A Race Between Apples And Oranges

China is winning the implied race in artificial intelligence (AI). The U.S. is winning the implied race in artificial intelligence (AI). Both statements might be correct, because the two countries are pursuing vastly different objectives. China wants to exploit the advantages of open-source AI models, create affordable and useful models and insinuate AI into operations across the entire country’s (and world’s) economy. Meanwhile, U.S. companies are seeking to exploit proprietary AI models in pursuit of a grand goal of being the first to reach artificial general intelligence (AGI), which they hope will gain them preeminence in economic growth. American businesses are starting to find the lower-priced applications of the Chinese open-source models to their liking, forcing companies with proprietary models to reduce costs to compete. We assess the implied competition between two very different objectives in the following five areas: Strategy; Research and Applications; Infrastructure; Funding; and Outcomes.