Global Impact: US-China tensions raise AI stakes, complicating an already messy tech war

Global Impact is a weekly curated newsletter featuring a news topic originating in China with a significant macro impact for our newsreaders around the world

In this edition, we look back at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) and provides the latest on the ever-developing world of AI

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Published: 2:00pm, 17 Jul 2023

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Ready or not, artificial intelligence is coming, and it is reshaping the US-China tech war that has evolved over the past five years.

This fact was on full display at China’s largest conference dedicated to the tech, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), which took place in Shanghai earlier this month.

While the event attracted all the biggest domestic players, a single foreign sponsorship – from mobile chip designer Qualcomm – illustrated just how strained things have become for US tech giants trying to operate in China. The last conference before the pandemic in 2019 had IBM, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services as sponsors.

This year’s conference at least had one big foreign public figure who could make headlines: Tesla and SpaceX CEO and embattled Twitter owner Elon Musk. This may not be particularly surprising. With Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory being instrumental to its global supply of electric cars, Musk has immense business interests in China. In an eight-minute speech, Musk’s enthusiasm for Chinese AI was on display.

China is going to be great at anything it puts its mind to. That includes … artificial intelligence

Elon Musk

“China is going to be great at anything it puts its mind to. That includes … artificial intelligence,” he said at the conference.