The Daily Planet #93: The AI Bubble, Part 18

I want to end this week's deliberations on AGI with a gesture towards next week's discussion of AI's impact on our general culture.

Some people - and by some people, I mean ' some well known scholars ' - think AI is a cultural technology, and they point to bureaucracies, corporations and markets as existing examples of AI. If you take AI as cultural technology seriously, with markets and corporations as historically influential examples, here's an alternative definition of AGI:

AGI is a collective institution that can match or exceed the cognitive versatility and proficiency of a well-educated adult.

For example, a high school biology club that can use an AI assistant to diagnose diseases better than a Harvard Medical School specialist (and better than the AI could do so by itself) or a high school math club that works with an AI assistant to prove Fields medal level theorems.

Both of these examples are from the knowledge economy, where the 'American Way of AI' is the dominant player. What about the manufacturing economy? How might we create institutions that embed AI in the physical infrastructure of everyday life?

For that, we will have to understand where the Chinese are going with AI.

Wuhan has emerged as a pivotal hub in China's ambitious pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), positioning itself as a testbed for innovative AI services and deployment strategies. Central to this effort are key institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Automation (CASIA), Huawei, and the Peking University consortium, which collaborate to infuse AI into Wuhan's industrial, scientific, and commercial sectors. Their work aims not only to optimize production and social governance but also to catalyze the evolution of AI toward human-like cognitive capabilities.

The city boasts a comprehensive AI infrastructure, anchored by the Wuhan AI Computing Center, which launched in 2021 with 100 petaflops of computing power and expanded to 400 petaflops by 2024. This center hosts Zidong Taichu, China's premier multimodal large generative model with 100 billion parameters, designed to support advanced reasoning and serve as a foundational platform for AGI development. Complementing this is the Wuhan Supercomputing Center, which supports high-tech fields such as aerospace and genome sequencing, underscoring Wuhan's role as a national AI computing powerhouse.

Wuhan's AI ecosystem is structured into three interconnected layers: foundational hardware including chips and computing power; technical development featuring large AI models and platforms; and application sectors spanning smart manufacturing, healthcare, education, and smart cities. Over 1,000 AI-enabled companies operate within this ecosystem, reflecting a mature and integrated industry chain.

A distinctive feature of Wuhan's AGI initiatives is the emphasis on "embodiment," where AI systems interact dynamically with real-world environments and social contexts, guided by values aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. This approach is exemplified by the development of a large-scale social simulator, which aims to blend human and machine intelligence to enhance social governance and decision-making. The Wuhan project is viewed as a precursor to a nationwide rollout, signaling China's strategic intent to challenge global leadership in AGI through innovative, value-driven, and embodied AI technologies.

BigBrother.AI for sure. But so is the Data Center surveillance state.

Wuhan’s AI Development | Center for Security and Emerging Technology

Wuhan, China’s inland metropolis, is paving the way for a nationwide rollout of “embodied” artificial intelligence meant to fast-track scientific discovery, optimize production, streamline commerce, and facilitate state supervision of social activities. Grounded in real-world data, the AI grows smarter, offering a pathway to artificial “general” intelligence that will reinforce state ideology and boost economic goals. This report documents the genesis of Wuhan’s AGI initiative and its multifaceted deployment.