Anindya Ghose: China, US, & Future of AI

As the world becomes a messier place, and as the U.S. Great Power Competition with China continues to ramp up, this battle will be fought on many fronts – few if any on an actual battlefield.

Instead, these superpowers’ fight for supremacy focuses on different dimensions of power and influence – in particular, areas like business and technology, including the next generation of Artificial Intelligence applications.

So who’s winning? Where does China stand – and what should other countries and companies understand to compete and win?

To find out, I welcomed back a previous and incredibly interesting guest: Anindya Ghose, the Heinz Riehl Chair Professor of Business at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Anindya is also the author of the important and engaging book, Tap: Unlocking the Mobile Economy, which has now been translated into five languages and was recently named one of the top 100 marketing books of all time. Ghose also was named to the prestigious 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list from the Web of Science Group, which recognizes the world's most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.

Anindya’s bottom line: While the U.S. may lead in AI research, China leads in AI implementation – they simply are doing more on commercialization and making AI an actionable part of everyday life.

What’s driving this advantage? I wondered, of course, if the difference comes down to the government thumb on the scale – that China’s support for targeted industries simply gives their companies an unfair advantage. But the response I got, as you’ll hear, was: Not so fast. From Ghose’s research, the difference is more cultural in terms of consumer uptake.

As he told me: “Their tech sector is clearly innovating faster, working harder, and is about 2-3 years ahead of their counterparts in the U.S. and about 5-8 years ahead from the ones in Western Europe and Southeast Asia. There is much to learn from them.”

One additional note: We also explored new research Ghose has just published on The Effect of Voice AI on Consumer Purchase and Search Behavior. Given the growth of voice in tech, I promise you’ll want to hear what Anindya and his colleagues found.