An over-dependence on current AI tools risks eroding the deep reasoning and experience in the Western workforce and those in education. As I’ll explain, this is a phenomenon Beijing could exploit as a strategic gambit against the West.
This foreseeable Chinese maneuver threatens to trigger the lowering of Western educational standards and cause an industrial brain drain. Perversely it would be a move unintentionally enabled by Western decisions.
Specifically, short-sighted US trade sanctions are benefiting Beijing. The AI embargo is catalysing a more efficient homegrown Chinese AI industry. This drives commodification, similar to the dumping of Chinese EVs and solar panels, allowing their cheaper alternatives to undercut Western products.
These cheap Chinese alternatives will likely lead to a huge Western adoption. Such moves may lead to the dumbing down of education, the de-skilling of the workforce and an unchecked reliance on systems trained on Beijing’s values and biases. The de-skilling and cognitive atrophy in the West is not the end of Beijing’s strategic gambit.
Like Beijing’s policies to limit social media and gaming for their own youth, they are increasingly choosing to gatekeep and limit AI in its own education system. This contrasts with the Western’s less guarded enthusiasm for their children’s use of technology, like we’ve seen with EdTech initiatives for screen-based learning.
So that is the strategic gambit. It is a Chinese manoeuvre that would result in a civilisational gap in educational attainment, which will have fundamental consequences for the workforce of the future, such as the loss of human judgement.
If left unchecked, it would have immeasurable consequences of Western economies, social cohesion and national prestige. This is not Beijing hardpower or even softpower at play. Rather it is Beijing once again playing the long-game and using the West’s own short-sightedness against them.