What a visit to China’s AI labs reveals about the battle for global soft power

The ultimate prize in AI is not just owning the technology, but having the power to dictate rules, frame ethics and command global influence Inside the exhibition hall of a Shanghai-based artificial intelligence research institute, an ink-wash map covered an entire wall, immediately drawing your attention. It was a cartography of AI: chipmakers were rendered as mountains on islands and algorithms as jagged mountain ranges, while questions of privacy, fairness and machine consciousness drifted at the edges like uncharted islands. “Why is Huawei’s chip placed right at the estuary?” someone asked. A staffer reminded us, more than once, that it was art – not an official statement of facts.

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