04/08/2025

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B EYOND dancing robots and eager-to-help digital avatars, Shanghai’s World AI Conference saw China stake its claim to global artificial intelligence (AI) leadership and frame itself as a clear alternative to the US. Assumptions that the US was far ahead in the fast-moving field were upended this year when Chinese start-up DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot that matched top American systems for an apparent fraction of the cost. With AI now at the forefront of the superpowers’ tech race, the World AI Conference (WAIC) that ended last Tuesday saw China set out its case to take charge on shaping its global governance too. China, US and other major economies are “engaged in a marathon at Formula One speed. Which country will attain the upper hand can only be assessed dynamically over the course of development”, said Steven Hai, assistant professor of tech innovation at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. China and US dominate the AI sector – only 10–15% of models developed in recent years were built without either’s participation, according to Epoch AI, a non-profit research institute. While US firms such as Google and OpenAI are still industry-leading, the institute labelled 78% of Chinese models “state-of-the-art” compared to 70% of models built with American participation. Beijing’s stated aim is to become the world’s leading AI “innovation centre” by 2030. “Now China is neck-and-neck with US in terms of core tech, that play (for global leadership) is more relevant than ever. With a solid AI offering and the US turning inward, the question is will Beijing’s vision gain greater global traction?” said Tom Nunlist, associate director for tech and data policy at Trivium China. In May, Microsoft’s Brad Smith told the US Senate that “the number-one factor” in the tech race “is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world”. Sovereign AI China’s offer is technical and economical. “One of the biggest differences Dubbed Nisar (Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar), the pickup truck-sized spacecraft blasted off around 5.40pm from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast, riding an Isro Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket. Livestream of the event showed excited schoolchildren brought to watch the launch and mission teams erupting in cheers and hugging. Highly anticipated by scientists, the mission has also been hailed as a milestone in growing US-India cooperation between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Our planet surface undergoes constant and meaningful change. Some change happens slowly. Some happens abruptly. Some changes are large, while some are subtle,” Karen St Germain, director of Nasa’s Earth Science division, told reporters ahead

China bids to lap US in AI leadership as tech gap narrows A remote-controlled robot by Unitree Robotics breaks a piece of wood during the WAIC in Shanghai, China. – PICS FROM AFP A humanoid robot by Digit is seen during the conference.

o Beijing pledges to share advancements with other countries (with the US sector) is that most of the leading models in China... are open-weight and open-source,” former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told an audience at WAIC. That means they can be adapted by other countries to fit their own needs, said George Chen, partner at Washington-based policy consultancy The Asia Group. “We already see some countries such as Mongolia, Kazakhstan, even Pakistan are trying to adopt the DeepSeek model to build their own. China has a chance to win in the

aspect of sovereign AI to export its model to those countries,” he said. The comparative low cost of Chinese technology – software but also hardware, for example through firms such as Huawei – will be a big factor, especially for developing countries, Chen added. Recently, another Chinese start-up Zhipu announced its new AI model – also open-source – would cost less than DeepSeek to use. In June, OpenAI accused Zhipu of having close ties with Chinese authorities and noted it was working with governments and state-owned firms across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. “The goal is to lock Chinese systems and standards into emerging markets before US or European rivals can,” it said. Washington has moved to protect

especially developing ones. His remarks contrasted sharply with US President Donald Trump’s aggressive low-regulation “AI Action Plan” launched just days before and explicitly aimed at cementing US dominance in the field. China released its own action plan at WAIC, following a meeting attended by delegates from dozens of countries. Li also announced the establishment of a China-led organisation for international AI cooperation. However, China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request from media for details on the set-up of the organisation – including any international participants – and several foreign delegates said they had not been briefed on the announcement beforehand. – AFP

its lead in AI, expanding efforts to curb exports of state-of-the-art chips to China in recent years. “While limiting China’s share of the global AI hardware market, (these measures) have accelerated indigenous innovation and led Chinese firms to exploit regulatory loopholes,” said assistant professor Hai, referring to “rife” smuggling and circumvention. Issues of trust? Other challenges to homegrown firms include the closed nature of the Chinese internet and “general issues of trust when it comes to using Chinese tech”, Trivium’s Nunlist said. At WAIC, China sought to present itself as a responsible power. Premier Li Qiang emphasised the risks of AI and pledged to share technology with other nations,

US, India launch powerful Earth-monitoring satellite A formidable new radar satellite jointly developed by the US and India launched last Wednesday, designed to track subtle changes in Earth’s land and ice surfaces and help predict natural and human-caused hazards. of launch. By picking up on tiny changes in the vertical movement of the Earth’s surface – as little as one centimetre – scientists will be able to detect the precursors for natural and human-caused disasters, from all of Earth’s land and ice twice every 12 days from an altitude of 747km. Microwave frequencies As it orbits, the satellite will continuously transmit microwaves and receive echoes from the surface.

Because the spacecraft is moving, the returning signals are distorted, but computer processing will reassemble them to produce detailed, high-resolution images. Achieving similar results with traditional radar would require an impractically large 12-mile-wide dish. Nisar will operate on two radar frequencies: L-band and S-band. The L-band is ideal for sensing taller vegetation such as trees, while the S-band enables more accurate readings of shorter plants such as bushes and shrubs. Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and India’s Isro shared the workload, each building components on opposite sides of the planet before integrating and testing the spacecraft at Isro’s Satellite Integration & Testing Establishment in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. Nasa’s contribution came to just

earthquakes, landsides and volcanoes to ageing infrastructure such as dams and bridges. “We will see land substance and swelling, movement, deformation and melting of mountain glaciers and ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica, and of course, we will see wildfires,” added St Germain, calling Nisar “the most sophisticated radar we have ever built.” India in particular is interested in studying its coastal and nearby ocean areas by tracking yearly changes in the shape of the sea floor near river deltas and how shorelines are growing or shrinking. Data will also be used to help guide agricultural policy by mapping crop growth, tracking plant health and monitoring soil moisture. Equipped with a 12m dish that will unfold in space, Nisar will record nearly

This Nasa image shows part of the Nisar satellite resting in a thermal vacuum chamber. – PIC FROM AFP / NASA /JPL

Shubhanshu Shukla, a test pilot with the Indian Air Force, recently became the second Indian to travel to space and the first to reach the International Space Station – a key step toward India’s own indigenous crewed mission planned for 2027 under the Gaganyaan (”sky craft”) programme. – AFP

under US$1.2 billion (RM5.13 billion), while Isro’s costs were around US$90 million. India’s space programme has made major strides in recent years, including placing a probe in Mars orbit in 2014 and landing a robot and rover on the moon in 2023.