china
The Weekly Planet #19: The China Shock, Part 3: AI.
When UBTech robots walked onto the factory floor at Zeekr's electric vehicle plant in March 2025, they did something no humanoid robots had done before: they worked as a coordinated team, lifting boxes, assembling car parts, and performing quality checks - all without human supervision. Powered by DeepSeek's reasoning model, these machines represented more than a manufacturing curiosity. They embodied a fundamentally different vision of artificial intelligence, one that may reshape the global technology competition in ways Silicon Valley hasn't fully grasped.
The Daily Planet #117: The China Shock, Part 18
And finally, any country that's rapidly becoming more technologically capable and dominant in some industries is going to get adverse attention. Are they trustworthy? Will they eat us alive? These are fair questions, and it's instructive to see how the official Chinese sources are responding to them. This is what they have to say:
The Daily Planet #115: The China Shock, Part 16
The race to develop humanoid robots is unfolding along two very different paths in China and the United States, reflecting contrasting philosophies about how robots should learn and improve. China is taking a bold, fast-paced approach by deploying large numbers of robots directly into real-world environments like factories, streets, and homes. This “learn-on-the-job” strategy allows robots to gather vast amounts of real-world data, which is then used to continuously improve their artificial intelligence. Companies such as Unitree and Agibot are leading this effort, with Agibot even offering an open-source operating system called Lingqu OS to encourage collaboration and innovation across the industry. By flooding the market with task-specific robots, China creates a massive, living laboratory that accelerates progress through collective learning and rapid iteration.
The Daily Planet #114: The China Shock, Part 15
Embodied intelligence refers to intelligent agents that have a physical or virtual body and interact with their environment through continuous sensing, decision-making, and action. Unlike traditional AI that processes static data, embodied intelligence emphasizes the dynamic loop where perception guides action, and action changes what is perceived. This interaction involves three key components: intelligence (the computational brain), embodiment (the physical or simulated body), and environment (the external world with its objects and dynamics).
The Daily Planet #113: The China Shock, Part 14
China is advancing its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts in a way that differs significantly from the United States. While the U.S. mainly focuses on developing large language models (LLMs) to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) - a future AI that can outperform humans in all cognitive tasks - China is taking a broader and more balanced approach. Instead of putting all its resources into one method, China is investing in multiple paths to AGI simultaneously.
The Daily Planet #112: The China Shock, Part 13
China is making a major push into embodied AI, which means creating smart robots and AI-powered machines that can sense, understand, and interact with the physical world. Unlike many Western countries that focus mainly on digital AI like large language models, China aims to combine its strengths in AI software with advanced robotics hardware. This approach is part of a national strategy to boost the economy, address social challenges like an aging population, strengthen the military, and gain a global technological edge.
The Daily Planet #110: The China Shock, Part 11
It's clear that renewables will not lead to a common human goal of addressing climate change; in fact, renewables might be a better hedge against foreign sources of energy than for climate action. In this world, China is both a supplier of energy technologies and an adversary worth hedging against.
The Daily Planet #109: The China Shock, Part 10
China is the world's largest consumer of coal, burning nearly half of the global total in 2024. This massive use is driven by its huge economy, high electricity demand, and abundant domestic coal resources. China generates about a third of the world's electricity, with coal as the dominant source. Despite rapid growth in renewable energy, China's increasing electricity needs mean it is not on track to meet its carbon intensity targets set for 2030.
The YouTube Boogie
A livestreaming pianist accidentally steps into an international incident—and nobody ends up looking particularly good.
On “Ernie”
Having learned that Baidu is about to steal my first name for its AI chatbot that’s launching this month, let’s talk about the name Ernie for a bit. (Can I stop them?)