China might have become the manufacturing floor for the global economy, but the West has taken some comfort from the assessment that the United States retains the lead when it comes to the quest for artificial intelligence (AI). That might depend, however, on how one defines the competition. The United States tends to define it in terms of the race toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that is, self-improving artificial intelligence which surpasses the cognitive power of human beings and is capable of executing real-world knowledge work tasks. By Trump’s AI czar David Sacks’ estimate, “China is not years and years behind us in AI. Maybe they’re three to six months,” but no one can really be certain—what that means, whether that’s true, and whether it really matters.
China, the United States, and the AI Race | Council on Foreign Relations
