China's AI Race with the US Has Ended Early, Graphics Cards Are Secondary, the Most Core Factor China Has Already Surpassed the US

American artificial intelligence expert Ma Rui, after attending the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in China, believes that power is no longer an issue in China.

Her reflection reveals the most critical difference in the Sino-US AI race.

In China, the vast power grid and stable energy supply are taken for granted, while in the United States, power shortages have become a fatal bottleneck for the development of artificial intelligence.

Facts are proving that the AI race is not determined by the number of graphics cards, but by the ability to provide a large and cheap power supply.

China has completely surpassed the United States in the most fundamental power infrastructure, and this competition may have already been decided in advance.

China's power system is highly unified and centrally scheduled, achieving cross-provincial power transmission and large-scale renewable energy grid connection throughout the country. Whether it is wind and solar power in the west, hydropower in the south, or nuclear power in the east, they can be quickly converted into energy security for data centers.

Plus the East Data West Calculation project, which directly locates high-energy computing bases in areas with abundant power, allowing the AI industry to expand without energy concerns.

More importantly, China's electricity prices are low and stable, with industrial electricity prices far lower than those in the United States, meaning that the cost of computing power supported by each kilowatt-hour of electricity is lower, allowing companies to expand data center scale without any worries.

That's why China's AI factories are emerging on a super scale, the computing power pool continues to expand, forming a snowball advantage.

But in the United States, the situation is completely different. The rapid growth of data centers in the United States has run into the bottleneck of an aging power grid and lengthy approval processes.

Many states' data center construction is not lacking in land, but in power, not lacking in graphics cards, but in power access permits that take several years to approve. At the same time, electricity prices in the United States continue to rise, and residents and businesses are paying the price for AI's high power consumption, with multiple states experiencing electricity price increases of 30%.

This makes Silicon Valley companies, even if they have the latest NVIDIA GPUs, unable to scale up and activate them.

Essentially, the AI race is a power war of the new century.

Just as oil determined the kinetic energy of war in World War II, now power determines the upper limit of computing power.

Graphics cards are just tools, power is the foundation. This means that the real competition has already ended early.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1840500336391177/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.