Contribution short abstract:

Over the past decade, artificial intelligence has been one of the key drivers of innovation in China. Tracing the local history of AI-related concepts, this presentation highlights some features of various discourses around them, and their implication for the development of these technologies.

Contribution long abstract:

Over the past decade, artificial intelligence has been one of the key drivers of innovation in the Chinese tech industry. Government plans and policy recommendations have driven investment in AI research and development, and countless tech companies have set up AI research labs, reorienting their products toward the provision of automated services and “smart” technologies. This has driven a society-wide hype around artificial intelligence, widely seen as a key technology for the future of the country’s prosperity and global standing. At the same time, mounting concerns about privacy and safety resulting from the application of AI technologies in everyday settings have started fueling pushback, and are subject of increasingly widespread debates. While the development of artificial intelligence in China has largely followed the Silicon Valley model, the discourse around artificial intelligence in China is also shaped by a longer history of theories of computation, automation and intelligence. For example, the term “artificial intelligence” itself is commonly translated as rengong zhineng, with the term zhineng indexing a sort of “intelligence” combining the philosophical concepts of zhihui “wisdom” and nengli “capability”. Zhihui is also commonly used to translate the adjective “smart” in terms like “smart city” or “smart logistics”, pointing towards a different articulation of theoretical concepts through which these technologies are explained, marketed and interpreted by the government, private companies and the public. Tracing the history of AI-related concepts in China, this presentation highlights some characteristic differences of various discourses around them, and their implication for the development of these technologies.