China embraces AI while America fears being replaced

While university graduates in the United States greet Silicon Valley executives with boos and see automation as a direct threat to their livelihoods, in China people are embracing the AI revolution with almost blind enthusiasm. The enormous gap is no accident. It is the result of a short technological memory, a radically different employment structure and one basic question: Who really holds the reins of the tech giants? At the University of Arizona's graduation ceremony in May, Eric Schmidt, Google's legendary former CEO and one of the leading architects of the internet era, took the stage. When Schmidt began extolling the "enormous benefits" of artificial intelligence, the hall did not respond with polite applause. Instead, the audience, made up mostly of graduates with fresh academic degrees and deep anxiety about their economic future, broke into a cacophony of boos.