The United States and China released competing visions of the future of artificial intelligence, with the U.S. seeking global leadership and China prioritizing open source AI models and cooperation among nations and organizations.
In “America’s AI Action Plan,” President Donald Trump said, “it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”
According to an English translation, China’s AI action plan, “Action Plan on Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence,” said “only by working together can we fully realize the potential of AI while ensuring its safe, reliable, controllable and equitable development,” and “create an inclusive, open, sustainable, equitable, secure and reliable digital and intelligent future for all.”
The U.S. strategy rests on three pillars: accelerating innovation, building infrastructure and asserting international leadership. Its tone is competitive, aiming to dismantle “onerous regulation,” restore American semiconductor manufacturing and extend U.S. dominance in frontier AI models, including through export controls on AI chips and components.
China’s plan sets out 13 areas of action, including building AI infrastructure, promoting cross-border data sharing, developing green AI standards and fostering collaboration with developing countries. The plan champions “open source communities,” emphasizes “sovereignty,” and calls for equitable representation in global AI governance platforms.
“The U.S. AI action plan is focused on America’s priorities — it’s a reflection of Trump’s ‘America first’ views,” said George Chen, partner and co-chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy, per a Financial Times (FT) report. “China, in contrast, wants to position itself as a defender of multilateralism, and it encourages more international cooperation.”
In an op-ed for Foreign Affairs, Owen Daniels and Hanna Dohmen from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said China’s approach to AI seeks to flex its “soft power.”
“By enabling AI’s benefits to be broadly shared, Chinese open models could win international goodwill and position China as an AI benefactor to countries across the developing world,” they wrote.
Moreover, China has embraced open ecosystems while U.S. companies have mostly developed closed AI models.
“If Washington’s new AI strategy does not adequately account for open models, American AI companies, despite their world-leading models, will risk ceding international AI influence to China,” Daniels and Dohmen wrote.
But the larger danger is that the U.S. “will lose key strategic leverage in emerging technology diplomacy in key regions of the world” as China exerts its “soft power” influence, they wrote.
Raw vs. Soft Power
At this month’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, where China’s AI action plan was unveiled, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said AI innovation is being hindered by bottlenecks such as chip supplies, the FT reported.
Li also said that “technological monopolies” and restrictions are hindering AI innovation, and it could become “an exclusive game for a few countries and companies,” without explicitly naming the U.S. He unveiled plans to create an organization for AI cooperation in Shanghai and two United Nations dialogue mechanisms for regulating AI.
China promotes AI as a tool for international development and poverty reduction, seeking to support less affluent Global South countries in building capacity and closing the digital divide. It seeks global coordination on AI risk testing, incident response and transparency.
Although both plans recognize the transformative potential and risks of AI, they diverge on who should lead global governance and how it should be structured. China seeks a consensus-based framework anchored in the U.N. The U.S. aims to build a global AI alliance around American infrastructure, norms and technologies.
China positions itself as a champion of multilateral governance and digital equity, while the U.S. frames AI as a power competition. The Chinese plan calls for “respect for national sovereignty” and a non-discriminatory governance model. In contrast, the U.S. plan vows to “counter Chinese influence in international governance bodies” and establish American AI systems as the “gold standard.”
Both plans endorse open source AI development, AI literacy efforts and the expansion of AI into public services. However, the U.S. plan makes open weight models a matter of strategic importance, calling them “essential for academic research” and a potential global standard.
The U.S. plan is also explicit in opposing ideological influence in AI systems. It directs federal procurement policies to favor models that are “objective and free from top-down ideological bias,” and tasks the National Institute of Standards and Technology with removing references to misinformation, diversity, equity and inclusion from its risk frameworks.
Source: https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/
