Arthur Herman
The public and the media are right to worry about a future dominated by artificial intelligence. But the threat is not coming from Silicon Valley, Big Tech, or the Deep State. It’s coming from Beijing, and much more than the runaway development both of artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) is at stake. The fate of societies and economies founded on Western liberal principles hangs in the balance—a future that Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party want to replace with their own totalitarian template. And that even includes a new definition of what it is to be human.
While Americans worry about whether AI and ChatGPT will enable students to cheat on their term papers or generate deep-fake videos of President Biden or Donald Trump, China has been steadily moving ahead with its own plan for this advanced digital technology. While the AI industry in this country remains focused on commercial advantage and market share and is diffused and dispersed throughout more than 67,000 companies large and small, China’s efforts in AI are centralized and regimented and entirely focused on a larger agenda.
Americans have had some exposure to China’s ruthless use of new technologies from human-rights advocates who detail how they are being used to oppress China’s Muslim Uighur minority. One of the reasons for alarm at the effectiveness of the Chinese-owned TikTok is that its algorithm owes its speed and effectiveness to AI, while TikTok’s data-gathering can provide valuable grist for the Chinese government’s AI mills.
China’s recent announcement about mass-producing humanoid robots by 2025 also raised alarms, since these are devices that will be largely driven by AI.
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