Is China Really Winning the AI Arms Race?

"If we don't build it, they will." I've heard that line again and again on Machines Like Us. The "it" is artificial superintelligence. The "they" is China. And in many circles, this is treated almost as orthodoxy.

But I don't think the arms race framing is accurate. AI is not like nuclear weapons, and will almost certainly evolve with a pace and diffusion that will make similar global regulatory interventions and norms impossible.

What is certain is that China is racing towards an AI future alongside us. But what they are building and how is profoundly different. And this is something I want to start learning much more about.

That's why I wanted to talk to Keyu Jin. She's a professor at the London School of Economics who splits her time between London and Beijing, and her book The New China Playbook tries to "read China in the original," a firsthand account of the forces behind its technological ambitions.