Democratic Culture and the Development of Artificial Intelligence in the USA and China

Advancement in artificial intelligence has gradually become a pressing concern for the world’s leading nations, especially the USA and China. In this article, the author confronts an argument made and alluded to in certain quarters: that when considered next to China’s, the US democratic culture leaves it disadvantaged in the development of artificial intelligence insofar as it stands in the way of decisive and coordinated action. The author deploys a variety of case study situations to analyse the claim and eventually finds that the apparent disadvantage is, at worst, inexistent and, at best, negligible. Instead, it is argued that the differences in democratic culture between the two countries may, in fact, be responsible for the still-leading innovation within artificial intelligence development in the USA. Through demonstrating the faults of this disadvantage thesis, the final aim of this article is to call on US law- and policy-makers to retain faith in their democratic culture.