China’s 10-Year Plan for AI Dystopia

The Chinese State Council released its bold new plan: AI+. AI+ is a state-driven technology initiative that aims to transform every aspect of Chinese society with AI.

This ten-year plan pushes to embed AI in six strategic domains, and rather than one-off actions like investing in data centers, the goal is to fully integrate AI into society with a standardized development process, extensive education, and global cooperation with other countries.

Central to this strategy are “Intelligent Terminals,” which appear to be devices that tap into public services or any service that’s integrated with the AI plan.

These Intelligent Terminals would take form as phones, in-car dashboards, smart home dashboards, and wearables.

Although it’s unclear what exactly civilians will do at these terminals, a good guess would be handling utilities, paying bills, and requesting public appointments. The broad vision appears to be to connect AI to everything and view it from one place.

Also central are “AI agents,” which will work alongside humans in various roles. Examples could be in industry, helping people gather the data they need, or coordinating with different departments.

By 2027, they would like 70% penetration of these AI systems across terminals and AI agents in their core industries.

By 2030, this jumps up to 90% penetration, and by 2035, they’ll be ready for the next stage of the intelligent economy. Perhaps at that point they won’t need humans to do anything at all.

The report focuses on Six Pillars of Integration:

• Science & Technology
• People’s Welfare
• Industrial Development
• Consumption Quality
• Governance
• Global Cooperation

The science and technology pillar will optimize building research platforms around AI; this includes cross-modal datasets that AI can train from and that are open to the public.

Additionally, new fields will be explored with the help of AI:

• Biomanufacturing
• 6G
• Quantum Technology

Quite eerily, these fields are important for developing nanotechnology, such as those outlined in the 2020 Internet of Bodies Report. This report predicted a future where people will be connected to medical devices, tracking health data in real time.

Within industrial development, we see that entire industries will be managed by AI with smart industrial machines, drones, and robots. No industry will be left untouched, including agriculture, where AI will oversee the breeding of different livestock.

The third pillar, consumption quality, aims to make AI easier to stomach for civilians, with R&D in areas like brain computer interfaces, to make the interaction with ‘AI’ seamless, with the intention of it being adopted by everyone.

Of course, the people’s welfare is top of mind, and the plan aims to replace every job that is lost with AI automated production. AI will not only come up with ideas for jobs, but empower previous roles. AI learning companions will be rolled out to schools and will be an integral part of a student’s educational experience—the new form of textbook.

AI+ governance will utilize AI in urban planning and infrastructure upgrades. China will not exclude those living out in the country and has made it explicitly clear that rural areas should be integrated with AI. Part of this is a governance structure, not just for people but for digital persons and robots. It’s unclear what this means specifically, but one could imagine updating the behavior of AI agents and robots with the passing of a new law or in the face of natural disaster. Additionally, AI will be used to improve national security, likely by monitoring surveillance systems such as cameras and sensors.

AI will also conduct “in-depth social experiments.” We assume this means within the domain of public services in order to see the effect of policy decisions in real time in how humans and AI operate and the results.

Don’t worry though, China isn’t keeping all of this AI magic to themselves—they will share it using global cooperation, treating AI as a public good and ensuring that even less tech-capable countries in the Global South can lean on China to develop their own AI frameworks. China will work with the UN to develop interoperable platforms and shared standards.

On a separate note, Albania made headlines by appointing an AI minister to run public procurement. But as we see from this AI+ plan, it really doesn’t hold a candle to China’s ambitions.

That begs the question: if everything is run by AI and every system is reliant on its operations, who audits the AI, and, more importantly, who can stop it if (or when) things go wrong?

This plan provides no answers to these important questions.

This is a segment from #TBOT Show Episode 14. Watch the full episode here!

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