For most of the last decade, China was thought to be distant second to the US in the AI space, but it might now be in pole position to win unless the US radically changes course.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has issued a stark warning about China’s growing dominance in artificial intelligence. His comments highlight a critical juncture in the global AI landscape, emphasizing the potential consequences of inaction and the clash of values at the heart of this technological competition. He invoked the success of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI-powered search engine, as evidence of China’s progress. Schmidt, known for his deep understanding of the tech world, didn’t mince words when describing the stakes involved.
“As a result of the incredible success of DeepSeek, the Chinese government, which has largely been asleep on (AI), has decided this is another national priority,” Schmidt said. “They’re pouring billions of dollars into this, and the Chinese model is to be taken very seriously. “They’re very smart, they work really hard, and although they don’t have the advantage of some of the chips we have, the constraints that we put on them cause them to invent new algorithms, such as what you see in DeepSeek, which are impressive. So never underestimate the Chinese competition here.”
He then delivered his most dire prediction: “So, if people don’t really care about everything else I’ve said, China is going to win. I’ll be very clear here: China is going to win this race with enormously negative effects unless we get our act together.”
“President Trump has indicated that he’s not going to pursue, in fact, he’s canceled, many of the Biden AI initiatives. The new team is getting confirmed, and my sense is that they’ll be focused on the China threat, which is a legitimate one,” he added.
Finally, echoing the sentiments of his work with the NSCAI, he emphasized the importance of aligning AI development with American values. “What I hope they do is they come back with a statement, which I did when I did the National Security Commission on AI a few years ago, that it’s imperative that the winner in AI win using American values and not Chinese values,” Schmidt declared. He elaborated on the contrast: “The American traditionally liberal values of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of movement…if you were to put China in charge of those, those values would not be front and center; they would be forgotten or omitted.”
China’s AI ecosystem might’ve become mainstream only recently, but it had its Sputnik moment all the way back in 2016, when Deepmind’s AlphaGo had beaten world champion Lee Sedol in a match. Go is an enormously popular game in China, and the country was hooked to the match between man and machine. When AlphaGo eventually prevailed, it created a spike in interest in AI in the country, and many of the top tech firms began working on AI in earnest.
The results of this are only now becoming apparent to the rest of the world. Deepseek not only managed to come up with novel technical architectures for its models, but was able to price its models at much cheaper than US labs. Apart from this, Chinese companies have made strides in self-driving as well, and there are a bevy of startups that are demonstrating the self-driving capabilities in the real world. In robotics, China is using AI heavily as well, and recently held the world’s first robot half-marathon, with dozens of participating teams. DeepSeek wasn’t an aberration — it was the result of years of work that just happened to go mainstream in the west. And like Eric Schmidt says, the US will need to rapidly rethink its approach to AI if it wants to prevent China from running away with the top spot in the AI race.