China Bets on Open, Inclusive AI to Rival the US
Attendees interact with humanoid robots on display at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2025 in Shanghai on July 26, 2025.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Hello, this is Colum Murphy in Beijing, happy to report that I can now check watching a robot boxing match off my bucket list.
That’s exactly what my colleagues and I did this past week at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. It was fun — and also revealing in terms of how the US-China rivalry over artificial intelligence is evolving.