Chinese humanoid robots play the piano as we figure out how fast to AI

As I’m writing this, humanoid robots are playing relaxing music on electric pianos, set in the lobby of a Beijing Hotel that has previously hosted the likes of Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon and Kim Jong-un. The context is the seventh World Media Summit, hosted by Chinese news agency Xinhua, and the focus is (of course) Artificial Intelligence. During the summit, China is looking to project itself as a global leader in a world dominated by AI and robotics, while at the same time trying to maintain the human role in the whole equation – an absolute must for a country with a population of 1.4 billion. Of the nearly 500 delegates from 112 countries, a vast majority are from the Global South, meaning the speeches and perspectives of a large portion of the group don’t reflect the traditional world view of the leading power structures of the West, which is almost exclusively concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere. Barely any references were made to the midterm elections in the United States where Donald Trump saw the Democrats take both houses of Congress, and much less of Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to South America, taking in Uruguay, Argentina and Peru. The underlying question here is: how much AI and how fast?

There has been a stark and noticeable contrast with the levels of scepticism regarding the full implementation of AI into every process in life that underlies the debate in the Western Hemisphere. While the leader of the Catholic Church warns of the need to retain what makes us humans relevant, and the media discusses the dual ethical and business model concerns regarding the use of AI, at the World Media Summit there weren’t even questions about how far we should go. Xinhua and robotics firm Ubtech unveiled what they called the world’s first pair of “bionic humanoid robot news anchors,” Xinyan and Xinyu, which were presented with a futuristic film on giant screens, finally emerging out of a flying saucer to deliver their first-ever newscast to the world. They were designed with the help of Zhang Yimou, one of China’s leading film directors, who also directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games and 2022 Winter Olympic Games held in Beijing. Yimou was brought on specifically to tackle the issue of the “uncanny valley,” the concept that as robots look increasingly human-like they begin to spark a certain internal and uncomfortable rejection. While Xinyan and Xinyu don’t fully look human up close, they certainly feel “good” and from up on the stage could be confused with their biological “cousins.” The question about whether they could be considered colleagues in the newsroom even came up.

At the World Media Summit, the crumbling business model of traditional media organisations wasn’t on the agenda. Many of the attendees belonged to state-owned media outlets and academic and scholarly organisations. The cost-benefit analysis of frontier models wasn’t on the discussion table either, as Anthropic gears up to go public for trillions and supposedly makes the case for profitable mega AI labs. This makes sense in the context of China’s head-to-head race with the United States for AI dominance. While the strategic focus of the US is in the frontier, while at the same time trying to restrict the distribution of advanced AI chips and semiconductor technology, China is going the opposite way, trying to seduce markets via cheaper, open-source models. With the full support of the Chinese Communist Party, the AI ecosystem in China is churning out models and related hardware including humanoid robots, self-driving and flying cars, as well as other gadgets with the intention of creating a widespread network of users to rival the growth of the US giants. Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing for global governance frameworks while trying to establish its own set of rules outside of US jurisdiction, so to speak. The debate is about how to implement AI, not whether we should.

This led to the issue of disinformation, as the proliferation of AI-generated content renders attempts to control media ecosystems increasingly futile. While there are a series of proposals as to how to make AI content detectable, for example through digital watermarks, it is difficult to imagine effective methods to combat the use of progressively more robust and cheaper technology that lies in the hands of bad actors. While not specifically tied to disinformation, one participant noted that while the United States and China lock horns, a much smaller country managed to pull off the biggest heist in history, making reference to the US$6.3 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from the Binance exchange attributed to TraderTraitor, a cyber-warfare group tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. The moral of the story being that once the genie is out of the lamp, outsized and unexpected outcomes can be part of the norm.

Debating the future of media in China is an interesting, albeit contradictory endeavour. Journalism is a cornerstone of liberal democracies, and requires freedom of speech to be exercised. That, of course, is tightly limited in China, while in many participating countries the de facto hegemony of longtime leaders renders the counterweights of democracy toothless. Yet, journalism occurs within the world of media, where a combination of tools, crafts, disciplines, and philosophies coexist. Creating content and doing journalism seek two distinct outcomes, though their processes overlap greatly. Many of the technologies shaping the present and future of journalism are being developed in China and while many of the new leaders of the West spend their time attacking the press, the Chinese government is actively pursuing a relationship with journalists and media organisations throughout the world. Regardless of one’s ideological standing, Chinese influence in the world of media, content, and journalism is and will be substantial.

At the same time, it is valuable to see firsthand how issues including the ethics of AI and the risks of disinformation are being debated from the “other” global power centre. The costs and benefits of the AI boom will be borne by all of humanity in differing degrees. The superpower struggle between the US and China has been translated to the AI space in full, its contours demarking the limits of today’s arms race which has the dual potential of total destruction, or the creation of superintelligence elevating humanity to the next frontier. Media and journalism are at the intersection of those worlds, shaped and both shaping how the race will turn out. A lot of it, in China.