Analyst says China and the US define the AI race differently

In short: A China-focused analyst says the US often talks about AI as a race to “superintelligence,” but China is more focused on putting AI to work across society.

What's going on

Matt Sheehan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued on The Ezra Klein Show that the US and China are aiming at different targets in AI.

In many US discussions, the “finish line” is AGI or superintelligence. AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, which means an AI that can do most kinds of work as well as a person. Superintelligence usually means something even stronger than that. In this framing, the big goal is to build the most capable model first.

Sheehan says China appears to treat the AI race differently. Instead of centering the idea of a single finish line model, China’s approach is described as more about deployment and governance. That includes getting AI into real products and workplaces, setting rules for how it can be used, and aligning it with state priorities like productivity, social stability, and political control.

A simple way to think about the contrast is this. Some US “frontier labs” (the companies building the most advanced AI models) talk like the race is a sprint to a trophy at the end. Sheehan suggests China is running more like a long construction project, where the point is to build lots of useful roads, not just win one race.

What to watch

If the two countries keep measuring “winning” differently, their policies could diverge even more. Watch for China to emphasize rollouts, industry use, and regulation, while the US debate continues to focus heavily on the next big leap in model capability.

Source: NYTimes