The AI China Report #10 🇨🇳
Your executive summary on the geopolitics of AI - Issue #10
Welcome back to The AI China Report. This week we’re looking at how smart cities in China are using AI, the consequences of US chip export restrictions, and the Pentagon’s push for autonomous weapons.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“No way you make progress over the long term without China and the US deeply talking to each other on something like AI, it has got to be an integral part of the process.”
- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
ONE BIG STORY: CHINA’S AI SMART CITIES
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou - China’s smart cities that are rapidly integrating AI and IoT (Internet of Things) into public services and everyday life are setting the standard for the world in what the cities of the future will look like.
In what sounds straight out of a science fiction movie, at new subway stations in Beijing passengers no longer need to swipe a card or tap their phones, instead facial recognition software scans their face to verify their identity and process payment. Large screens in stations show real-time capacity in each carriage to let passengers know which to board.
This is a part of the Beijing Citizen Social Service Card which has turned the city effectively cashless, where citizens can automatically “pay with their faces” at supermarkets and restaurants, for parking spots, and even hospital visits digitally after they have received their goods or services.
Shanghai’s Citizen Cloud offers over 1,000 different public services for residents such as storage of important personal documents, transportation, and leisure activities. Some techno-optimists may consider this a process made more efficient with technology, while alarmists would find this concerning, just a few steps away from a society without privacy.
No matter where you stand, this present day scenario in China is likely to come to the US as technology advances and AI becomes more integrated into public infrastructure. The US government spent $3.3B on AI last year, up 2.5x in the last 5 years, a trend expected to continue to grow. It’s worth looking at what China is doing with AI to create smart cities to understand what to expect in the future for US cities and how we could learn how to replicate successes and avoid potential issues that could jeopardize American freedoms.
Americans have been introduced to these types of technologies in the home - with security systems and home appliances. In China these new technologies are rapidly being deployed into major cities. The city of Guangzhou for example, uses sensor technology to monitor the moisture level in the soil and get a feed of data on the health of the trees and heavy foliage in the city. This allows for better care, practically eliminating the eyesore of dead plants that plague many cities - creating a future of more beautiful cityscapes. Similar technology is implemented to monitor air quality and pollutants in Guangzhou and other major cities.
The city of Hangzhou, the home of tech giant Alibaba, has implemented Alibaba’s ET City Brain. The technology monitors traffic conditions in real-time to adjust traffic lights. Since 2016 the city has seen an overall reduction of travel time by three minutes and a 50% faster response time for emergency vehicles. The City Brain system has been implemented in 23 cities across Asia, while successful in reducing traffic congestion, it isn’t without criticism. The technology was widely adopted across China during the pandemic for surveillance, to monitor citizens and alert authorities of large gatherings, which many have called a government overreach and invasion of privacy.
As we observe the evolution of China's smart cities, where AI and IoT are seamlessly woven into the urban fabric, we're witnessing the blueprint of future metropolises. As the US ramps up its investment in AI, it must find a balance in leveraging technology for public good and safeguarding individual freedoms. This will be a defining challenge as American cities inch closer to their own smart futures.
NEWS ROUNDUP
Baidu’s Ernie Bot, China’s closest competitor to ChatGPT, has reached over 70 million users within the first three months of its launch. Baidu charges users about $8/mo to use the service - which helped drive the company beat quarterly financial projections. (The Decoder)
Nvidia has postponed the launch of its new AI chip, the H20, in China until the first quarter of next year. The H20 is the most powerful among three China-focused chips recently developed by Nvidia to comply with the latest U.S. export rules. The postponement may affect Nvidia’s efforts to maintain market share in China, particularly in competition with local firms like Huawei. (Reuters)
Graphcore, a British chipmaker once seen as a rival to Nvidia, announced it is no longer selling AI chips to China, citing recent US export restrictions as reasoning for abandoning the China market. (SCMP)
The Pentagon is getting serious about autonomous AI drones. After success with a pilot program using AI drones to aid Ukraine, it launched a new Replicator initiative aims to deploy thousands of AI-enabled autonomous drones by 2026 to match China's advancements. Many industry experts and Pentagon officials agree that this is just the beginning, and that within the next few years the US will have fully autonomous lethal weapons. (CBS News)
Alibaba is donating its in-house quantum computing research lab, Damo Academy, to Zhejiang University so that it can allocate more resources to AI projects. (SCMP)
Changan, one of China’s Big Four auto manufacturers announced a new joint venture with Huawei to create AI infrastructure for auto systems. (China Daily)
DATA TO USE
Know someone who should be in the know about AI and China? Share The AI China Brief 🇨🇳 with your friends and colleagues!
Have feedback on how we can improve? Want to discuss this issue’s content? We’d love to hear from you in comments below!