Nina Xiang provided expert commentary on CGTN, discussing DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence sector, and U.S.-China AI competition.
Some comments beyond the TV interviews:
“The AI war/competition framework is misguided. The key issue isn’t technological (who’s got the most advanced models or open/closed source). The real battleground is cultural or civilizational.
China invented gunpowder, yet historically, it wasn’t primarily used for military dominance in the same way it was in the West. Similarly, the compass was invented in China, but there was no desire to establish global sea trade routes as seen in European exploration.
The computer vision AI wave (2014-2019) is a clear example of how the global AI landscape is shaped by value choices, not just technological ones. Chinese companies utilized computer vision for surveillance, for both good and sometimes excessively invasive use cases – something the West largely shunned.
Gen AI could be shaping up to be another clash of civilizations, where knowledge and perception of reality become increasingly divided along cultural lines. If social media deepened societal fractures, Gen AI has the potential to go even further—reshaping our cognition according to preexisting values and narratives.
No single country will dominate AI. The real choices are cultural. We should know how those cultural choices would be made in the East and West. Those don’t change.”