Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei sees divergence in US and China AI strategies
US focusing on supercomputing power while China is adopting a more practical approach to solve real-world problems, says Ren Zhengfei
“The US is seeking AGI and ASI to get answers to questions like ‘What is human?’ and ‘What is the future of society?’ They are trying to solve the whole problem [at once], but it takes time for [humanity] to know what the problem is,” according to a transcript of Ren’s November 14 speech to the International Collegiate Programming Contest, released on Friday.
His comments reflect the strategy behind Huawei’s own AI investments, as the Shenzhen-based company with one of the world’s largest research and development budgets builds its home-grown alternatives to Nvidia’s much-coveted AI processors.
The strategic divergence also explains why China is racking up users and developers with open-source large language models, while US technology giants are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on building ever-larger models.
“China is focusing on how to get things done [with AI] to create value and fix development issues,” the 81-year-old entrepreneur said.