A Comparative Study of the Divergent Paths to Artificial General Intelligence between China and the United States – Lu Chuanying

A Comparative Study of the Divergent Paths to Artificial General Intelligence between China and the United States – Lu Chuanying

https://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/a-comparative-study-of-the-divergent-paths-to-artificial-general-intelligence-between-china-and-the-united-states

Publish Date: 2026-06-12 03:43:00

Source Domain: www.chinausfocus.com

• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has become a central theme in artificial intelligence research, policy, and technological debates, with potential to reshape economic structures, social governance, and international power configurations.

• Two dominant narratives for AGI development are the technical feasibility narrative led by the technical community, and the engineering feasibility narrative advanced by industry, which focus on cognitive modeling/learning mechanisms and incremental scaling of deep learning paradigms respectively.

• The development of AGI is increasingly seen as a strategic issue due to its technical uncertainties, massive investments, and far-reaching externalities.

• The role of the state should be to establish institutional arrangements that promote long-term, high-risk research coordinated across sectors in a way that is economically sustainable, politically acceptable, and socially risk-controlled.

• Divergent pathways to AGI development are exhibited by China and the United States, who have very different institutional structures and views on technology governance.

• The U.S. model-centric path focuses on large-scale infrastructure investments and technology leadership to drive breakthroughs in AGI, relying on a few key firms, with potential for short-term competitive advantages but risks of path dependency, concentration, and lack of adjustability.

• China’s general-purpose infrastructure path takes a broader, systemic and application-driven approach, prioritizing risks mitigation through capability diffusion and infrastructure integration in development systems, though with higher coordination costs and uncertain breakthough timelines.

• The divergent pathways between China and the United States highlight different paradigms for integrating general-purpose technologies into national governance systems, and exploring AGI has become a critical test of institutional coordination capabilities.