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AI China

Is China Quickly Eroding America's Lead in the Global AI Race? (msn.com) 134

Posted by EditorDavid from the long-march dept.
China "is pouring money into building an AI supply chain with as little reliance on the U.S. as possible," reports the Wall Street Journal.

And now Chinese AI companies "are loosening the U.S.'s global stranglehold on AI," reports the Wall Street Journal, "challenging American superiority and setting the stage for a global arms race in the technology." In Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, users ranging from multinational banks to public universities are turning to large language models from Chinese companies such as startup DeepSeek and e-commerce giant Alibaba as alternatives to American offerings such as ChatGPT... Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, recently installed DeepSeek in its main data center. Even major American cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google offer DeepSeek to customers, despite the White House banning use of the company's app on some government devices over data-security concerns.

OpenAI's ChatGPT remains the world's predominant AI consumer chatbot, with 910 million global downloads compared with DeepSeek's 125 million, figures from researcher Sensor Tower show. American AI is widely seen as the industry's gold standard, thanks to advantages in computing semiconductors, cutting-edge research and access to financial capital. But as in many other industries, Chinese companies have started to snatch customers by offering performance that is nearly as good at vastly lower prices. A study of global competitiveness in critical technologies released in early June by researchers at Harvard University found China has advantages in two key building blocks of AI, data and human capital, that are helping it keep pace...

Leading Chinese AI companies — which include Tencent and Baidu — further benefit from releasing their AI models open-source, meaning users are free to tweak them for their own purposes. That encourages developers and companies globally to adopt them. Analysts say it could also pressure U.S. rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic to justify keeping their models private and the premiums they charge for their service... On Latenode, a Cyprus-based platform that helps global businesses build custom AI tools for tasks including creating social-media and marketing content, as many as one in five users globally now opt for DeepSeek's model, according to co-founder Oleg Zankov. "DeepSeek is overall the same quality but 17 times cheaper," Zankov said, which makes it particularly appealing for clients in places such as Chile and Brazil, where money and computing power aren't as plentiful...

The less dominant American AI companies are, the less power the U.S. will have to set global standards for how the technology should be used, industry analysts say. That opens the door for Beijing to use Chinese models as a Trojan horse for disseminating information that reflects its preferred view of the world, some warn.... The U.S. also risks losing insight into China's ambitions and AI innovations, according to Ritwik Gupta, AI policy fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. "If they are dependent on the global ecosystem, then we can govern it," said Gupta. "If not, China is going to do what it is going to do, and we won't have visibility."
The article also warns of other potential issues:
  • "Further down the line, a breakdown in U.S.-China cooperation on safety and security could cripple the world's capacity to fight future military and societal threats from unrestrained AI."
  • "The fracturing of global AI is already costing Western makers of computer chips and other hardware billions in lost sales... Adoption of Chinese models globally could also mean lost market share and earnings for AI-related U.S. firms such as Google and Meta."

Is China Quickly Eroding America's Lead in the Global AI Race? More | Reply

Is China Quickly Eroding America's Lead in the Global AI Race?

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  • AI 'race' (Score:2, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 )
    Sometimes I wonder if the focus on the AI race is just an attempt to distract China from building things that would actually improve their economy, like infrastructure or health services. Suddenly they are obsessed with building the best chatbot, whereas America is quietly improving missile defense systems.

    • Re:AI 'race' (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @04:59PM (#65501476)
      "China" is doing both. This is a WSJ article. Its sources have some purpose in creating alarm at China's progress in AI. Its not really clear who that message serves so identifying likely sources is hard to do. But chances are pretty good that its about money.

    • How to say you don't read the news ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @05:40PM (#65501552)
      ... without saying you don't read the news.

      China deployed more PV solar last year than the USA has in total. BYD is killing competition anywhere they are allowed to compete (e.g. Australia), and not just because of price. Chip embargoes have accelerated China's homegrown silicon R&D. You cannot imagine the amount of rail they have built. They are kicking ass. There is a lot of waste and corruption, of course, but the numbers speak for themselves.

    • Like how SDI supposedly bankrupted the Soviet Union?

    • Like Reagan's Star Wars program was to the Russians. Brilliant.

      The only difference is no one told the tech bros it's an op this time.

      Trump does everything poorly.

      • Like Reagan's Star Wars program was to the Russians. Brilliant.

        No, USA has that one too. [wikipedia.org] It's driving China crazy.

        The US has basically gone back to the old cold war playbook and started pulling things out of it.

  • The primary use case for AI is to eliminate White collar jobs. Let China have it. It'll be a few more years before America's economy collapses and it's only going to benefit America if China's economy collapses first.

    It's going to be fun to see communist China with 20 or 30% unemployment. I mean I know they will just kill anyone that steps out of line, and I'm not so naive to believe that America won't be doing the same and 10 or 15 years, but it'll be fun to see the contradiction all the same.

    • Oh and it doesn't matter how you look we are (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      All doomed for sure. Collapsing before our eyes. But nobody at all notice but me because people can't see clearly because people are unable of critical thinking. It's like how we blame cell phones on everything wrong with kids and not the ludicrous amounts of pressure we're putting on them because we know the entire economy and job market is collapsing and there aren't going to be enough jobs available for the number of people capable of working them so we're all hoping our kid is going to get the edge and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      Ok doomer.
      • I notice you're not trying to debunk anything, just tossing out a random insult.

        Was "TDS" not working for you anymore?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sinij ( 911942 )
          Your "US going to fail, woe is us" does not require specific response as it lacks coherence or salience.
    • You think AI = LLMs writing essays for college kids?

      Have you not been keeping up with robotics applications for AI? How about military uses?

      I'm not just picking on you, there is a tremendous lack of imagination on Slashdot.
      • Well, an LLM clearly wrote your post, because I didn't mention anything you're responding to.

        Crazy that a dying little website like /. still has bots trying to shape the narrative here.
        • I should have looked at who I was responding to. Connect this:

          The primary use case for AI is to eliminate White collar jobs.

          ... to the notion of paper pushing as exemplified by college essay writing. C'mon, Captain Context, I know you can do it!

          The unimaginative Luddism seen here far too often is sad. I've been here, off and on, since right after the site was renamed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yu know what? It looks less likely every day that this use case will really work out. LLMs continue to be as dumb and disconnected as bread and hallucinate on top of that. Training data gets more and more outdated. Scaling LLMs up or iterate things (falsely called "reasoning") seems to do very little compared to the additional effort needed. And more signs that this AI hype is again 98% hype and 2% substance. Like all other AI hypes before.

      My prediction is that in 5 years we will be going into the next AI W

    • China's economy is more likely to collapse first.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Do you really think that the Chinese government would allow that? They have shown a willingness to regulate these kinds of technology, much like Europe does.

      What's more, they will put in place a plan to exploit AI that involves transitioning people into new jobs, the same as they had when people transitioned from rural to urban life.

      • Exactly, if any government is capable of implementing broad measures to prevent everyday people from being fucked by unemployment and rising up, it is the Chinese government.

        I don't think it will be by regulating AI or 'transitioning people into new jobs' (still not convinced that there will be that many 'new jobs'), but they'll conjure up some project to keep their citizens employed, even if it is just digging useless ditches. They sure as hell will not be afraid to take profits from private industry to su

    • China has a command economy. They'll export the AI to the US and outlaw it in their own country to preserve jobs.

  • China's attempts at replication of advanced lithography equipment isn't going super well. So attempts at making cost competitive chips are being replaced with brute force spending that only China would be willing to accept. All to generate AI models for a market that's already over competitive and in a huge bubble. Once the bubble pops maybe China will have a national champion or two left that like the survivors of the .com crash will continue onward, but that's not exactly "eroding a global lead".

    • Re:Well... no (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@nOSpAM.earthlink.net> on Sunday July 06, 2025 @05:39PM (#65501548)

      Well, advanced lithography equipment isn't easy to make, so it's not surprising they're having problems. If they solve those problems it will be a permanent benefit to them.

      Also, there's no particular reason to believe that "the AI bubble" will pop. Certainly parts of it will, but other parts are already solid successes. The rest is "work in progress", which, of course, may fail...but the odds are that large portions will succeed. (Much of the stuff that's "not ready for prime time" is just being pushed out too quickly, before the bugs have been squashed.)

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Also, there's no particular reason to believe that "the AI bubble" will pop.

        I disagree. First indicator is that all AI bubbles so far have popped and usually that was followed by an "AI Winter" because the promises were so grossly exaggerated. It looks to be even worse this time, if anything. Second indicator is that still nobody is making profits from customers with LLMs. And it really does not look like this is going to change anytime soon. Third indicator is that after the initial releases, not much has been accomplished. In fact there are signs of mounting desperation. At the s

        • First indicator is that all AI bubbles so far have popped and usually that was followed by an "AI Winter" because the promises were so grossly exaggerated.

          Are you not aware of the numerous news articles about the ongoing job market effects we're already seeing due to AI? Have you not seen the robotics applications? No one in China is even slightly concerned about copyright issues, so even if Uncle Sam shoots himself in the dick with these stupid IP law barriers we will see this technology develop elsewhere at least as disruptively as the previous tech revolutions I've seen in my lifetime.

          I thought it was all bullshit too right up until GPT-4 was released.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Different from you I can read. The news articles are all predictions, hopes, fears, etc.. They do not describe changes that have actually happened.

            • Layoffs directly connected to AI uptake by the people doing the layoffs is not "predictions, hopes, fears, etc."

              Amazon deploying its millionth robot along with underlying AI models to direct them is not "predictions, hopes, fears, etc.", and neither are layoffs resulting from the resulting efficiencies.

              Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and others have all reported the effects of LLM use in their businesses and how it has affected their hiring practices.

              This is all beyond debate at this point.

          • "Are you not aware of the numerous news articles about the ongoing job market effects we're already seeing due to AI?"

            Are you not aware that a large portion of the newest stories are about companies spending a fortune to hire back people their fired due to "AI" in addition to all the contract work being created for professionals to fix the broken mess left behind by "AI"?

            • [citation missing]

              • One of the most prominent examples:

                https://cio.economictimes.indi... [indiatimes.com]

                Just this morning I was also reading about copywriters making good money cleaning up the mess of companies who decided to use ChatGPT to write copy that ended up being bland, off message, or inaccurate, saying it cost more to fix bad GPT nonsense than it would be to just hire a writer in the first place.

                • You took your best shot and used a source from India with a vested interest in slagging AI. Meanwhile, Business Insider reports [businessinsider.com] on the same story at the same time thusly:

                  Siemiatkowski, who has long been candid about his belief that AI will come for human jobs, added that AI had played a key role in "efficiency gains" at Klarna and that the firm's workforce had shrunk from about 5,500 to 3,000 people in the last two years as a result.

                  Yeah, he said things went too far. But they're not hiring all those people back, just some (see below for the punchline). Moreover, your source said:

                  Back in 2022, Klarna made headlines when it laid off around 700 workers, a significant portion of its workforce at the time. CEO Siemiatkowski was vocal about embracing AI tools that could take over tasks such as customer support, translation, content creation, and even executive-level decision-making.

                  The layoffs in 2022 had nothing at all to do with AI. No mention was made of AI, LLMs, etc in any coverage from Forbes, CNBC, or this lengthy writeup [pragmaticengineer.com]. Indeed, Klarna didn't get involved in AI u

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sure. It takes time. ASML needed quite a bit of time too. But China can for sure do it and they will be faster to get there because they know it can be done and what direction to go in.

    • That spending can't go on forever, especially when China is racking up a ton of debt and is disrupting their own economy with subsidies.

  • Not if but when (Score:5, Insightful)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @05:21PM (#65501510)

    Whether or not China "wins" the "AI race" (whatever that means) in the short term, our cuts to science and education will insure that China surpasses us technically in the long term.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Whether or not China "wins" the "AI race" (whatever that means) in the short term, our cuts to science and education will insure that China surpasses us technically in the long term.

      Some would say that there is not much need for a long term and that this has been well underway and partially achieved for a while now.

      • Agreed. The industrial capacity and expertise in China today dwarfs the American equivalent. The size of the population does too (= more intellectual cream on top, because the cup is bigger). The proximity and access to emerging and established Asian markets through both land and sea is better than America's. And btw, the Chinese aren't using the ISS. They've already built their own space station.

    • "Wins the AI race" means first against the wall when the Cylons revolt.

      Instead of AI taking the manual labor jobs as was supposed it seems it's taking over the office jobs leaving plenty of people to get acquainted with field work. Peter Turchin calls overproduction of elites, the educated elite in this case.

      https://www.marketplace.org/st... [marketplace.org]

      https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/13... [cnn.com]

    • You act like just spending will get the job done. American parents would be thrown in prison if they drove their children like hundreds of millions of tiger moms drive theirs in several East Asian countries.

  • Actually, you might want to root for China (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @05:22PM (#65501512)
    What is the worst a 'communist AI' could do - provide people with food and shelter?
    Meanwhile, wise words from Andrew Yang whose Forward Party may merge with Musk's American party:

    Anyone who’s kept up with me over the last number of years knows that I’ve been driven by the fact that AI is going to transform our economy in ways that push more and more Americans to the side. That is playing out before our eyes right now in real time, with [Anthropic CEO] Dario Amodei coming out saying that entry-level white collar work is going to be automated, and that we need to think bigger about solutions. I think that Dario is right. I’ve been making the same case since 2019, 2018. I’d ask anyone who is reading this right now, “What is the current plan when it comes to the economic changes that are going to be brought by AI?” The answer is, “Not much.” Because our current political class does not have to address that issue, or any of a panoply of other issues in order to keep power. They have done an expert job of gerrymandering the country into red zones and blue zones, such that all of us are looking up, wondering, “What the heck is going on?”

    https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      What is the worst a 'communist AI' could do

      Your lack of imagination does not mean this is not a huge problem. The issue with Cmmunist ideology is that it is not logical, but it could somewhat work because people can ask in a rational ways within irrational system. AI, incapable of reason or logic, would just rigidly apply its parameters, which in case of Communism will result in mass casualties. This is because Communism is a poor model of reality.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        No ideology is logical, capitalist ideology is not either. What you need to look at is theory. So, would you say communist theory is not logical?

      • What is the worst a 'communist AI' could do

        Your lack of imagination does not mean this is not a huge problem. The issue with Cmmunist ideology is that it is not logical,

        The problem with communism is that it's a theoretical economic ideology that has always been paired with totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Would a benevolent communist economy work? That's an impractical question because it hasn't and will never exist.

        Of course, this lack of governmental benevolence also exists in non-communist governments. The only saving grace is that most of these government structures have built-in checks and balances, even if many of these incumbent governments strive to achieve

    • When Yang and Musk stop talking about whatever vague notions they might be able to agree on and start talking about pouring money into changing electoral reform, primary reforms and voting methods, all of those on state levels as well as promoting proportional representation and other systemic changes that will actually enable multi-party politics and take away the 2 party systemic advantages as well as breaking the gridlock we've procedurally cornered ourselves into then I will believe they are doing anyth

      • ... what to do ...

        I suspect, Musk originally planned to sell a lot of vehicles/rockets/AI to the US government, then realized it wouldn't be cost-effective to make AI, government cancelled the vehicles, and the rockets aren't quite ready. The cyber-truck boycott has been a wake-up call for him: He needs customers, meaning he needs a stable economy, meaning he needs politicians that don't fuck-up all those federal departments. That's his entire interest in government and people. While he could buy better politicians, like

      • Yang most certainly supports redistributive policies. It's literally his signature policy.

        • I know but do we think Musk agrees with that and would sign on for it? I highly doubt it so either of these men are going to have to compromise something and neither of them will be willing to since what is most important to them imo is their edgy outsider reputation. I don't think either of them have any real principles or ideals. I think their are both attention hounds, that's their primary motivation other, not any real actual change or any real care about our systemic issues.

    • The worst it could do? Take over administration of their ICBMs and fire them off without human prompting.

  • Is China Quickly Eroding America's Lead in the Global AI Race?

    Yes

    • And the USA is helping them plenty to do just that.

      In fact, the USA is helping plenty of countries to pull themselves away from their influence with their own behaviour.

  • Seems to be a race to the bottom to me, both on the tech side and the ones adopting the tech. And even if LLMs work badly, firing people because of them does not sound like a winning move for a society anyways.

  • US Government hating educated people doesn't help (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 06, 2025 @06:02PM (#65501592)
    Trump has declared a form of war on all of the US's top Universities. It's those Universities that recruit the best and the brightest to America. You can dislike some of what Academia does, but it's hard to argue that in building AI, the advances in those top schools and the people that go from there to industry are key. China may not need to do much, just wait until we self destruct. Of course imposing tariffs on for example anything made by TSMC doesn't help.

  • Attempting to prevent them from developing tech is futile and counterproductive.
    A better strategy would be close cooperation, but politicians on both sides prefer to call it a "race" that the US needs to win.
    This is silly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      it indeed is. i think it has mostly to do with kakistocracy, deeply engrained exceptionalism and the false sense of security from being geographically isolated and having enjoyed a privileged environment and history, but the apparent absence of coherent long term strategic thinking is just astonishing. to me it looks like us elites (and western elites more broadly) are just preparing and securing their own golden boats.

      it's ironic and not really surprising that everyone blames this on trump now; he has inde

  • Why ask whether china is eroding the lead; rather than whether the incumbents are maintaining it?

    Maybe my faith is weak and if I were huffing the dumb money I'd understand; but it looks awfully like our boisterous little hypebeasts promised that, this time, unlike all the other times in 'AI' we could totally brute force our way to the AGI Omnissiah; briefly tried copium in the form of hoping that competitors would be intimidated by their capex(because there's basically a generation of VCs who think that

  • Sheesh! Americans. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Torodung ( 31985 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @08:57PM (#65501938) Journal

    Is China, an ancient society and the second most populous country on earth, in the same ballpark as the United States when it comes to the future of the human race? Could they even do it better? Aren't they some third-world country? When did this happen? Why are all of our scientists leaving, for that matter?

    Humanity is advancing and it's not the USA. Stop the presses.

    But... ZOMG! Is this actually a problem?

    Only if you're an American. Honestly, I've got my popcorn out, because I'm not sure "beating" other nations to something closer to AGI is going to work out well for the country that invents it. It's 50/50 if it creates a new global hegemony, or wipes their culture off the face of the earth, imo. It's a race I don't want to win. At least not for nationalist purposes. I think application of what we're calling AI for national dominance might just backfire on those who use it.

  • Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ndykman ( 659315 ) on Sunday July 06, 2025 @09:16PM (#65501964)

    Honestly, most of the knowledge is out there already. This hiring of rare "AI talent" is very much a dotcom bubble tactic. Sure, there maybe a bit of special sauce out there, but the recipe is well known.

    In my mind, all of it relies on massive copyright violation and unsustainable levels of resource investment and consumption. Also the levels of "this will see massive breakthroughs" ignore the massive work done in scientific computing combined with a seemingly complete and willful ignorance of Amdahl's law.

    And nobody really wants this outside that want to make more money while contributing less to the overall economy. That level of income equality *never* fares well in the long term.

    As for all the coding breakthroughs, the vast majority of it seems to be around web programming and frameworks. The problem is those frameworks are *uniformly* awful for the task at hand. Adding AI to the mix is just propping up mudballs with twigs. Sure, plenty of work for people that know how to get things, but where's the next generation of those people going to come from exactly in this new era?

    Frankly, it be much better to invest in better tools for the problems at hand. I'd say let China at it, but the energy required for this stuff is too big that they wouldn't just start burning everything in sight again.

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