GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
China’s capabilities in artificial intelligence are “much closer than I thought” to catching up to the USA, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Nikkei Asia, stressing that America will not succeed without a “very strong partnership with our Asian friends.” Schmidt, now chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, said China is closing in on the USA in certain areas of AI + quantum computing — faster than his previous estimate of “a couple of years…That’s a really, really big deal,”
Schmidt continued that for the US to win the tech competition with China, the U.S. must maintain its lead in “strategic” areas such as AI, semiconductors, energy, quantum computing and synthetic biology. And for that, he said, “we need much closer relationships with Japanese researchers, Japanese universities, Japanese government — the same thing for South Koreans and same thing for Europeans.”
Therefore two challenges for the US – first maintaining technical superiority +, second, closer relationships with countries in Asia + Europe.
If you read the journals on China, one issue that keeps reappearing is China’s growth surge in the very areas that Schmidt has identified – AI, Quantum Computing + Synthetic Biology. There are significant expectations that China is already equal to the US if not opening a gap. But it is the second problem that is the real difficulty for the US.
With Trump lurking off stage (for now), will the Europeans and Japan, SK, Indonesia, Philippines even Taiwan want to retain even closer relationships with the USA – just as China continues to make big strides forward.
This is part of the changing geopolitical thrust in the world today. Soon China will be bigger in terms of GDP than the US + that one piece of information is key to the thinking of the rest of the world. Who Do I Bet On Going Forward? Things are Changing.
