In this conversation, I spoke with Tom Nunlist from policy consultancy Trivium, about China’s AI Plus plan and its implications for the economy and society. We discussed the role of digital infrastructure in AI adoption, the transformation of production relations, demographic challenges, and the government’s role in connecting academia and industry.

The conversation also covers the complexities of navigating China’s regulatory landscape, municipal and provincial implementations of AI policies, and the measurement of AI’s economic impact.

Tom shares insights on how MNCs can better align corporate strategies with government objectives during the AI growth era, and talks about the emerging AI pilot zones and how China balances between innovation and regulation.

Tom Nunlist is the Associate Director of Tech and Data Policy at Trivium, a leading China policy research consultancy. Tom’s work explores the intersection of politics and technology, with a focus on data and artificial intelligence. His hands-on consulting work with Fortune 100 clients covers policy analysis, risk assessment, government relations, and communications.

In today’s world, there’s no shortage of information. Knowledge is abundant, perspectives are everywhere. But true insight doesn’t come from access alone—it comes from differentiated understanding. It’s the ability to piece together scattered signals, cut through the noise and clutter, and form a clear, original perspective on a situation, a trend, a business, or a person. That’s what makes understanding powerful.

Every episode, I bring in a guest with a unique point of view on a critical matter, phenomenon, or business trend—someone who can help us see things differently.

For more information on the podcast series, see here.

Chapters

04:27 Understanding China’s AI Plus Plan

10:55 Transforming Production and Society with AI

15:54 Government’s Role in AI Development

24:59 Measuring AI’s Economic Impact

27:12 Local Adaptation in Policy Implementation

28:01 Understanding Chinese Policymaking for MNCs

28:59 Aligning Corporate Goals with Government Objectives

31:19 AI Pilot Zones and Innovation Hubs

33:26 Promising Use Cases for AI Adoption

35:56 Balancing Innovation and Regulation in AI

42:52 Shifts in Government Priorities for Technology

45:56 Tracking Real AI Diffusion in the Economy

48:57 The Skills Gap Created by AI

AI Generated Transcript

Grace Shao (00:00)

Joining me today is Tom Nunlist, Associate Director of Tech and Data Policy at Trivium, a leading China policy research consultancy. Tom’s work explores intersection of politics and technology with a focus on data and artificial intelligence. His hands-on consulting work with Fortune 100, clients, covers, policy analysis, risk assessment, government relations, and communications. Tom, it’s so great to have you here and it was lovely meeting you online actually a couple weeks ago at one of the panels we were on together.

So today, will unpack China’s AI Plus plan, what it means for the real economy and how AI governance is viewed by China, sorry, viewed in China and compare that to what’s happening really in the US. But to start, tell us about Trivium and what’s your own professional journey. How did you kind of end up in Shanghai?

Tom Nunlist (00:45)

Cool, thanks, Grace. That was a nice introduction and likewise, good to meet you and good to be here on your podcast. Definitely flattering. I’ve seen your upcoming guest list and lots of exciting personalities coming up to be on the podcast. So yeah, a little bit about Trivium. We were founded ⁓ in, I think, 2017. So we’ve been around about eight years now. We are a China-focused, or right now China-only policy consultancy.

⁓ And so we really our kind of like value ⁓ is that we really know how the sausage is made here in terms of policy and politics in China and we help our clients mostly multinationals and investor clients understand that. So, you know, for example, a new policy like AI plus, you know, comes out, you know, we can come in very quickly and, you know, help inform our clients, you know, what this is, where it comes from, its overall context.

and then forming scenarios for how it’s gonna play out and kind of what they might wanna do. As you mentioned, I’m on our tech team, but we cover a lot more ⁓ than tech, really kind of the whole nine yards of ⁓ policy making, be it from economics to labor to kind of everything in between.

Tom Nunlist (02:01)

Yeah, as for for myself, I think I have a pretty typical China story, you know, insofar as, you know, long time expats. I came here in 2008, you know, more or less on a lark as a study abroad students, you know, to figure it all out and, know,

then life happened, got interested in it. I moved here permanently in 2013. My undergrad background is in journalism. So I studied here for a bit. Then I worked at a business review magazine and then eventually kind of made my way into the consulting space. Not too much of a very strict career plan, but again, one thing sort of leading to the next and here we are.

Grace Shao (02:43)

Awesome. So I think we’re going to go straight into it. What everyone’s interested right now is in the AI Plus plan. So that rolled out in August this year, believe, late August. It’s quite new. think people are still trying to understand what it really means. So the Chinese State Council published a high level paper that was basically pushing all sectors to really embrace AI.

It’s said to be the most comprehensive blueprint for AI development domestically, and even touches on China’s international ambitions or diplomacy as well. So to start off with, can you just tell us, high level, what is this really about? How do we understand this policy?

Tom Nunlist (03:24)

So this is the second high level AI policy to come out of China. The first was some years ago already back in 2017. That was about, you know, it was about the new generation of AI. AI Plus, the concept has been around for two years already now. It was originally announced at the two sessions. Hopefully our listeners know what that is. an annual meeting like that sets policy. It was announced two years ago, talked about again this year, but you know, not many

details were revealed about it. There was some assumptions which they were correct that it would be a bit like a former policy from 2015 called Internet Plus, was kind of following in that same vein. And just to sort of like set the stage of like what a document like this is, so it’s called a State Council opinion, you know we’re referring to it as a plan, it’s called Plan in the name, but it’s really a sort of like high level

like political document that is setting the priorities for what the nation wants to do, right? Like here’s the direction we’re gonna move in. Here are some like broad, you know, over the horizon kind of KPIs. This is where we all wanna go. ⁓ And then, you know, the plan will cascade kind of down from there. We’ll get more details over time. In terms of the name, AI Plus, that’s AI Plus or added to everything.

So everything in the economy, in all sectors, in society, we wanna see, the government wants to see AI make its way into there to get the most use out of it, to really ultimately transform the way that the economy and society works. It’s big, it’s a big vision is the answer.

Grace Shao (05:04)

think it’s really interesting you mentioned Internet Plus because I remember when that came out. So you said roughly 10 years ago, It was really embraced by every part of the economy and society. So have you seen any attitude changes or shifts or how people view AI Plus just being on the ground in China right now?

Tom Nunlist (05:22)

Well, in terms of views on the ground, like in terms of people talking about it publicly, not a whole bunch. I think what’s really happened here is these both internet plus and AI plus are responding to things that are already happening. So the internet certainly did not arrive in China in 2015. was ⁓ like.

Grace Shao (05:42)

Yeah.

Tom Nunlist (05:43)

very, very much going strong and was already one of the world’s leading digital economies at that time. And so what it was really seeking to do is kind of take the momentum for things that were already happening and push that further. So obviously, in 2015,

you know, the consumer internet, know, Alibaba, Taobao, like those type of, certainly WeChat Pay was introduced in 2013. You know, these were making waves, making big changes in the way that society just kind of basically works. And then Internet Plus was like, yeah, let’s take this momentum and apply it to everything else. Let’s have Internet Plus healthcare. How can we use the Internet there? You how can we use it in government services? And again, AI Plus is sort of doing the same thing. You know, the, you know, this is an introducing the AI wave to China, the AI wave is here, it’s happening, everyone’s using it, everyone’s excited. And so this is getting behind that momentum that is naturally already here and attempt to build a policy framework around it and like, yeah, really, where are we going with all this momentum, right? What are we aiming to achieve?

Grace Shao (06:52)

Yeah, I think actually on that, I am curious, has China’s highly digitalized society and the infrastructure made AI implementation or diffusion any easier in your eyes? Or how has that kind digital infrastructure played a part in just the mass consumer adoption of AI we’re seeing right now in China?

Tom Nunlist (07:05)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s a huge part. mean, from just the consumer side, China is like the US or Europe, just an extremely connected society. Everyone, even in the most remote places in the country, has their smartphone, has probably even has like 5G.

WeChat is something of a national infrastructure at this point. It’s a messaging app that everyone uses for work and life. It really is absolutely indispensable. And so having that infrastructure already there, or having everybody with a phone in their pocket automatically makes these tools accessible. I think...

any age, any person you might come across, you know, do they have DeepSeek on their phone? Chances are, yes, they probably do. On the back end, which I think is, you know, just as ⁓ important. So the past few years, or as we all know now, right, the...

know, the biggest part of the biggest spend of the AI boom is building out, you know, massive, massive data centers, right? And making that kind of infrastructure work. It’s a huge race right now in the United States. And so there was already a national plan to have ⁓ a nationwide network of data centers, you know, put in place as kind of before this big AI wave.

It’s a bit to do with some broader reasons of internet and energy and having some of this infrastructure in place. ⁓ Actually, in terms of energy, that’s one of the ways that I think a big leg up that China has in terms of the US is the amount of energy infrastructure it has built out compared to other parts of the world. So they’re ready to sort of do this, where I think other places maybe a little bit less so.

Grace Shao (08:57)

Yeah, and I think we can kind of talk a little bit more about the East data, West compute and all these different government initiatives that’s really boosted the data center built out. like, to your point, priority even the AI boom. But actually, let’s take a step back and kind of look at how the policies really affect a society, right? I think in September, one of your colleagues Kendra, her shape for a road, a blog post saying,

The state council’s AI Plus directive is to reshape the paradigm of human production and life. When I read that, was like, what does this mean? It seems kind of crazy. Like, are we going to make AI babies now? What does it mean to promote a revolutionary leap in productivity and profound changes in production relations and accelerate the formation of a new intelligent economy? So how do we kind of like break this down? What does it mean? And, you know, when we were chatting prior to this podcast recording, you said this is a grandiose term.

It’s three-shaping human production, but what does that actually mean? Like, is this quite literally reproduction? Like, how do we understand that?

Tom Nunlist (09:54)

Well, I don’t know, hopefully reproduction will stay traditional. in terms of, know, these types of policies sometimes have these like really big grandiose framing. know, again, back to what I said earlier, the point of this, it’s a political document at the end of the day. It’s establishing a vision, right?

and the promise of AI, which is not... ⁓

news to a Western audience is that it will be transformative of society that will kind of like change sort of how things work. This specific language that they’re using there, like talking about transforming production, you know, that’s a bit in the sort of like communist Marxist language, you know, of China. And then the context that it’s kind of living in now as well, ⁓ there’s this like really big deep sense of urgency in China of like kind of like

the need to move from ⁓ an economic model that is waning, that sort of reliance on labor intensive ⁓ economy and land sales and things like that into a ⁓ new area where they’re get new types of growth, new and better growth, the switch from quantity or quantity.

⁓ to quality. These goals were kind of already there. There’s another, you know, wonky Chinese policy term called new quality factors, new quality production factors, and what are all of these, you know, types of new things, you know, ⁓ AI, self-driving cars, and so on. And...

it wants to leverage these into making new growth opportunities happen, basically.

Grace Shao (11:33)

Yeah, and I think you touched on one thing, which is like, you know, the traditional economy is very like labor heavy and it really relied on just the mass population of the mass workforce, right? But what we’re seeing right now in China, but not only China, a lot of like actually very developed economies across Asia, including Japan and South Korea right now.

is that there are just not enough people. Like the population is declining, people are not willing to have children, right? And kind of given that backdrop of an aging population, a shrinking population, what is kind of, I guess, the goal from the government when we look at the labor force? And how will AI and technology play a role in that? Are we really just going to see like robots implemented or is it more automation? Or how do we understand this? Yeah.

Tom Nunlist (12:22)

think in some cases, we will see robots replacing physical workers. ⁓ But I think that’s the smaller part of the story. The bigger part of the story is this broader question of actually just avoiding the middle income trap. And so in order for China to take care of its aging population, to sort of weather this big demographic shift that is happening now,

no matter what, even if birth rates double or triple next year, it’s gonna happen. And the way to do that, that the government sees is to raise people’s incomes per capita.

and do that very quickly over the next 10 years, More profitable companies have more prosperous people, have a bigger tax base. And so that the country is just able to deal with this challenge as it emerges. Again, it’s inevitable. And so back to this new quality production factors or this transformative effect that AI is gonna have, the transformative effect is that it will be a productivity multiplier, right?

enabled everyone and companies from big to small to be vastly more productive and vastly more valuable and really help China earn enough and become wealthy enough, maybe right before it ages too much. So I think a bit indirect there, but it’s about the whole economic story together.

Grace Shao (13:51)

Yeah, and I think the whole approach to AI development and progress has been extremely pragmatic and economic driven for China, which is a bit different from what I get the sense in DC and even for sure Silicon Valley. Actually, on the topic of what you just mentioned, which is the government’s role in promoting companies and companies’ profitability, I have heard of this thing where the government is playing a role becoming a networker between the academics.

Tom Nunlist (14:00)

Yeah.

Grace Shao (14:19)

and the researchers and the companies. And I think for the audience, a lot of people sitting in West, we know about Alibaba Tense and Huawei, these mega big tech companies having talent schemes, quite similar to how basically there’s campus recruitment for like Meta and Google, whatnot, right? But how is the government now playing a role for SMEs or even smaller companies in terms of how are they connecting talent and...⁓ policy people and kind of the resources in the public space and the private space.

Tom Nunlist (14:51)

This is a great question, think, and a really important thing that’s emerged just over the last couple years. It’s not just AI, it’s sort of like all areas of science, technology, and engineering. But what it seeks to do is to bridge the corporate world and the academic and research world in a better way, right? So you can have like...

⁓ needs and talents and coms flowing both ways. So for example, this might be setting up round tables or some kind of like platform or any kind of mechanism that brings these parties together. So going in one direction from corporates, setting up links with universities so they can go into departments and say, hey, we’re doing biosciences, we’re doing AI, we’re doing you know, some type of metallurgy, you know, these are the types of talents we need. And can you focus on that? Can you help get us, you know, train that talent that we need?

or going the other way, having researchers see what’s going on in the corporate world and having a solution for that, or green fielding their own research, right? They’ve been doing this for a state institution or a university, and now they wanna take it out of there and find the right entrepreneurial partners to do that with.

Right. You know, as you mentioned, know, like large companies have done this sort of thing for for a very long time and have prospered, you know, because of those links. mean, indeed, I mean, a lot of the American tech giants, you know, came. That’s a famous story. It came out of a university or dropped out of a university, you know, and now, you know, maintain those links. It’s same in China, but, know, that’s a lot harder to do if you’re an SME. I mean, everything’s harder to do if you’re an SME because you don’t have the resources. Right. So providing that meeting place,

facilitating that is I think a really important program and one that I’m pretty confident will see solid results in the next couple of years.

Grace Shao (16:49)

So what agency or what government entity is actually helping facilitate that kind of meeting right now? And this question is to lead to the next question, which I’m going to actually ask now, which is, for me, I’m not a policy person. I’m getting confused when I read these papers, right? Because there’s the NDRC, which is in charge of the economic planning.

Then MIIT, which is in charge of the information technology, the ministry, the CAC, which is a cybersecurity regulator, right? Then there’s the MOST, and then there’s a party central science technology commission. There’s just so many of these government agencies that seems to be all involved in pushing the progress of AI technology at this point, as well as being a regulator for safety and policy work, right?

Could you kind of just break that down? Who’s in charge of what?

Tom Nunlist (17:39)

All right, okay, let’s just address that one, because that’s like a pretty big question. So for this, for the AI Plus plan in particular, the main administrative body for this is the NDRC. So for those of you don’t know, that is the macroeconomic planner. They’re in charge of kind of like setting the big direction.

of the ⁓ economy, right? So NDRC is in the coordinating role of this plan, right? So from there, it’ll go to the other ministries of the state council, some of whom you’ve just mentioned, right? So the industrial ministry, that’s MIT, science and technology ministry, most. ⁓

⁓ CAC, the cyberspace administration, all across the board. And those ministries will be in charge of taking the big idea and making it specialized or setting specific goals for their various sectors. And we’ve already seen that happen, actually. just a couple of weeks ago, the National Energy Administration, the NEA, came out with the very first ministerial AI Plus plan, which is AI Plus Energy.

And we’ll skip most of the details there, but suffice it to say, it is gonna use AI to help make the energy transition happen, which is very cool. From there, it will cascade down further into localities. And localities is really, that’s where the rubber meets the road and where all of the action happens. So we’ll see cities, they’re already AI plus plans.

There’s one in Beijing and Suzhou, those are explicit. And then like Shanghai has one basically, although it’s not called AI Plus, but they have one as well. Interestingly enough, those also actually predate the national plan, which is something that kind of happens in China at various points. And so a lot of the like actual like funding decisions and a lot of where the funding comes from will be at the local level.

And then there’ll be like, you know, a national pool of money as well that will like help support those, right? So, you know, it’s a top, you know, people say, China’s a top-down system. That’s of course true. And what I just described is how that top-down system works, right? So from the central planner down to ministry needs, down to local level, which has all of those ministries at the local level and, kind of being funded ⁓ from there. And then of course there’s like special national projects here and there.

Grace Shao (19:59)

So I’m just trying to understand this. In the RSC, the economic planner basically makes a big grand plan and they push out the AI Plus that we’ve been talking about that was pushed out in August. But a lot of the execution that’s done is actually trickled down into localities like the local governments, the provincial governments, city governments, whatnot. And so something like, just taking this as an example, something like the facilitation of maybe a researcher at Tsinghua meeting private company for potential, let’s say commercialization plan, that could be actually led by say the Beijing Education Department or how does that, I just wanna understand how to execute that works. Okay.

Tom Nunlist (20:36)

Yeah, yes, yes, yes.

Those might exist at different levels, I’m not sure. But yeah, the local level would certainly be implementing stuff like that. Or in another more sort of ⁓ direct way, Shanghai has money now where it can like say, companies that are in AI space are eligible for X amount of money.

funding for their first year, right? And like that funding decision, that’s made at the local level at Shanghai.

Grace Shao (21:03)

And that will be decided, I guess, by what the city might mean. So each city, each province, given their strong, they have their own economic factors, right? Like for example, like I think I was researching Harbin, like, you know, people think it’s just like a really cold place for the ice festival, but actually it’s an industrial city with a lot of legacy in robotics, traditional robotics, mechanics, industrial machinery. So their money might be put into developing physical AI.

Tom Nunlist (21:12)

Yes.

Grace Shao (21:29)

like embodied AI, right? And then maybe in Shanghai, we’re thinking about like maybe consumer driven products, right? Like just, just kind of high level thinking, but that that that’s kind of what happens. ⁓ So I want to understand how does the KPI work then, like in terms of like, how do we understand, I guess, how these, because what I’ve heard also is like these cities to cities, compete with each other, they compete for talent, they compete for, like, bringing in different businesses, how does that work? And then in terms of like, how do they actually

Grace Shao (21:59)

a measure, right? Like the technology or AI’s contribution. Because we talk a lot about, like people talk a lot about like how companies are trying to measure AI’s like actually, ⁓ you know, contributions to the company right now, the profitability. How do we actually understand AI’s contributions to the economy? I guess it’s two separate questions, but yeah, help me understand that.

Tom Nunlist (22:19)

Yeah, this is a really interesting question. And I think frankly, it’s one that the government is just trying to figure out itself. For years, of course, it was just GDP. So you win if you bring your area GDP, which is great for encouraging growth until it encourages the wrong kind of growth or encourages the wrong kinds of projects. And so I’m a little bit less familiar off the top of my head, but it’s something my colleagues have looked into. ⁓

as well is how these KPIs might be changing. And again, from this shift from quantity to quality, I think at the end of the day, probably something like GDP is simply the easiest thing to sort of see. But certainly, and that’s like if you’re like a mayor, I guess. But for people that maybe work within different ministries or in like...

specialist areas, whether or not they do a cool project along these lines, whether or not they brought, they fostered the emergence of a new giant in their district. That’ll be looked on favorably. So in terms of who actually sets these KPIs, I think that would actually go down to the personnel department ⁓ and how they interact, how the personnel department decides

things to include on there, some of which will be from NDRC’s AI plan and some of which will be from like totally other different things. I can’t tell you what their score rubric looks like. But again, the message here of going this like broad top-down kind of thing, what officials will be doing is, you

looking at the communication of these targets, right? Looking at the messaging and interpreting them for their district, right? So what do I need to do to make that happen here? And that’s the way forward for my career, right? And also to connect this with what you were just talking about in terms of local specialization, right?

what’s going on in Harbin, the local conditions there are different from in Shanghai or in Hangzhou. And so I think in the ideal way, and the government uses this phrasing a lot, is to have things definitely specially adapted for your local conditions, right? Don’t just do exactly what we’re saying, like make it work for you.

Right. And so in the ideal world, you would have like different things going on everywhere and they would all be complimentary. I think what happens, what tends to happen is that you have duplicative efforts, you know, which of course we see, you know, everyone’s talking about now in the auto industry. my gosh, there’s a hundred auto companies and they’re all, you know, in a giant battle Royale that is destroying value, you know, rather than. Yeah.

Grace Shao (25:06)

Yeah, the price war right now. Yeah.

Actually, how do we understand this? think because for the sake of, know, understanding Chinese policymaking for say, Western investors or Western companies, like say, MNCs operating in China, and in the day is to help them

better their operations, right? So then how do we understand this from that perspective? Say your client’s M &C and they’re saying, seeing, okay, AI plus is being rolled out on a central level. Then they are like, how do they decide? I don’t know where to put their plan, to build out their operations. How do they kind of make that judgment comparing provinces to provinces? And I think to your point, you kind of have...

answer this in the sense of like maybe if you’re industrial machinery you go to Harbin right but if you’re consumer goods you’re Shanghai but are there any other things that companies need to be aware of or investors investing in companies are coming out of these different problems should be aware of?

Tom Nunlist (26:00)

Yeah, great question. So I think probably the first choice, the first thing to look at is just, you know, where are the hubs for what you’re doing, right? If you’re an automotive company and you’re looking to make any of these, well, might go to, you might go to Enhui, right? Hefei, sorry, I forgot it for second. You might go to Hefei because that’s where a lot of the new energy vehicles are.

Right, and then from there, and this I think is a bit more unique ⁓ to China, is if you’re a corporate and you’re trying to be successful here, one of the first things you need to do is align with whatever the government is trying to do. You know, that doesn’t mean do exactly what the government asks you, right? But you know, figure out what officials there want, what their KPIs are, what their existing programs are, and how do you align your corporate goals with that?

⁓ And that’s how you get support. That’s how you get buy-in. That’s how you’re ultimately successful, right? You know, as in sure it’s no secret to anyone, you know, the Chinese government just has a much bigger voice in the direction that the economy is going, right? And the things that are happening in the economy and, you know, companies and investors absolutely, you know, have to listen to what that voice is saying.

I think for investors as well. So where are these companies collected? Where are the big hubs for the industry that we’re investing in? And also, what is the government itself saying that it wants? And which companies do we think can...

Obviously, of course, first deliver on the market promise, like do what they’re saying you’re trying to do, but are there opportunities here? Will they get this kind of support from the government that is a factor that is larger here than it is in other places? Probably maybe any other place.

Grace Shao (27:46)

Yeah, I think it’s also like the point you’re saying, it’s not really like you have to do what the government says, but it’s like you might as well lean into, like, I guess, lean into it, right? Like there are going to be favorable policies for your industry, certain areas, municipal areas, you might as well lean into it to optimize or to like maximize your success rate or your success possibility, right? So on that

Grace Shao (28:10)

point actually, I’ve heard that there are quite a few AI pilot zones. Like, you know, right now, I think for the West, people only know about Shenzhen, Hangzhou being kind of the tech innovation centers, obviously Beijing, Shanghai playing a big role for corporate headquarters and obviously where investors sit, policymakers sit. What are some other major cities that are actually quite relevant to this like AI growth right now or are considered AI pilot zones?

Tom Nunlist (28:35)

think those would honestly be the main ones. know, Shanghai, Beijing, you said, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, like these are the places where, you know, a lot like the most action is happening, right? Especially in an area where we’re talking about, I mean, it depends on what we mean, right? So like if we’re talking about just raw AI development, making new LLMs and stuff like that, you know, one of the big, you know, stories is that there’s only so much talent out there that can do that.

⁓ and this talent will gravitate towards some center. And there’s only a few of those, only, not everyone can have those people. Not everyone, those people won’t go everywhere.

Right, AI, but back to what AI Plus is about, right? AI Plus, all of these other things, right? And having that in various sectors, I think where other cities will excel or have the opportunity to excel is where those hubs are, right? So if we’re trying to add AI into auto manufacturing, that’s gonna happen in an auto manufacturing hub.

Right. And I think that actually speaks to the important thing that folks need to be looking out for. You know, at this point, know, we’re, you of course, at the high level, you know, we’re talking about sectors. OK, we AI in the research sector or want AI in the health care sector. But I think what’s most important is going to be looking out for not which sectors it revolutionizes, but which specific use cases, right, are going to be.

Grace Shao (29:59)

Mm-mm, I see.

Tom Nunlist (30:06)

most obvious to implement.

Grace Shao (30:08)

And actually on that point, which use cases, let’s put it that way instead of sectors, do you think are kind of showing the most promising mass consumer adoption of AI, gen AI as we know it? So I’m not talking about like the buildup of LLMs and everything. I’m saying, know, when DPC came out, there was a media frenzy of stories about how China’s like home appliances are even adopting AI, EVs are trying to adopt AI, you know.

Tom Nunlist (30:13)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Grace Shao (30:34)

I mean, obviously that kind of hype has gone, like, moved past us, but like, in terms of whether you want to use sectors or use cases, where do you see actually China right now really leading in adoption? And where do you think we’re seeing the trend going towards maybe in the next three to five years?

Tom Nunlist (30:50)

Yeah, think ⁓ it will continue to penetrate more ⁓ on the consumer side, just on of like AI services that are available to everyone. mean, that’s sort of the biggest thing right now. Whether or not we can get consumers to pay in China, I think is a little bit different of a question. But in terms of specific areas, I think it’ll be where we’ve already seen AI ⁓ have quite a bit of traction. So in like logistics and transportation where, you know,

with like self-driving is kind of almost here and you know we have the the nev is this it’s a software-defined vehicle and we’re going to be like a ready integration for ai into the features of the vehicle that’ll definitely be one you know another one thinking about ⁓ that comes to mind is is agriculture which i you know ⁓ i can’t name a specific company or or a project but ⁓

you know, drones are becoming ⁓ large and, you know, helping to manage big farms, like do things like crop spraying, you know, or inspecting or like, also not just in agriculture, in inspecting power lines, drones are not used to do that. It’s actually physically hard to get up there, right? And so there’s AI use cases for that, right? It can go into like visually inspecting, right? Or visually help, you know, irrigate your crops and so on and so forth.

So it’ll be things like that, right? Where we’ve already started to see new things happen, AI being used a bit. And now these new tools and the growing power of these tools will enable it to really actually happen.

Grace Shao (32:28)

Yeah, definitely. think like, when I first saw and tried out a few of the EV cars, this is even like during COVID, this is like three, four years ago, I was shocked by I wouldn’t say they’re like genuine power, but how tech savvy they already are. had voice control, each of them already had a built in robot, you can control your like windows, you control your heat, like the heat of your seats by voice recognition, voice control. And I think like you said,

Tom Nunlist (32:42)

yeah.

Grace Shao (32:52)

implementing GEN.AI into it just means that it can actually embolden it more, right? Do more things or right. So that’s really interesting. I think I want to double click on one question that a lot of people are kind of debating. know, China’s approach innovation often is said to be, you know, innovate and then regulation comes later. Europe obviously takes another extreme case of like hyper or not hyper, but like a lot more.

Tom Nunlist (32:57)

Yes.

Grace Shao (33:16)

cautious and safety, you know, safety cautious and like, you know, regulation comes first. And some people are complaining about how it’s hindering innovation or innovation going into production. Right. So I guess my question right now is you’ve been in the AI safety and policy space for a long time now in China. Do you think that actually you must give up safety for innovation or are there other ways that you’re seeing people actually being able to have safety and

innovation co-exist and co-develop and maybe taking data privacy as an example or how did Deepsea come through if there was so or let’s just talk about that space.

Tom Nunlist (33:50)

you

Yeah, this is an excellent question. And frankly, I think one of the most underappreciated or even like misunderstood aspects of the AI story as it stands right now in China. I mean, there was a point not too long ago before the EU AI Act, which you mentioned where, you know, China had, you know, the strictest AI regulations on the books in the world. And yet, you know, DeepSeq was still clearly able to emerge here and,

you know, become what it is, right? And I think the story here is that, you know, China is, I think, as most people will understand, a very security conscious, you know, country, but it is also highly flexible, right? And the interesting thing, the sort of interesting story, like when ChatTPT first came out, there was this mad scramble.

among regulators to get a handle on it, right? Because it was gonna flood the internet, you know, with these tools and man, what are the impacts gonna be, you know, like just a real sense of urgency to try to like write something immediately. And so there was a period of about a year and a half where you had regulation after regulation and, you know, they...

you know, if you looked at them in line, you’d think they were different, but they were actually kind of rewriting one another, and it was like all very ⁓ messy and a very confusing space. But then, you know, China was able to kind of like find what its bottom line is.

and then be flexible and adapt from there, right? So it was, you know, hurry up, let’s do something. Let’s kind of see what’s gonna work, where it might be too far, and then dynamically kind of like dial back.

So one of the interesting, I think probably the most interesting single event of this story was there was a registration system that was created where if you want to publicly release an AI tool like a chat TPT, it has to be registered with the state and blah, blah. And then some requirements started to be built on top of that. And there was a draft that said at one point,

all of your data that you need to train your LLM with needs to be verified as true. And the AI research community came back and said that this is impossible. Like if this is implemented, will, know, progress will grind to a halt. There is no way we can do this, right? There was no official response to that, but the final version of the rule did not contain that.

Right, was that was walked back. was an idea that was tried out, that was an explored, you know, and eventually, you know, was abandoned because it didn’t work. And so I think, you know, one of the sort of like, again, underappreciated or even unknown strengths of China’s regulatory system is that it can be flexible in that way.

Grace Shao (36:27)

Right.

Tom Nunlist (36:46)

in an ungenerous interpretation of this, which you hear from a lot of foreign companies and rightly so because there are drawbacks of this, is that regulation can kind of seem all over the place and arbitrary and you never know what things are gonna change next.

And certainly in emerging areas, that is true and very challenging, you know, if you’re in a corporate compliance type situation. But the plus of that is it can be, you know, quite flexible and adapt to, you know, what the perceptions of the needs are kind of as they’re coming up, which in, you know, an environment as fast developing as this one, where again, new problems might emerge tomorrow. I think that’s a really important strength or really useful strength to have.

Grace Shao (37:29)

We could be quite reactive in the sense that they would actually react to what the industry and the actual practitioners at the leading frontier, technology development, want or need, right? To really help and regulate the technology, yet also not hinder any progress. I think that’s really interesting and it’s a very fresh take on it. I haven’t really heard that before, but I think it’s

it makes sense. And it also kind of explains what you said about some people’s kind of complained or misunderstanding of this whole like murkiness. so you said that the AI Plus initiative really it’s been around, like not been around, but like the AI policy or the plan has been around or the idea has been around. And then there was a 2017 National General AI Plan as well,

There’s also the made in China 2025 plan, all these big grandiose plans that have been really pushing forward AI or robotics and just technology development in general. as you said, policymakers and regulators can actually be quite reactive. So over the last, I guess, 10 years as these three mega plans been rolled out.

How have you seen these things change or how has the policy makers really a change in terms of their sentiment or the attitude towards this technology?

Tom Nunlist (38:40)

Let’s say the biggest thing, so taking a bit of a longer view, so science, tech, and manufacturing development has been a priority of the governments for a very long time, since the late 90s. It’s been kind of on this top priority list. And so one shift I’ve seen in the past few years is side tech development moving from one of the list of important things into the top thing.

like the most important thing. It’s like that is ⁓ kind of an organizational principle, right? Or like a driving organizer of the whole party, right? And again, that’s because of the perception of what the state’s needs are at this point. In the past, in the sort of like last formulation, right? Of like what the country needed, right? It just needed growth.

It’s like, it’s the late 70s, we’re into the 90s and 2000s. We need to just grow. We need more people and jobs, we need production. That’s what we need. Now that’s not what they need. We need quality growth, we need to move up the value chain, we need to avoid the middle income trap if we can, expand people’s incomes, become a more efficient and a more technologically driven society. And so the sort of prioritization,

and some of the character of these plans have changed sort of in line with that. Some other things I think have stayed the same or strengthened rather, right? So with Made in China 2025, which this not really talked about explicitly anymore because of the political sensitivities it creates in the US, right? But the sort of view, right, was that China

you know, doesn’t want to be vulnerable, basically to, you know, always reliant on outside technology and wants, you know, these things for its own, right? Wants them to be secure and controllable. It wants to have, have its own thing, right? That of course, I think, you know,

in light of the subsequent ⁓ US effort to strangle the semiconductor sector in China is even more of a priority. So it’s not just move the value chain and get incomes up, it’s also create these fundamental technologies which we absolutely cannot have as a vulnerability.

Grace Shao (41:03)

Essentially kind of push more honed in on the self-reliant focus than they previously didn’t really have to, right? It was also kind of a reaction as well. Okay, I think I want to go in some quick questions. ⁓ You did answer a bit of it, but one overhyped and one underhyped province or city that you think people are not noticing enough outside of China.

Tom Nunlist (41:28)

Yeah, again, would say,

Yeah, they’re not really as specific over under Hype City that I can think of. But yeah, I would say go back, double down on the point of like, you know, look at where different specific hubs are, right? So right now, you know, especially the US talking about AI development sort of in general, right? Like the rush to AGI, you know, so on and so forth, right? The AI plus plan is about doing things in the real world, right? So I think where a lot of like really fascinating stuff is going to happen is where those real world

things are in China, right? So like where we have many filtering use cases actually emerge and that’s going to be sort of all over the country.

Grace Shao (42:02)

Right.

Right, like CN maybe for renewables, but like Hefei for you say auto, and then like even like Baoding and Hebei for like auto. You get at least like second, third year cities that are just like actually relevant, but only if you’re in the sector, you would know, right? And that’s a really interesting take. So what is one metric that a policy analyst like yourself should be really tracking or focusing more on?

instead of just, you know, maybe what we’re seeing on the headline is like, you know, this crazy chase for like benchmark frontier technology, frontier of LLM benchmarking. How do we actually track or judge real AI diffusion in the economy?

Tom Nunlist (42:48)

would say it’s probably more along the lines of traditional measures, So penetration, productivity, profitability, wage and efficiency growth. Again, the emergence of those scenarios, Are people actually out there using it in the real world? So I think it’s look for those traditional.

tangible things, right? Again, I mentioned that Chinese consumers tend to not want to pay for consumer-grade AI tools. If that’s something that changes, right? If they’re good enough where people are willing to pay for it, wow, maybe that would be an enormous indicator.

Grace Shao (43:16)

Yeah.

I don’t think anyone’s gonna want to pay for like, you know, consumer app. The culture, right? Like no one wants to pay. I don’t know, I switched my brain on and off when I use like Western apps versus Chinese apps. And when I’m on a Chinese app, they pop up, they’re like, pay for premium. I don’t want that filter anymore. I don’t need this sticker anymore. I’m like, I’m not paying. You just have a different mentality, right? Because you do get too many goodies for free already. It’s very...

Tom Nunlist (43:27)

I think he wants to go to pay for a I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Grace Shao (43:51)

It’s very hard, think. The barrier is very high. The threshold. I have one last question for you. And it’s a question I ask everyone that comes on to differentiate understanding, which is what is an unconventional view you hold? And this could be about work or something in life, you know? But what is something that you think about and you’re like, oh, maybe I don’t say this out loud, or maybe this is quite different from what my peers think?

Tom Nunlist (44:13)

What was an unconventional view I hold?

I’ll go one with topic specific here. That’s because it’s come up recently in ⁓ fights I get into, Twitter fights I get into with people. There is this interesting and I think not totally off the mark concern with AI that it’s gonna basically make us all dumber. Students are gonna outsource learning to AI. There was a case study that did the rounds about doctors using AI tools to help them spot

certain types of cancer got worse at it, know, like after relying on the tool. And that’s a real concern. I think it’s something that, you know, there’s some red flags that seem to say that that might actually be happening. But I think the real problem might be a bit more nuanced than that. think it might, my hypothesis is that it will create something like a ⁓ skills or performance gap.

between different parts of the population and exaggerate it. So, whereas some groups of people might become reliant on it and become de-skilled in their job, definitely. And then in some cases, that might be what we wanna happen. I we don’t want everybody, I mean, that’s sort of the promise, not have to do certain boring things. But I think for a smaller portion of the population, it is gonna be a massive learning and development.

accelerator, right, to really help you to get good and improve. And so, you know, I mean, beyond, you know, whether or not I’m right, I don’t know I’m right, it’s just a bit of a guess. You know, I’m wondering where that gap kind of might be and how large it’ll be, right? So is it going to be 90 % of people get dumber and 10 % of people become super learners? You know, or is it, you know, somewhere in between?

That’s my unconventional view. It’s gonna create a skills disparity.

Grace Shao (46:04)

Yeah, I actually kind of agree with I think it would make people who are relying on it for skill set like vocational skill almost like just the art of, know, not art, but the skill or ability to write a press release or draft a basic news piece or you know, build a DCF model or you know, do some quick basic research that might become dumber in the sense that you don’t know how to

do it in a traditional way. But I think the arguments also like say 34 years ago, people are like, you have the internet now. You don’t even know how to use a library anymore, which I think our generation honestly, I don’t really know how to use the library very well. Like I go on my loss. I don’t know how, you know, how to find books essentially from alphabetical order and, you know, like finding the topics, but we do learn how to find more information in some sense, right?

But I think to your point of like, ⁓ it will help people learn a lot faster, but it will require a new kind of skillset, is like, you can access all this information, can you decipher it? Can you dissect it? Can you actually pick out what is correct? What is actually relevant? Because there’s so much noise and clutter, which is kind of similar again to our generation where we had to use the internet to find information, Versus like our parents generation had to like walk into the library and just like.

Grace Shao (47:19)

go through like 10 books, right? ⁓ But that’s super interesting. Thank you, Tom. Really, really appreciate your time. This was super insightful. It was really helpful for me to even learn about how to understand how policy was made in China, how it might affect businesses and investors. And yeah, this was just super insightful and a lovely conversation.

Tom Nunlist (47:21)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you, really. It was really lovely to be on the pod.

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AI Plus: Understanding the Intersection of AI and Economic Growth

AI Proem Podcast

AI Plus: Understanding the Intersection of AI and Economic Growth