Who Will Win the Artificial Intelligence 'Cold War'? A look at schools in China will tell you
Artificial Intelligence (photo Wrightstudio, Dreamstime.com)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently predicted that China will win the AI race over the US because it has the advantage of lower energy costs and looser regulations. The real reason might be a classroom.
In China, long hours and hard work are the norm, notes Fortune. A father, Ray Liu, has gone viral on TikTok after uploading a video of him picking up his 13-year-old daughter from school late at night.
“Hey guys, it's 8:30 at night, let's pick up Cindy from school,” the 42-year-old father said. “She went to school at 7am so she was there for about 14 hours.”
China's education system prioritizes long class hours, discipline, and constant exams. It is common for students to spend more than 10 hours in class. Then they have to prepare their lessons, do extracurricular activities and study for their university entrance exams.
As Ray told a British newspaper, things haven't changed much since he was a student. But now, as a father, he admits the pressure can sometimes be too much. “It affects their physical and mental health,” he said. But he explained that families often accept that this stress is the price they pay for social advancement.
“All students take university entrance exams, and almost all Chinese parents believe that getting into a good university is the only way to secure a good job and a happy life,” he explains.
In contrast, in the US, students typically start school between 7 and 9 a.m. and finish between 2 and 4 p.m. Afternoon activities are optional and there is less homework.
The result is that Chinese 15-year-old students outperform Americans in math. With a score of 552 in the OECD's 2022 international PISA survey, Chinese students are among the best in the world, while Americans score around 465, which is below average.
According to Fortune, this educational competition between the US and China could ultimately determine the winner of the artificial intelligence race and the next global dominant force in a future shaped by technology.
This fall, elementary and middle schools in Beijing began offering at least 8 hours of artificial intelligence classes in each classroom. This means that children as young as 6 learn how technology works and how to use chatbots, while also being informed about the ethics of artificial intelligence.
In contrast, the US has no national plan for AI education. In April, Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for better AI education and the integration of the technology into classrooms, but many industry leaders say that's not enough.
More than 250 executives, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Airbnb's Brian Chesky and Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi, signed an open letter in May calling on US lawmakers to make computer science and artificial intelligence education mandatory for every US student.
“In the age of artificial intelligence, we need to prepare our children for the future – to become creators of AI, not just consumers of it,” the letter reads.
