Will China beat the US in AI?

IN China, people are being paid to fold clothes, wipe tables, and open microwave doors. Wearing virtual reality headsets and exoskeletons, they repeat the movements hundreds of times so humanoid robots can learn them. Across China, similar centres have people performing other painfully ordinary tasks. The work looks mundane, but it produces precious data. It may seem like an odd way to begin a story about geopolitics, but like this piece, it offers im­­portant clues about who is better placed to ‘win’ the AI race — China or the US? The winner will have a much larger say in the next world…