China bids to lap US in AI leadership

BEYOND dancing robots and eager-to-help digital avatars, Shanghai's World AI Conference saw China stake its claim to global artificial intelligence leadership and frame itself as a clear alternative to the US.

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Assumptions that the US was far ahead in the fast-moving field were upended this year when Chinese startup DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot that matched top American systems for an apparent fraction of the cost.

With AI now at the forefront of the superpowers’ tech race, the World AI Conference (WAIC) that ended this week saw China set out its case to take charge on shaping its global governance too.

China, the US and other major economies are “engaged in a marathon at Formula One speed’, said Steven Hai, assistant professor of tech innovation at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

“Which country will attain the upper hand can only be assessed dynamically over the course of development.”

China and the US dominate the AI sector - only 10 to 15% of models developed in recent years were built without either’s participation, according to Epoch AI, a nonprofit research institute.

While US companies like Google and OpenAl are still industry-leading, the institute labelled 78% of Chinese models “state-of-the-art” compared to 70% of models built with American participation.

Beijing’s stated aim is to become the world’s leading AI “innovation centre” by 2030.