This week, industry leaders from around the world gather for the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China. Two important developments point to the need for renewed efforts to enhance global co-operation on artificial intelligence and remedies to tackle the challenges it poses to society.
First, China has rapidly emerged as a global leader in AI with significant combined structural advantages. These include: a vast ocean of highly valuable data (which is critical for AI applications); increasingly strong companies and research labs turning out huge numbers of top AI scientists; a well-established and explosively ambitious technology start-up ecosystem; and genuine political will to advance the AI agenda with state support and massive financial backing.
I expect China will lead the AI revolution together with the US. This in itself is a new development of considerable geopolitical importance. It will require more open-minded interactions from other players on the world stage.