Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School in the United States. It is a benchmark in technology and economics. He even worked at the White House on antitrust issues.
He has just written one of the most important articles on current thinking on artificial intelligence, published by the Financial Times. In the title, he asks: “Can the United States win the AI race while losing the war?” In this case, “the war” is about China.
The tenacious and unwavering argument made by Tim Wu in his article is this: the United States is 100% invested in the success of artificial intelligence. Never in the history of the country has there been such a gigantic bet on a single technology. We are talking about investments whose potential can exceed 1 trillion US dollars. That’s more than humanity spent on going to the Moon, creating the atomic bomb, and developing the Internet, combined.
The United States’ bet is that by taking the lead in artificial intelligence, both in infrastructure and in what is called “superintelligence”, they would be able to unlock an economic windfall never seen before, allowing humanity not only to solve all its bottlenecks (energy, medicines, food and others) but also to conquer the planets (these grandiose words come from texts by Silicon Valley personalities).
The strategy is reminiscent of a famous episode of the series South Park. In it, the gnomes create a business plan to get rich in three steps. The first is to collect all of humanity’s underwear. The second is a question mark. And the third is profit. Just like in the series, between artificial intelligence and profit, there is a huge question mark today.
That’s when Tim Wu turned his attention to China. Contrary to popular perception, the country is not 100% invested in AI, like the United States. On the contrary. Chinese investments in the region are relatively modest, around $100 billion. The Chinese bet is focused on several different sectors. The country places its chips on electric vehicles (of which it dominates 70% of production), solar panels (85% domination) and batteries (75% of production).
Even including AI, China’s bet is not superintelligence. It’s efficiency. While the United States pursues science fiction phenomena such as the “singularity,” the Chinese want AI to be able to improve productive efficiency: industrial plants, robots, vehicles, commerce and other sectors of the real economy.
Tim Wu cleverly recognizes in the article that between the Chinese and American points of view, there is still no winner. So far, the capital market has rewarded those who invested in AI according to the American model, for example.
If the American bet is correct, then the reward at stake is supremacy. Not just economic, but military, scientific and beyond. Anyone who doubts can “pay the language”.
But the thing is, this all reminds me of the article I wrote in August 2024 here on Leaf: The global economy is becoming a huge global “gamble”. What we previously considered an investment is gradually becoming a mere gamble. Individuals, businesses and now countries are taking existential risks by putting everything on the table. The die is cast.
It was already – a time when the word bet meant a game of cue played in the street
This is already the case – the word bet everywhere
It happens – the logic of “bets” dominating ever larger segments of the economy
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