Why is China less worried about an AI dystopia than the US?

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Unlike in the United States, no one seems to be openly fretting over the prospect of humanity being destroyed by artificial intelligence soon.

There, citizens access local government services through AI-powered digital employees; students receive instant feedback on written assignments by uploading a photo; and hotel guests collect parcels delivered to their doorsteps by robots.

The wide adoption of AI in today’s China underscores the country’s embrace of the novel technology. A Morgan Stanley survey released Monday found 80% of Chinese respondents used AI at least weekly, far exceeding the 54% in the US.

Even as US tech executives and researchers urge a slowdown in AI development citing its existential threat to humanity, the Chinese public has remained comparatively unfazed.

“This technology was created to serve humanity,” said Xu Jingyuan, 22, a business student from Beijing. “We shouldn’t see it as something to fear, but as something that brings greater conveniences to our lives.”

He said the government is “absolutely capable” of managing its risks.

Xu’s comments echoed those of several people CNN spoke to this week, reflecting a divide in attitudes toward AI in Chinese and American society, as well as differing levels of trust in respective governments’ ability to handle the potential threats posed by the technology.

“In the US, there is a general public perception that without whistleblowing, big corporations could escape accountability or scrutiny due to weak government oversight,” said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at technology research firm Omdia.

“Whereas in China, I think there is this very strong confidence from the public that if any sh*t hits the fan, the government will step in.”

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Analysts also point to differences in exposure to AI, public discourse around the technology, and the broader cultural and historical context as possible explanations for the divide.

In a survey by marketing research firm Ipsos earlier this year, 83% of Chinese respondents found AI-powered products or services exciting, whereas only 33% of those in the US felt similar way. Meanwhile, another survey by marketing consultancy Edelman showed that 86% of respondents in China said they trusted their own government to do what is right, compared with just 39% in the US.

A marked difference between the two nations is their political systems. While whistleblowing is routine in the US and policy debates often become messy, especially in an increasingly polarized democracy, China’s top-down power structure allows the one-party state to set agendas without facing open criticism.

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In China, the ubiquity of AI, its commercial applications and robots have helped boost the public’s wide acceptance of the technology.

“Everyone I know says AI has already permeated every aspect of our lives,” said 51-year-old Shi Hongchao from China’s northeastern Liaoning province. “Everyone is either talking about it or has already started using it. It feels almost unstoppable at this point.”

In China’s hypercompetitive market, tech companies have been aggressively rolling out free AI chatbots and features built into applications people already use. Industries from filmmaking and e-commerce to manufacturing are also integrating the technology. The productivity gains and convenience have spoken for themselves.

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“Most Chinese people meet AI as a cheap product first and as a debate second,” said Poe Zhao, analyst and founder of Hello China Tech, a newsletter focused on China’s tech industry. “When a technology shows up as a useful, low-cost service, people judge it by what it does for them, not by what it might do to them.”

This stands in stark contrast to the US, where industry executives and researchers have raised prominent concerns about the rapid advancement of AI and its potential existential risks. China, another AI superpower widely regarded as capable of rivaling the US, has been noticeably silent on the issue.

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“Chinese warnings are quieter and use a different vocabulary. The dominant framing is loss of operational control, malicious use and social disruption, rather than human extinction,” Zhao said.

China’s intelligence chief Chen Yixin published an article last Sunday detailing the need to incorporate AI as a strategic industry into the country’s economic development, while outlining what Beijing sees as the technology’s extensive risks.

Beyond the familiar risks of hostile actors misusing AI to conduct cyberattacks, spread misinformation and steal state and corporate secrets, Chen also warned that the technology could destabilize society and threaten China’s political security. He also cited the risks posed by certain countries’ “monopolistic practices” – an apparent reference to the US for its export controls – as another concern.

Rather than public discussions and open letters about AI’s safety threats, much of the Chinese AI governance takes place behind the scenes through companies’ compliance work with the authorities’ technical standards, security assessments, and administrative filings, Zhao added.

Chinese AI companies’ development trajectories also differ from those of their American counterparts, reflecting different priorities and constraints. While Chinese AI labs have rapidly narrowed the gap with US leaders such as Anthropic and OpenAI, their models still trail the most advanced American systems, in part because of constraints on computing power and capital.

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng said in a leaked conference call with investors in July that the biggest gap between Chinese and American AI labs lies in access to the most advanced AI processors – essential for training AI models – due to US restrictions, as well as lower levels of capital investment.

Chinese AI companies are also driven more by commercial incentives to monetize and turn a profit, potentially making them less focused on developments that could trigger extreme or existential risks.

“The US is really keen on pushing the boundaries more,” Su of Omdia said. “In China, there may be less focus on frontier capability, but more focus on how to make AI more productive and commercial.”

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China’s technological advances have coincided with the country’s rapid economic development and its rise on the global stage over the past decades. As the country’s AI industry has grown more capable, many Chinese people have come to see that progress as further evidence of China’s technological rise, Su said.

“In China, there is this very pro-AI culture,” Su said. “Technology has always been viewed as a national pride.”

That view contrasts with the US, where skepticism toward large corporations and the government has grown alongside opposition to AI data centers.

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Over the past decade, Chinese technologies – from smartphones and electric vehicles to batteries and supercomputers – have increasingly gone head-to-head with US counterparts, surpassing them in some areas.

For many Chinese people, that history has created an implicit expectation that a new technology can deliver both economic benefits and might, said Grace Shao, a tech analyst and founder of industry newsletter AI Proem.

“The average person has seen how much economic gain, prosperity, and even just convenience that technology has brought to them, so there is an unspoken assumption that AI could do the same for them,” she said.

China’s people also tend to look up to the government for protection, Shao added. The Communist Party has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to assert its control over the country’s most powerful enterprises.

In 2020, Beijing launched a historic crackdown to curb the power of the country’s biggest names in sectors from tech and gaming to education, wiping out over $1.5 trillion in market value from the companies affected.

“There is built-in trust by the people that the government will act as a parental figure again to draw out the guardrails and guidelines for this new technology,” Shao said.

Shi from Liaoning is one of them.

He believes that AI’s benefits still outweigh the concerns, and the development of AI should not be slowed simply because it carries risks.

“I think we should continue to invest more heavily in AI and keep developing it. After all, restricting the technology doesn’t mean it will stop advancing,” he said. “China is a major country. It has an even greater reason to prioritize the development of AI.”

CNN’s Joyce Jiang contributed to this report in Beijing.

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与美国不同，似乎没有人公开担忧人工智能很快就会毁灭人类。

在那里，市民可以通过人工智能驱动的数字员工获得地方政府服务；学生可以通过上传照片获得书面作业的即时反馈；酒店客人可以领取由机器人送到家门口的包裹。

人工智能在中国的广泛应用凸显了该国对这项新兴技术的接纳。摩根士丹利周一发布的一项调查显示，80%的中国受访者每周至少使用一次人工智能，远高于美国的54%。

尽管美国科技高管和研究人员以人工智能对人类构成生存威胁为由，呼吁放缓人工智能的发展，但中国公众对此却相对平静。

“这项技术是为了服务人类而创造的，”来自北京的22岁商科学生徐景元说，“我们不应该把它看作是可怕的东西，而应该把它看作是能给我们的生活带来更多便利的东西。”

他表示，政府“完全有能力”管控风险。

徐的评论与本周 CNN 采访的几位人士的观点不谋而合，反映出中美社会对人工智能的态度存在分歧，以及对各自政府应对该技术可能带来的威胁的能力存在不同的信任程度。

“在美国，公众普遍认为，如果没有举报人，由于政府监管不力，大公司可能会逃避问责或审查，”科技研究公司 Omdia 的首席分析师 Lian Jye Su 表示。

“而在中国，我认为公众普遍抱有很强的信心，相信如果出现任何严重问题，政府都会介入。”

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分析人士还指出，接触人工智能的程度、围绕这项技术的公共讨论以及更广泛的文化和历史背景方面的差异，可能是造成这种分歧的原因。

今年早些时候，市场调研公司益普索（Ipsos）的一项调查显示，83%的中国受访者认为人工智能产品或服务令人兴奋，而美国受访者中只有33%持相同观点。与此同时，市场咨询公司爱德曼（Edelman）的另一项调查显示，86%的中国受访者表示他们相信本国政府会做出正确的决定，而美国受访者中只有39%的人持相同观点。

两国之间一个显著的区别在于其政治体制。在美国，举报是司空见惯的事情，政策辩论也常常变得混乱不堪，尤其是在一个日益两极分化的民主国家；而中国的自上而下的权力结构使得一党制国家能够在不受公开批评的情况下制定政策议程。

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特朗普不会因为想打败中国而限制人工智能的发展。北京究竟有多大的威胁？

在中国，人工智能的普及、其商业应用以及机器人技术的发展，都促进了公众对这项技术的广泛接受。

“我认识的每个人都说人工智能已经渗透到我们生活的方方面面，”来自中国东北辽宁省的51岁居民石洪超说。“每个人要么在谈论它，要么已经开始使用它了。感觉现在这股势头几乎不可阻挡。”

在中国竞争异常激烈的市场中，科技公司正积极推出免费的人工智能聊天机器人和相关功能，并将其集成到人们常用的应用程序中。从电影制作、电子商务到制造业，各行各业都在整合这项技术。生产力的提升和便利性的优势显而易见。

人工智能如何改变了中国的微剧场景

“大多数中国人首先将人工智能视为一种廉价产品，其次才将其视为一个争论的话题，”专注于中国科技行业的时事通讯《你好中国科技》的分析师兼创始人赵坡表示。“当一项技术以实用、低成本服务的形式出现时，人们评判它的标准是它能为自己带来什么，而不是它可能对自身造成什么影响。”

这与美国形成鲜明对比，美国的行业高管和研究人员对人工智能的快速发展及其潜在的生存风险表达了高度担忧。而中国，另一个被广泛认为有能力与美国匹敌的人工智能超级大国，却对此问题保持了明显的沉默。

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赵说：“中国的警告语气比较温和，用词也不同。其主要措辞是失去作战控制权、恶意使用和社会混乱，而不是人类灭绝。”

中国情报局局长陈义新上周日发表文章，详细阐述了将人工智能作为战略产业纳入国家经济发展的必要性，同时概述了北京方面认为该技术存在的广泛风险。

除了敌对势力滥用人工智能进行网络攻击、散布虚假信息和窃取国家及企业机密等众所周知的风险外，陈还警告说，这项技术可能破坏社会稳定，威胁中国的政治安全。他还指出，某些国家的“垄断行为”（显然是指美国的出口管制）也构成了另一项令人担忧的风险。

赵补充说，中国的人工智能治理与其说是通过公开讨论和公开信来探讨人工智能的安全威胁，不如说是通过企业遵守当局的技术标准、安全评估和行政备案等方式在幕后进行的。

中国人工智能公司的发展轨迹也与美国同行有所不同，这反映出两国不同的优先事项和制约因素。尽管中国的人工智能实验室已迅速缩小与Anthropic和OpenAI等美国领先企业的差距，但由于计算能力和资金方面的限制，它们的模型仍然落后于最先进的美国系统。

DeepSeek创始人梁文峰在7月份与投资者的一次泄露的电话会议上表示，由于美国的限制以及较低的资本投资水平，中美人工智能实验室之间最大的差距在于获取最先进的人工智能处理器（这对训练人工智能模型至关重要）的途径。

中国的人工智能公司也更多地受到商业激励的驱动，以实现盈利，这可能会使它们不太关注可能引发极端或生存风险的发展。

Omdia公司的苏表示：“美国确实热衷于不断突破界限。而中国可能不太注重前沿能力，而是更注重如何让人工智能更具生产力和商业价值。”

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中国的人工智能产业在超越美国竞争对手的竞赛中似乎势不可挡。但事实果真如此吗？

苏先生表示，过去几十年，中国的科技进步与该国经济的快速发展以及在全球舞台上的崛起相辅相成。随着中国人工智能产业能力的不断提升，许多中国人开始将这一进步视为中国科技崛起的又一佐证。

苏说：“在中国，有着非常支持人工智能的文化。科技一直被视为民族骄傲。”

这种观点与美国形成鲜明对比，在美国，人们对大型企业和政府的怀疑态度日益增长，同时对人工智能数据中心的反对情绪也日益高涨。

尤金·戈洛古尔斯基/盖蒂图片社

过去十年间，从智能手机、电动汽车到电池、超级计算机，中国技术与美国同行之间的竞争日益激烈，并在某些领域超越了美国。

技术分析师、行业通讯 AI Proem 的创始人 Grace Shao 表示，对于许多中国人来说，这段历史让他们隐隐期望新技术能够带来经济利益和力量。

她说：“普通人已经看到了科技给他们带来的经济收益、繁荣，甚至是便利，因此人们不言而喻地认为人工智能也能为他们带来同样的好处。”

邵先生补充说，中国民众也往往指望政府提供保护。共产党已多次表明其愿意对国内最强大的企业行使控制权。

2020 年，北京发起了一场历史性的打击行动，旨在遏制中国科技、游戏、教育等各领域巨头的权力，导致受影响公司的市值蒸发超过 1.5 万亿美元。

邵说：“民众普遍信任政府会再次扮演家长的角色，为这项新技术制定保障措施和指导方针。”

来自辽宁的石先生就是其中之一。

他认为人工智能的益处仍然大于其带来的担忧，不应仅仅因为人工智能存在风险就放慢其发展步伐。

“我认为我们应该继续加大对人工智能的投资，并持续发展这项技术。毕竟，限制这项技术并不意味着它就会停止进步，”他说道。“中国是一个大国，它更有理由优先发展人工智能。”

CNN记者Joyce Jiang在北京对此报道亦有贡献。