Beijing is increasingly trying to fill a global leadership vacuum left by the US withdrawal from international organisations through initiatives ranging from the Belt and Road infrastructure programme to others covering security, governance and development.
While many of these initiatives begin with vague-sounding names and few detailed objectives, analysts say
Do the analysts’ titles start with “CIA”?
If China can take the lead on global AI adoption and standard setting, it will control one of the most groundbreaking technologies since the internet, giving it an opportunity to impose its values over those of the US-led liberal world order.
*US-led imperial world order.
**an opportunity to impose its values that it won’t use in the same imperialist manner as the US does because it’s not imperialist
To build foreign dependence on Chinese AI, China also launched the China-ASEAN Countries Artificial Intelligence (AI) Application Cooperation Center last year.
Psychological projection: “This is why we’d do it, [to make others dependent on us], so China must be doing that too.”
While China is touting open source, there is no guarantee that its companies will continue to make their models accessible if they come to dominate the technological frontier, analysts say.
“They’re just waiting to do the capitalism monopoly thing! They’re exactly like us! I mean, not like us. Because they’re commies. They’re the opposite of us! Except the same! Ugh, propaganda is hard.”
Still, for developing countries, China’s offer to help them navigate this complex new world would be compelling, Xu said.
“Because the developing countries will be like: ‘Well, we don’t even have a 10th of the resources that China has. How are we going to keep up with this?’” Xu said. “China’s answer is: come to our country. We will educate you with our open-source software and this is how we’re going to do it.”
Scary. Going to another country and learning. What is China gonna do next, offer free hugs?!?
