Hangzhou is the hub for all technological development in China. In this context, Alibaba is advancing in the technological race and presenting new proposals related to artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI). Eddi Wu, Alibaba’s chief executive, recently presented Alibaba Cloud and positioned Chinese AI as a market leader, ahead of the United States. In fact, Qwen is its latest model and, with the support of Oracle, plays an essential role in the advancement of AI. Alongside other artificial intelligences such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and even Elon Musk’s xAI, Chinese intelligence is making its mark. Professionals from the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace emphasize that China is growing in the world of global artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, in the United States, Josh Hawley, Richard Blumenthal, and Ted Cruz emphasize that the U.S. Congress should address this situation. Read on to learn more.
What happened at the Alibaba Cloud conference
During his 23-minute keynote address at the flagship Alibaba Cloud conference, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu presented a incoming featuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI). These notions point to a theorized era in which AI is avout to be roughly as smart as humans (AGI) and then much, much intelligence (ASI).
At the same time these notions have been seen around Silicon Valley for years, Wu’s presentation was memorable: Alibaba is currently the first established Chinese tech giant to clearly appeal to AGI and ASI.
“Achieving AGI — an intelligent system with general human-level cognition — now appears inevitable. Yet AGI is not the end of AI’s development, but its beginning,” Wu explained. “It will march toward ASI — intelligence beyond the human, capable of self-iteration and continuous evolution.”
The main leaders in AI powers
The U.S. and China are the world’s most important AI powers, each with huge computing abilities and top-tier investigators developing cutting-edge systems. Yet point of view have framed the countries as having several paths to AI, with perceptions that China focuses more on real-world AI applications.
“There’s been some commentary in Western media recently about how the U.S. is missing the point by pushing for AGI, while China is focusing solely on applications,” said Helen Toner, interim executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “This is wrong.”
“Some Chinese researchers and some parts of the Chinese government have been interested in AGI and superintelligence for a long time,” Toner said, though she noted this view was primarily held by smaller startups like DeepSeek.
Roadmap to artificial superintelligence seems to blend trend perspective
Alibaba’s “roadmap to artificial superintelligence” seems to blend mainstream perceptions. Any number of California techno-optimists, such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei or xAI’s Elon Musk, might have brought Wu’s speech, selling a technology-enabled utopia at the same time mainly sidestepping darker doubts about the way humanity would be alive with or survive an era of digital superintelligence.
The notion of superintelligence has long been on the minds of — if not explicitly guiding — prominent American AI companies. For example, OpenAI presented an article focused on the safe development of superintelligent AI models in May 2023.
“Now is a good time to start thinking about the governance of superintelligence — future AI systems dramatically more capable than even AGI,” the statement said.
ASI is being seen as an innovative notion
In addition, ASI might seem like an innovative notion at the same time today’s AI systems fail to understand basic tennis rules, hallucinate or fabricate basic information, or do not seem to actually comprehend the way the external world operations.
At the same time, AI systems keep getting closer and sometimes go over human abbilites in many domains, from driving cars with no problem to winning international coding competitions, leaving many experts to say it’s a matter of when, not if, humans develop digital superintelligence.
