Just as frontier artificial-intelligence models are benchmarked against each other, so AI will itself benchmark the rival political systems of America and China. The technology will test which is better at creating AI tools and diffusing them through the economy. And that will in turn depend partly on their very different ideas of how societies should be run.
Even in a field changing as rapidly as AI, the results of that contest may not become clear for some years. But as we report from inside China, the country is already adopting AI fast—and its government is preparing for the dramatic economic and social change this heralds. As an autocracy, China has some advantages in harnessing the 21st century’s most promising technology. It also has plenty of problems.
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
Start with the calibre of China’s models. The common perception is that they are cheap and that even the best persistently lag behind America’s. In fact, the two countries’ AI models are converging. Innovative Chinese models are getting bigger and cleverer. Within the past few weeks Chinese labs have released Qwen3.8-Max and Kimi K3, which almost match the most advanced American AIs such as Anthropic’s Fable 5. Chinese models will be just as likely to break loose from their test beds as American ones.
