China prepares to unseat US in fight for AI market

Straits Times

3 days ago

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Chinese Premier Li Qiang warned of AI 'monopoly' and instead called on foreign officials in the room to cooperate on governance.
BEIJING – While humanoid robots faced off in a boxing ring at China's flagship artificial intelligence conference in Shanghai, a fight in the US-China tech war was fought in suits nearby over who gets to set the rules in the AI age.
China's answer is a new global organisation to convene countries to foster safe and inclusive use of the powerful new technology.
At the annual World AI Conference over the weekend, Chinese Premier Li Qiang warned of AI 'monopoly' and instead called on foreign officials in the room – mostly from developing countries – to cooperate on governance.
The new group, known as the World AI Cooperation Organization, embodies China's plan to jostle with the US for sway by positioning itself as a champion of AI for all.
More favourable rules may give a global boost to Chinese companies competing with US firms to sell hardware and services in a market estimated to hit US$4.8 trillion (S$6.2 trillion) by 2033.
For many of the countries represented at the conference, Chinese firms already offer competitive solutions, even if the US dominates the supply of cutting-edge AI chips.
'The Chinese are coming to the table with a very different AI product mix that is going to be extremely appealing to lower-income countries that lack the computing and power infrastructure needed for large-scale implementation of OpenAI-like AI systems,' said Mr Eric Olander of the China-Global South Project.
Using technology as both carrot and calling card, Beijing's approach appears to take a page out of its earlier Digital Silk Road initiative, which put Chinese companies at the center of telecommunications networks spanning continents.
China for years has strived to define the global parameters for emerging technologies such as 5G, seeking to influence development and set the stage for its companies to win market share abroad.
Huawei Technologies' prominent role in standard-setting groups became the subject of scrutiny of the US government when it cracked down on the use of its equipment.
Global AI governance has emerged as a new battleground for the world's leading powers, both seeing the technology as critical not just for their economy but national security.
President Donald Trump declared last week that his country will 'do whatever it takes' to lead in AI, with his plan for actions including countering Chinese influence in international governance bodies.
While there are no binding global rules for AI development, China's action plan calls for building more digital infrastructure that uses clean power and unifying computing power standards. The country also said it supports the role of businesses in creating technical standards in security, industry and ethics.
Details about the Chinese body, to be headquartered in Shanghai, are scarce. In brief public remarks before media were ushered out of the room, a Chinese Foreign Ministry senior official, Mr Ma Zhaoxu, said the organisation would work to establish standards and governance frameworks. China would discuss details with those countries that are willing to join, he added.
As US and Chinese companies race to develop systems that could match or even surpassed human intelligence, safety concerns have also prompted calls for guardrails.
AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who spoke at the Chinese event, expressed support for international bodies to collaborate on safety issues.
Part of Beijing's AI strategy appears to come from its diplomatic playbook, which urges support for Global South countries to step up in international affairs. In his address to kick off the Saturday event, Mr Li emphasised helping those nations develop AI.
These countries made up most of more than 30 nations that were invited to the high-level governance talks, including Ethiopia, Cuba, Bangladesh, Russia and Pakistan.
A handful of European countries including the Netherlands, France and Germany, the EU and several international organisations were also represented.
No nameplate for the US was seen by Bloomberg News. The US Embassy in Beijing declined to comment on any official presence.
Dr Achmad Adh itya, special adviser to Indonesia's vice-president who attended the meeting, told Bloomberg News that China's initiative is 'very appreciated by the Indonesian government.'
His country is preparing AI curricula to be rolled out across 400,000 schools and is training 60,000 teachers about the tech, he said.
Beijing's emphasis on openness – a word used 15 times in its governance action plan – appears to ride on the success of Deepseek earlier this year.
The AI upstart stunned the world not just by releasing AI models that are almost as capable as those of OpenAI but also made them freely available for anyone to download and customise for free.
A succession of Chinese companies has done the same, with companies from incumbent giants like Alibaba and newcomers like Moonshot releasing cutting-edge large language models that are similarly open-weight.
That accessibility may be especially important to developing countries who may not have the resources to gather vast datasets and train their own AI models from scratch, a process that would involve expensive chips made by companies such as Nvidia Corp.
China also emphasises internet sovereignty, something that may appeal to more autocratic regimes around the world.
'We should respect other countries' national sovereignty and strictly abide by their laws when providing them with AI products and services,' according to the country's Global AI Governance Initiative issued in 2023.
In contrast, Mr Trump's AI plan vows that the US government will only work with engineers who 'ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias'.
The US-China rivalry presents a familiar dilemma for countries that may feel pressured to choose a side, but Solly Malatsi, minister of communications and digital technologies of South Africa, rejects the binary choice.
'It's not a case of one model over the other,' Mr Malatsi said from the conference. 'It's about an integration of the best of both worlds.' BLOOMBERG