Chinese correspondent
Get into your hands, eight -year -old Timmy muttered to himself as he tried to beat a robot that had powered artificial intelligence in a chess game.
But this was not a AI salon or a lab – this robot lived on a coffee table in a Pekina apartment, along with Timmy.
On the first night he returned home, Timmy hugged his little robot before heading to bed. There is no name for that yet.
“It’s like a little teacher or little friend,” the boy said, as he showed his mom’s next move that was thinking about the chessboard.
A moment later, the robot entered: “Congratulations! You win.” The district eyes that blinked on the screen began to rearrange the pieces to start a new game as she continued on Mandarina: “I saw your ability, I’ll better next time.”
China accepts AI in its effort to become a technological superpower by 2030.
Deepseek, Piercing Chinese chatbot It attracted world attention in January, was only the first hint of that ambition.
The money is poured into the company AI by looking for more capital, encouraging home competition. There are more than 4,500 companies that develop and sell AI, schools in Peking capital introduces AI courses for primary and secondary students later this year, and universities have increased the number of seats available for students studying AI.
“This is an inevitable trend. We will coexist with Ai,” said Timmy’s mom, Yan Xue. “Children should meet this as soon as possible. We should not refuse it.”
She wants her son to learn both chess and a strategic plaque game – the robot does it both, which assured her that his $ 800 price was a good investment. Its creators are already planning to add a language teaching program.
The Chinese Communist Party may have hoped for this when she stated in 2017 that the AI would be the “main driving force” of the progress of the country. President XI Jinping is now betting on it, because slowing the Chinese economy is struggling with the blowing of tariffs from its largest commercial partner, the United States.
Beijing plans to invest 10tn Chinese Juan (1,4tn £; £ 1tn) in the next 15 years, as it competes with Washington to gain an advantage in advanced technology. Ai financing has received another incentive on the Government’s annual political gathering, which is currently underway. This appears on the heel of 60 billion Yuan-Ai investment fund, created in January, just days after US additional export control for advanced chips and put several Chinese companies on a trade black list.
But Deepseek has shown that Chinese companies can overcome those obstacles. And that is what was stunned by the Silicon Valley and the Industry experts – they did not expect China to make up for so quickly.
Race among dragons
This is the reaction that Tommy Tang used to after six months of marketing robot to play chess in various competitions.
Timmy’s machine comes from the same company, Sensoorebot, which offers a wide range of abilities – Chinese state media welcomed the advanced version of 2022, which beat Chess Grand Masters in the game.
“Parents will ask about the price, and then they will ask where I am from. They expect me to come from the US or Europe. They look surprised to be from China,” Mr. Tang said, smiling. “There will always be one or two seconds of silence when I say I’m from China.”
His company has sold more than 100,000 robots and now has a contract with a large American supermarket chain, Costco.
One of the secrets of Chinese engineering success is his young people. In 2020, more than 3.5 million countries graduated from science, technology, engineering and mathematics, better known as Stem.
It’s more than any other country in the world – and Beijing wants to use it. “Construction of strength in education, science and talent is a common responsibility,” XI told the party leaders last week.
Ever since China opened the economy to the world in the late 1970s, “she has gone through the process of accumulating talent and technology,” says Abbott Lyu, Vice President Whalesbot based in Shanghai, a company that makes up toys. “At this time of Ai, we have many, many engineers and they are diligent.”
Behind him a dinosaur made of bricks in various colored twists. It is controlled through a code made up of a seven -year -old on a smartphone.
The company develops toys to help children such as three learning code. Each brick package comes with a code booklet. Children can then choose what they want to build and learn how to do it. The cheapest toy is sold for about $ 40.
“Other countries also have robots of AI education, but when it comes to competitiveness and smart hardware, China goes better,” Mr. Lyu insists.
The success of Deepseek has turned its executive director Lianga Weenfeng’s national hero and “was worth 10 billion yuan advertising [China’s] AI industry, “he added.
“He made the public know that Ai is not just a concept, that he can truly change people’s lives. He inspired public curiosity.”
Six domestic Ai companies, including Deepseek, the Internet is now a nickname in Chinese six small dragons – other unitrere robotics, deep robotics, brain, science of games and Manycore tech.
Some of them were at the recent AI fair in Shanghai, where the largest Chinese companies showed their progress in business, from the search and rescue robots to Backflipping PSA, which wandered the corridors among visitors.
In one hectic exhibition hall, two teams of humanoid robots fought in a football game, completed in red and blue jerseys. The machines fell when they clashed – and one of them even turned away from the field in the stretcher by their human executive who wanted to keep the joke.
It was difficult to miss the air of excitement among developers after Deepseek. “Deepseek means the world knows we are here,” said Yu Jingji, a 26-year-old engineer.
‘METHODS’
But as the world learns of Chinese AI potential, there are also concerns that AI allows the Chinese government to learn about its users.
Ai is hungry for data – the more it becomes, the smarter it seems, the with about a billion mobile user’s user compared to just over 400 million in the United States, Beijing has a real advantage.
To the West, his allies and many experts in these countries believe that data collected by Chinese applications such as Deepseek, UNODOTEA or TICTOKA can be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party. Some point to the National Law on Earth Intelligence as proof of this.
But Chinese companies, including Bytettance, which owns Tiktok, says the law enables the protection of private companies and personal information. Still doubt that American user data on Tictok could end up in the hands of the Chinese government Washington -This decision to ban an extremely popular app.
That same fear – where it takes care of privacy, face the challenges of national security – affect Deepsek. South Korea forbidden New take over DeepseekWhile Taiwan and Australia have forbidden the app from the Government -issued devices.
Chinese companies are aware of these sensitivity and Mr. Tang quickly told the BBC that “privacy was a red line” for his company. Beijing also realizes that it will be a challenge in his efforts to be a global leader in AI.
“The rapid increase in Deepseek has launched the hostile reactions of some in the west,” the comment said at the Daily State Beijing, adding that “the developmental environment for Chinese AI models remains very uncertain.”
But the Chinese companies did not turn away. Instead, they believe that a frugal innovation will get an undisputed advantage – because it was Deepseek’s claim that she could submit Chatgpt for a fraction of the costs shocked by the AI industry.
So the engineering challenge is how to make more, for less. “This was our mission impossible,” Mr. Tang said. His company revealed that the robot hand to move chess pieces was very expensive to produce and that it would stimulate the price up to about $ 40,000.
So, they tried to use AI to help do engineers and improve the production process. Mr. Tang claims to have reduced the cost to $ 1,000.
“This is an innovation,” he says. “Artificial engineering is now integrated into the production process.”
This could have huge consequences because China applies AI at a huge level. State media are already displaying factories of full humanoid robots. In January, the government said that it would promote the development of humanoid robots to AI to take care of its rapid aging population.
XI has repeatedly declared “technological confidence” with a key goal, which means that China wants to create its own advanced chips to compensate for American export limits that could interfere with its plans.
The Chinese leader knows that he is a long race-he has not been warned by Beijing that the deep moment is not time for “AI triumphalism”, because China was still in a “way of compensation”.
President XI greatly invests in artificial intelligence, robots and advanced technology in preparation for a marathon that hopes China will eventually win.
