This is an unprecedentedly fierce competition.

Which field?

Artificial Intelligence (AI).

At the recent Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, the biggest hot spot was AI.

The biggest historic opportunity in the world today should also be AI. I always feel that this will be a major innovation that will change the fate of a country, a nation, and even our entire human race.

McKinsey&Company estimates that AI can add $4.4 trillion in global wealth annually. Whoever can dominate in the field of AI has the potential to reshape global technological power and bring about a whole new world.

Which countries are at the forefront?

The first one is the United States, and the second one is China.

But we must see that the United States is pressing the accelerator button.

After Donald Trump was elected, he said that he would appoint an “AI minister” to support local AI by reducing “unnecessary” regulations, so as to strengthen the leadership of the United States in the global AI competition.

We should not overestimate the efficiency of Americans, but we should not underestimate their drive.

In 2019, the Biden administration signed the Executive Order to Maintain American Leadership in AI, requiring the federal government to promote AI technology research and development and open up markets to support innovation.

On November 18, Bloomberg reported that Donald Trump’s team planned to “build a federal framework for fully autonomous vehicle” as one of the priorities of the US Department of Transportation.

On November 26th, the US China Economic and Security Review Commission, which has always aimed at China with colored glasses, proposed an AI proposal to Congress, stating that the United States needs to launch an AI research and development program similar to the Manhattan Project to contain China through defense level priority, legislation, alliances, sanctions, and other means, and compete with China to develop and acquire “General Artificial Intelligence (AGI)”.

In the opinion of Wu Shenkuo, deputy director of the Research Center of the China Internet Association, after Donald Trump takes office, the United States will further strengthen its pressure on China in the AI industry, including further contraction in the global AI industry chain and supply chain, including various measures such as tightening open source licensing and strengthening trade and economic sanctions

Moreover, with the support of a series of heavyweight policies in the United States, the AI market in the country is growing rapidly.

The 2024 Global Vitality Tool for Artificial Intelligence released by the Stanford Human Center for Artificial Intelligence (Stanford HAI) shows that the United States has led China in several key indicators: in 2023, the United States attracted $67.2 billion in private investment in AI, while China only received $7.8 billion; The United States has launched 61 famous machine learning models, while China has only 15.

In terms of computing power, the United States has imposed strict restrictions on the sales of GPU chips in China, which has undoubtedly become an important bottleneck for China’s development of AI.

In terms of algorithms, many core AI algorithm innovations are still led by the United States, such as innovations in convolutional neural networks, large models, and other fields. The ‘siphon effect’ of the United States on AI talent remains strong globally.

The situation is severe, we must be clear headed.

Of course, the gap in China is not insurmountable.

It must be noted that China has caught up in patents and academia (according to the Global Report on the Development of Artificial Intelligence, China is already on par with the United States in terms of the number and influence of AI papers published). Recently, several foreign industry insiders have revealed that the first law of AI big models, Scaling Law, originated from China’s Baidu (proposed in 2017), rather than OpenAI in 2020.

It is precisely because of the early research on Scaling Law that Baidu invested in AI big model research many years ago and released the first generation Wenxin big model in 2019, almost at the same time as OpenAI; In 2023, Baidu will be the world’s first technology giant to launch generative AI products.

AI competition is fierce, and even more intense is the autonomous driving technology closely related to AI.

It must be noted that in China, autonomous driving companies represented by Apollo Go and Xiaoma Zhixing have reached the forefront of the world, but their advantages are not obvious. In some areas, they are being overtaken by the United States.

According to the data, Waymo, a autonomous vehicle company owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, had only 50000 self driving travel services in May; But with the opening up of autonomous driving in San Francisco, the surge in the number of autonomous vehicles, and the increase in user coverage, Waymo has experienced explosive growth!

In August this year, Waymo’s weekly order volume exceeded that of Apollo Go; In October, its weekly order volume has reached 150000. At present, the weekly order volume of Apollo Go is about 82000.

In terms of vehicles, Apollo Go has only launched more than 400 driverless vehicles in Wuhan, while Waymo has 778 driverless vehicles.

The data brought by large-scale operations also enables Google to continue optimizing algorithms and compete for the global AI and autonomous driving high ground.

Not to mention, in the field of autonomous driving, no one can ignore Tesla’s existence.

As a giant of new energy vehicles in the United States, Tesla’s autonomous driving technology is also among the top in the country. The cumulative mileage of its FSD has exceeded 1.6 billion miles.

By the first quarter of 2025, FSD is expected to be approved and implemented in Europe and China, which will accelerate Tesla’s data expansion and iteration.

It can be said that as the representative of China’s “local turnips”, Apollo Go is competing with “foreign turnips” represented by Google and Tesla, forming a competition pattern of “three big players” in driverless driving between China and the United States.

But the United States is constantly making efforts, while China is facing more intense competition.

This requires a three pronged approach.

Firstly, enterprises need to strive for self-improvement and have genuine original innovation. Global competition cannot tolerate any falsehood.

Second, policies should be awesome, especially at the moment. We must encourage competition more, promote innovation more, and prevent potential risks.

Thirdly, we need to be more open. There’s nothing we can do about it. Closing off won’t solve any problems, it will only create more trouble and difficulties.

It must be noted that in the field of AI and autonomous driving, China fell behind without taking a step forward this time, and we even have advantages that many other countries do not possess.

After all, China has the world’s largest automobile market and the most diverse application scenarios, which provides vast space for the development of autonomous driving technology.

At the same time, we have invested heavily in new infrastructure construction such as 5G, satellite Internet, data center, intelligent transportation, which also provides a solid technical support for automatic driving. The emergence and transformation of Apollo Go is a prominent example.

But we need to be more aware that there is still a gap between us and the world’s most advanced technology, and some countries are still digging holes. It cannot be ruled out that sometimes they may even stab us in the back

This is an unbeatable competition.

It should be noted that autonomous driving is not just a change in driving methods, but also involves numerous industrial chain links, including sensors, chips, communication, maps, artificial intelligence, and so on. The development of these industries will provide strong impetus for economic growth, creating a large number of job opportunities and economic value.

The enterprise that can lead the way in this industry will have the ability to define the entire track and export technological products to the world.

Time waits for no one, we need to have both sufficient confidence and a strong sense of crisis.

China and Chinese companies must work hard!