Natalie Kittrow

Got it.

So when does that relationship between the Chinese government and AI actually begin?

What's that story?

And given how things typically go in China, from my understanding, I'm assuming that what happens next is what always happens when they have a plan, which is that they pour boatloads of money into it, into supercharging it.

Am I right?

And what's the effect of that?

It caught everybody off guard.

So they're looking at this as a potential threat to their political model.

It sounds like there's this tension for the Chinese government between wanting to dominate in AI, which now includes this world of generative AI, but also from an authoritarian perspective, wanting to maintain as much control as they can over information, which is so key to powering these models.

I mean, part of the reason for the success of these chatbots is that they pull from the entire universe of information.

And did that meeting, did the new signaling, new messaging around this actually lead to concrete changes that you see in China?

Like, do you see it manifest?

Right.

So in the collision course that the U.S.

sees China running headlong into, what are China's disadvantages?

I wondered, for example, if some of the restrictions that the government still has on the development of AI, the control that it exercises over it might hold their industry back in some meaningful ways.

Just talk about what the effect of that could be.

It sounds like it could have a chilling effect, but what is the impact of knowing that the government could clamp down at any moment?

What you're talking about with this case is really the Chinese government actively curtailing the ideal environment that you would have for innovation.

And it's interesting because China is famous for doing all of this aggressive industrial policymaking to fuel its industries at home.