The Biden administration announced export restrictions on advanced chip technology, specifically targeting China. The incoming Trump administration will soon be reviewing this policy and will decide whether to continue pursuing the same course. Mark Niu has more.
The Biden Administrations new Regulatory Framework for the Responsible Diffusion of Advance AI Technology creates a tier that includes both China and Russia and prevents them from buying advanced U.S. chips and powerful AI models.
AI Chip Maker NVIDIA issued a statement saying the rules would only weaken America's global competitiveness.
TIM BAJARIN Chairman, Creative Strategies, Inc. "These restrictions will keep, I think, global competitiveness away in some sense, because it's restricting who we can partner with. And that's going to be an issue that's incredibly difficult to deal with. And then of course, the technology effectiveness, the restrictions may not effectively limit overall AI computing power, as competitors can achieve similar capabilities by using more, less powerful GPUs but cobbling them together."
MARK NIU San Francisco "That's exactly what Chinese companies have managed to do. Case in point – the AI Chatbot DeepSeek. The Chinese developers claim to have spent only a fraction of the development costs compared to company's like OpenAI. In some tests, it's closely matched the performance of OpenAI's ChatGPT model and outperformed Meta's Llama AI model."
WINSTON MA Author, "The Digital War" "You could have said that thanks to the sanction of the chips, lots of Chinese AI startups focused on developing AI applications in a more efficient way, using much fewer GPU chips than the U.S. counterparts."
One area Chinese tech companies have focused energy on is humanoid robotics.
WINSTON MA Author, "The Digital War" "If you went to the recent CES Las Vegas Exhibition, you will find Chinese manufacturing, Chinese manufacturers that dominate the exhibition of smart robotics. It's interesting that 'Made in China' was started when China was at the low end of the global supply chain. But after two, three decades, the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem, especially relating to electronics, has become the strongest in the world."
Rebecca Fannin, author of "Tech Titans of China," says the lack of collaboration has resulted in diverging paths in the personal computing space too.
REBECCA FANNIN Author, "Tech Titans of China" "We're seeing separate spheres develop of innovation. For instance, with Huawei and it's own Harmony OS operating system, totally developed within China, no longer dependent upon anything from Android."
Yu Xin, the vice president of one of China's leading laser projection companies, Appotronics, points out another sector where China has carved out its own innovative path, too – EV's.
YU XIN Vice President, Appotronics "Chinese companies are the best in innovation of applications. So, you see a lot of fancy new ways of applications inside the car and home. The robotics, smart car applications, like all this kind of like fancy, interactive applications inside the cars."
That's Bajarin's answer to being asked if Trump will keep chip sanctions in place.
TIM BAJARIN Chairman, Creative Strategies, Inc. "How we solve this now is going to have a very big impact eight and ten years from now when we start bringing in quantum computers."
WINSTON MA Author, "The Digital War" "Quite unfortunate that today, you know, geopolitics becomes such a huge issue. I certainly believe that more inter-exchange, between global innovation will lead to more innovation."
Mark Niu, CGTN, San Francisco.