When US President Donald Trump unveiled his government’s plan for big investment for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a stark warning about AI’s global threats at the recent World Economic Forum summit in Davos, the two underlined both the promise and danger that AI poses to the world.
Trump announced what he called “the largest AI infrastructure project in history” – a $500bn joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank that aims to build a network of data centres across the US. The new partnership, dubbed Stargate, aims to construct essential data centres and computing infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence development and, according to Trump, create more than 100,000 American jobs “almost immediately.”
However, POTUS Trump and all the US tech companies as well as UN’s Guterres must have hit a very bad patch in their respective careers when China launched the latest versions of DeepSeek and Kimi out of the blue a couple of days ago. Tech moves very fast. What America thought would be its moment in the sun was very quickly overturned by the Chinese announcement. While many may argue over the low cost that DeepSeek claims to have invested in its development, the Chinese have snooked the middle finger at the US. Analysts are of the view that DeepSeek’s large language model can compete with US giants but at potentially a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek had already hit the top of the chart for free apps on Apple’s App Store by Monday, and analysts said such a feat would be particularly impressive given how the US government has restricted Chinese access to top AI chips. Those who have used either or both of the Chinese apps vouch that these AI products are way beyond what OpenAI/ChatGPT or anybody in the US tech industry has ever imagined. The release of DeepSeek and Kimi gave such a jolt to the US stock markets that American tech companies lost billions of dollars in market capitalisation in a single day. Semiconductor giant Nvidia alone has lost a whopping 590 billion dollars in its market value following a 16.9 per cent fall in its stock price on 27 January. Other Big Tech stocks also took heavy beating, and they pulled the Nasdaq composite index down 3.1 per cent. One can very well guess the disastrous effects of these Chinese apps. Undoubtedly, the Chinese launch has proven that the US is no longer the sole tech leader of the world as was being touted till yesterday.
It is interesting to note here that eight years ago Russian President Vladimir Putin had proclaimed that mastering AI would make a nation the “ruler of the world.” Western tech sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may have frustrated Putin’s ambitions to lead in AI by 2030. However, it is not for nothing that one of Putin’s first moves in 2025 was to align with China on AI development.
The upshot of the latest developments is that the AI race is as much about global influence as technological dominance. Significantly, Putin urges developing nations to unite to challenge the US tech leadership. But, without global regulation, the whole AI push is fraught with immense risks. It would be pertinent to remember the prophetic words of Geoffrey Hinton, the AI pioneer and Nobel laureate. He had warned that the breakneck speed of progress may precipitate catastrophe for mankind. In the race to dominate this technology, he reminds the world,that the greatest risk is not falling behind, but losing control entirely. It may also be pertinent to remind that such nay-sayers have, in history, always warned about technological developments that would endanger mankind. Interestingly, till going to print, it has not done so.