The U.S. is spending billions of dollars and burning gigawatts of energy in a rush to beat China to the next evolutionary leap in artificial intelligence—one so great, some boosters say, that it will rival the atomic bomb in its power to change the global order. China is running a different race. Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT nearly three years ago, Silicon Valley has spent mountains of money in pursuit of AI’s holy grail: artificial general intelligence that matches or beats human thinking. Enthusiasts say it will give the U.S. insurmountable military advantages, help cure cancer and solve climate change, and eliminate the need for people to perform routine work such as accounting and customer service. In China, by contrast, leader Xi Jinping has recently had little to say about AGI. Instead, he is pushing the country’s tech industry to be “strongly oriented toward applications”—building practical, low-cost tools that boost China’s efficiency and can be marketed easily. The diverging visions represent a head-to-head bet with significant stakes. If China’s gamble turns out to be wrong, it could find itself lagging far behind the U.S. in the most consequential technology of the 21st century.

Full report : Xi Jinping is pushing the country’s tech industry to be oriented toward applications for AI, charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley’s pursuit of AGI.