Xi Jinping, president of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), traveled to Shanghai in mid-July. Of his several missions in Shanghai, none was more important than his opening speech to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
Breaking from the norm established since the first World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai in 2018, Xi himself, rather than a leader from the inner circles of the CCP, took the helm on July 17 and opened the conference with his thoughts. And his speech left no doubt that he has decided to take a leading role in the development of AI.
Xi’s speech addressed the attendees at the conference, but his real audience was the international community, and of course the United States, China’s chief competitor in AI development. Surprisingly, Xi began his speech by giving credit to the foreign sources that initiated the study and development of AI.
“Seventy years ago,” Xi told the assembly, “a group of young scholars proposed the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) for the first time at the Dartmouth Workshop in New Hampshire of the United States.”
The reference to the foreign, indeed American, creators who were the progenitors of AI is an uncharacteristic acknowledgement for a Chinese leader to make.
