The United States and China are really the only two countries that matter right now in shaping the A.I. future. As President Trump and President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, there’s a kind of Cold War atmosphere, with people talking about an A.I. arms race. But who is winning? Are we even in a race at all? Kyle Chan, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, says it’s hard to call it a race because the U.S. and China have very different A.I. goals.
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Ross Douthat: Kyle Chan, welcome to “Interesting Times.”
Kyle Chan: Great to be here.
Douthat: So at the moment, there are really only two countries that matter for the A.I. future: the United States and China. Their leaders are meeting in Beijing this week, and the atmosphere is sort of similar to a kind of Cold War atmosphere, where people think and argue and talk about them being in a kind of arms race.
You are an expert on China and A.I., and we’re going to talk about that race: who’s winning, what winning even means, whether it even makes sense to talk about the U.S. and China in terms of a race.
But I want to start with a basic question. How is China’s current approach to A.I. different from the American approach?