If you’re at all like me, you’re probably a little confused about geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China over AI. But this week the issue became a bit more clarified, at least in my blogger mind, with a Monday article at the WSJ (“Top American AI Execs Sound Alarm on Chinese Models”), a variation of which can be found at Futurism (“It’s Official: AI Execs Are Quaking in Their Boots”), combined with a good analysis piece at MIT Technology Review (“China’s AI models have Trump’s AI world at war with itself”), with all of those pieces partially reinforced by a NYT article about the building of global AI walls. 

But the real kicker for me was this morning’s WSJ story about China’s “All-Out Push to Catch Up With American AI Chips” — and how the Chinese government views this race as the equivalent of its all-out development of nuclear bombs and satellites in the 1960s. That sparked the obvious US-USSR Space Race analogy in my mind – two nations technologically going at it on a grand scale.

But the economic component of the current AI race also reminds me a bit of the Microsoft-Apple rivalry for dominance of the PC market in the ‘80s. I’m usually in favor of market-driven answers to such corporate rivalries — and it was market forces that ultimately settled the Microsoft-Apple PC battle more than 40 years ago. But they’re talking today about Chinese firms flooding the U.S. market with freebie AI models. Who gives away hugely expensive products for free? Answer: entities trying to corner the market. In this case, government-backed entities trying to corner the market.

And that’s what’s making this such a tough call for the Trump administration (or any administration). Is the AI race a national rivalry or a market-driven rivalry? Unfortunately, the Chinese government clearly views it as the former – and we’re probably going to have to respond in kind while trying to find a way to maintain respect for market forces. It ain’t going to be easy.