Chinese AI Takes the Stage
Week 30 Cartoon
Background
This week we read about the Chinese creating a new global forum ‘World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation’ WAICO (opens in a new tab). A genius move to be simultaneously (a) using state funding to gain advantage, (b) leveraging the gains made by the US, and (c) inviting the global south to join them and share open source models and compute. Forces the US to be protectionist (the funding model demands it), which hastens the collapse of the US’s lead in AI. While reading this, I’m also watching videos of Unitree’s (opens in a new tab) amazingly capable robots. This could be the moment China takes the lead on AI and robotics. Assuming it might be (at least directionally), what’s the future of rights and personal freedoms? If it is distinctly Chinese flavoured, what does a once-libertarian society look like in 100 years?
(This is my original thinking, developed and produced with AI support from Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Google Nano Banana 2)