China's AI Superintelligence Ambitions Signal New Tech Race

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu has unveiled the company's 'Roadmap to Artificial Superintelligence' at the flagship Alibaba Cloud conference in Hangzhou, marking a significant shift in China's approach to artificial intelligence development.

During his keynote address, Wu charted out a future featuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI), making Alibaba the first established Chinese tech giant to explicitly invoke these terms traditionally associated with Silicon Valley tech companies.

'Achieving AGI — an intelligent system with general human-level cognition — now appears inevitable,' Wu stated, outlining Alibaba's commitment to developing advanced AI systems that could eventually surpass human intelligence.

The announcement has caught the attention of U.S. policymakers. Senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal have introduced draft legislation that would assist Congress in determining the potential for controlled AI systems to reach artificial superintelligence.

This development scrambles mainstream perceptions about China's AI ambitions, which have often been viewed as more focused on practical applications rather than frontier AI research. The concept of superintelligence has long guided prominent American AI companies, with OpenAI publishing articles on safe superintelligence development as early as May 2023.

'This ASI narrative is definitely something new, especially among the biggest tech companies in China,' noted one industry analyst, suggesting this could intensify the global race for AI supremacy.