huddled in the soft yellow glow. I didn’t know it at the time, but the future founder of one of China’s most important AI companies was there, squeezing in an extra couple of hours of studying in the dark Hefei night.

abundant data, tenacious entrepreneurs, well-trained AI scientists, and a supportive policy environment.

in an age of intelligent machines, what does it mean to be human?

a large base of users and a vibrant entrepreneurial and venture-capital ecosystem.