Every evening as our children eat dinner, my phone notifies me that our 3-year-old’s teacher has uploaded photos taken during the day at school. An artificial intelligence facial recognition feature puts a red square around his face, letting me know which photos to look at. It’s kind of creepy, but kind of helpful, too.

每天晚上，当我们的孩子吃晚饭时，我的手机就会通知我，我们三岁孩子的老师上传了当天在学校拍摄的照片。人工智能人脸识别功能会在他的脸周围画一个红框，提醒我该看哪些照片。这有点令人毛骨悚然，但也挺有帮助的。

In China, surveillance technology and A.I. surround our everyday life. It’s built into the way we order food delivered to us from online apps; almost nobody I know here in Shanghai buys groceries at a grocery store, so we rely on A.I.-powered technologies to keep us fed. It’s visible in the infrastructure we use to go to work and school, from trains using facial recognition in lieu of physical tickets to self-driving taxis. China’s technological system offers an unparalleled convenience, and A.I. is such a huge part of it.

在中国，监控技术和人工智能已经渗透到日常生活的方方面面。我们通过在线应用订外卖时就用到了它；我在上海认识的人几乎没人去实体超市买菜，我们依赖人工智能驱动的技术来解决吃饭问题。在我们上下班和上学的基础设施中也能看到它的身影——从用刷脸代替实体车票的列车，到自动驾驶出租车。中国的技术体系提供了无与伦比的便利，而人工智能是其中极其重要的一部分。

Many American leaders believe the United States cannot overcome its adversary China unless it beats the country in the A.I. race. Every new chip that President Trump approves for sale to China, every visit by Nvidia chief’s executive, Jensen Huang, to Shanghai and every Chinese A.I. breakthrough strikes terror into the hearts of America’s China hawks. Hardware, rare-earth metals, revamped power grids and human talent could all dictate which side ends up creating the first superintelligence. The upcoming summit between Mr. Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, may lead to a few policy changes, but this belief is more fixed.

许多美国领导人认为，美国要想战胜自己的对手中国，必须在人工智能竞赛中击败它。每一次特朗普总统批准向中国出售的新芯片，每一次英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋访问上海，以及每一次中国人工智能的突破，都让美国的“对华鹰派”感到恐惧。硬件、稀土金属、升级后的电网以及人才，都可能决定哪一方率先创造出第一个超级智能。特朗普与中国领导人习近平即将举行的峰会可能会带来一些政策调整，但这种信念已经根深蒂固。

The reality is that China and the United States are racing in different directions, because the two countries conceptualize A.I. very differently. Americans want to create the most powerful technology humans have ever known. In the quest for superintelligence, the U.S. government is encouraging private firms to move full speed ahead, regulation be damned. Under the very tightest regulation, by contrast, the Chinese want to make A.I. more practical and embedded in society, more carefully selecting how it is deployed and used by the population. If the Chinese achieve their A.I. goals, they may take a lead in the larger geopolitical contest between the two nations.

现实情况是，中国和美国正朝着不同的方向竞赛，因为两国对人工智能的理解截然不同。美国人想要创造人类有史以来最强大的技术。在追求超级智能的过程中，美国政府鼓励私营企业全速前进，让监管见鬼去吧。相比之下，在极为严格的监管下，中国希望让人工智能变得更加实用、更加深入社会，更谨慎地选择如何部署和让民众使用它。如果中国实现其人工智能目标，他们可能会地缘政治的大国竞争中占据上风。

Most Chinese policymakers don’t believe A.I. superintelligence is arriving any time soon. Instead, the Chinese strategy is about advancing a government-directed strategy referred to as “A.I.+” that treats A.I. as if it were infrastructure. This includes government-coordinated plans, local subsidies and national computing-power programs to diffuse cheap, capable A.I. tools into every public service. Chinese people encounter A.I. as a natural part of their day-to-day lives. Sometimes it’s visible and palpable, like the “smile to pay” terminals used in many shops. Sometimes it’s invisible, like Hangzhou’s City Brain, which uses A.I. to analyze massive amounts of data for urban management needs like regulating traffic and environmental protection.

大多数中国决策者并不认为人工超级智能很快就会到来。相反，中国的战略是推进一项政府主导的策略，称为“人工智能+”，将人工智能视为基础设施。这包括政府协调的规划、地方补贴以及国家算力项目，目的是将廉价、高性能的人工智能工具普及到每一项公共服务中。中国人把人工智能当作日常生活自然而然的一部分。有时它显而易见，比如许多商店里使用的“微笑支付”终端；有时它隐形无踪，比如杭州的“城市大脑”，它利用人工智能分析海量数据，用于交通管理和环境保护等城市治理需求。

Unlike in the United States, where most people remain wary, A.I. seems to have had less of a backlash in China. The Chinese A.I.+ strategy is practical and comprehensible to the local population in a way that the U.S. strategy simply is not, which may explain why the Chinese appear so much more optimistic about A.I. than Americans.

与美国不同（大多数人仍对人工智能保持警惕），人工智能在中国似乎没有引发太多反弹。中国的“人工智能+”战略对当地民众来说实用且易于理解，而美国的战略则远非如此，这或许解释了为什么中国人对人工智能显得比美国人乐观得多。

Chinese leaders are trying to maximize the country’s resources. The country’s chief resource is not oil, soybeans or pork bellies, but Chinese people. As of the 2020 census, nearly 40 percent of Chinese lived in rural areas, including 110 million children. Even more are living without access to quality education and health care. For Chinese leaders, the fact that so many Chinese people are structurally denied access to their best lives is a crisis even bigger than the low birthrate. How many potential geniuses are there among those 110 million rural children? What if the gross domestic product per capita of all of them could be quadrupled?

中国领导人正在努力最大化国家的资源。中国最重要的资源不是石油、大豆或五花肉，而是中国人民。根据2020年人口普查，近40%的中国人生活在农村地区，其中包括1.1亿儿童。还有更多人无法获得优质教育和医疗。对中国领导人来说，如此多的中国人被结构性剥夺了过上最好生活的机会，这是一场比低生育率更大的危机。在那1.1亿农村儿童中，有多少潜在的天才？如果他们所有人的国内生产总值人均值都能翻两番呢？

A.I. may be the answer. Are the teachers in rural schools overworked and undertrained? A.I. agents can help teach students with personalized instruction. Are the hospitals lacking in high-quality doctors? A.I. can diagnose diseases by analyzing patients’ health data. A.I. could make it easier to hire and train the caregivers needed for China’s growing elderly population, with robotic or digital companions supplementing the work of human nurses.

人工智能或许就是答案。农村学校的老师是否负担过重、培训不足？人工智能代理可以提供个性化教学来帮助学生。医院是否缺乏高素质医生？人工智能可以通过分析患者健康数据来诊断疾病。人工智能还能协助招聘和培训中国日益增长的老龄人口所需的护理人员，机器人或数字伴侣可以辅助人类护士的工作。

A.I. could also make it easier to predict and prepare for extreme weather events that could set back local economies. It could further optimize the transition to green energy. China has ports in which machines put containers on ships with barely any human supervision.

人工智能还可以更容易地预测和准备极端天气事件，这些事件可能拖累地方经济。它还能进一步优化向绿色能源的转型。中国的一些港口已经实现机器在几乎无人监督的情况下将集装箱装上船。

But China’s A.I.-as-infrastructure strategy is about more than just improving the country’s domestic quality of life. It’s also about exporting Chinese influence. Chinese A.I. is already integrated into the supply chains that dominate world trade.

但中国“人工智能即基础设施”的战略不仅仅是为了改善国内生活质量。它还关乎输出中国的影响力。中国人工智能已经融入主导世界贸易的供应链之中。

And increasingly, rather than selling individual goods or services, China is selling a whole suite — energy, infrastructure, telecoms, transportation, surveillance — with A.I. systems to manage it all. As emerging markets from Southeast Asia to Latin America to Europe seek solutions to large problems like keeping power grids running, Chinese A.I. solutions may be what they end up buying. These models don’t have to be as powerful as American ones; they just have to be powerful enough. In that way, as China exports those A.I. models, it will be exporting Chinese governance as well, with all of the safety, abundance, surveillance and embedded hierarchies that entails.

而且，中国越来越不是在销售单个商品或服务，而是销售一整套解决方案——能源、基础设施、电信、交通、监控——并用人工智能系统来管理这一切。从东南亚到拉丁美洲再到欧洲，新兴市场都在寻找解决大规模问题（如维持电网运行）的方案，最终可能都会选择中国的人工智能解决方案。这些模型不必像美国的那样强大，只要足够强大就行。这样一来，随着中国出口这些人工智能模型，它也将同时输出中国的治理模式，包括随之而来的安全、富足、监控以及嵌入其中的等级秩序。

That’s why the difference between these two countries in the A.I. race matters so much. America’s spaceship might still be the first to take off. But back on planet Earth, the Chinese will be using A.I. to run their hospitals, schools, roads and more. Brazilians, Russians, Africans and even the Europeans may be doing so soon, too.

这就是为什么两国在人工智能竞赛中的差异如此重要。美国的“宇宙飞船”可能仍是第一个起飞的。但在地球上，中国人正在用人工智能管理他们的医院、学校、道路等等。巴西人、俄罗斯人、非洲人，甚至欧洲人，可能很快也会这么做。