More Americans think China is world leader in AI, new survey reveals

More than one-third of Americans see China, and not the United States, as the global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), according to a Pew Research Centre survey released on Thursday, as US President Donald Trump confirmed the technology would be on the agenda when his Chinese counterpart visits the US later this year. The survey found that 36 per cent of Americans believe China is more advanced than the United States in developing artificial intelligence. By comparison, only 12 per cent say the US is leading the AI race, while 18 per cent view the two countries as equally advanced. Another 33 per cent were unsure which nation is ahead. The perception also cut across party lines, with 30 per cent of Republicans and 43 per cent of Democrats saying China is ahead of the US in AI advancement. Republicans, however, were more likely than Democrats to view the US as the leader, with 17 per cent holding that view compared with nine per cent of Democrats. The findings come against the backdrop of an accelerating AI race between Washington and Beijing, underscoring anxieties in the US that China is quickly eroding America’s technological edge by leveraging the capabilities of its top companies and accessing restricted access to advanced semiconductor chips. Trump touted the US’ lead over China in AI in Washington on Thursday, saying “whoever wins that race is probably going to win. Period” as he discussed America’s goal to “dominate the future” and confirmed AI would be on the agenda when he next meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We’re leading China. We want to keep it that way. President Xi is coming over on September 24th, and we talked about it when I was over in Beijing, and we’ll be talking about it again,” said Trump, claiming Xi was impressed with the US’ advances in AI. Artificial intelligence was high on the agenda when Trump met Xi in Beijing for a high-stakes summit in May, with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun confirming there had been “constructive exchanges” on AI. Beijing happy to work with US on promoting development of AI The two leaders agreed that their governments should hold further dialogues on the topic, Guo said, adding that they should work together to promote the development of AI and improve its governance. While in Beijing, Trump invited Xi to Washington on September 24 as part of a reciprocal visit, a plan he has reiterated ever since. Elsewhere in Thursday’s speech, Trump accused members of the opposition of wanting to shut down new development, kill America’s most successful industries, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, and surrender the AI race to China. “China, look, you know, I’m not blaming them. I have a lot of respect for them, and have a lot of respect for President Xi, but they represent China. We represent the United States of America,” he said, adding that unless the US is very “foolish” and “stupid”, it will continue to lead the AI race. “We have a nice lead. A lot of people didn’t expect that was possible,” Trump said. The president also claimed the US was ahead of China and every other country “by a lot” in AI and “just about every other category”. On Wednesday, a White House official accused China’s Moonshot AI of stealing from Anthropic, alleging the Beijing-based start-up had targeted the American company’s most powerful model, Claude Fable 5, through a large-scale “distillation”. According to the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, “distillation attacks involve a malicious actor using a ‘teacher’ model’s outputs to train a ‘student’ model”. The accusations made by White House science and technology adviser Michael Kratsios have intensified Trump administration scrutiny of Moonshot AI following the release of its powerful new Kimi K3 model earlier this month. AI experts have pushed back on Kratsios’ allegations, claiming a lack of justification and pointing to the narrow release window between the two models. A senior US State Department official also asserted that China’s alleged use of US-developed AI models showed that American companies continued to hold an advantage. “The US is still leading, and the evidence for that is that China is still distilling our models,” Jacob Helberg, US undersecretary of state for economic affairs, told the South China Morning Post in an exclusive interview. How America’s private sector can give them the edge in AI race Helberg, who leads Washington’s Pax Silica initiative – a 24-country coalition aimed at building China-free, AI-related supply chains – also argued that the strength of America’s private sector gives the country a path to maintaining technological leadership. He contrasted China’s state-led approach, which he described as an “entirely in-house industrial strategy” centred on government-funded and government-operated projects, with the US and its allies, which leverage “incredible companies that build transformative products that people really love”. “We realise that the US government is not set up in a way to compete with the Chinese tit-for-tat on that same basis,” he added. “We decided to lean into that strength and leverage the innovative, creative capacity and dynamism of our private sector.” The survey on Thursday also showed that 43 per cent of Americans considered US leadership in AI development extremely or very important, while 22 per cent said it was not too or not at all important. Men, older adults and Republicans were more likely to place greater importance on US leadership in AI. According to the Pew Research Centre, the poll was conducted last month with a sample size of 3,488 adults.