外媒新判断：中美AI差距，比你想象得要小！

中美AI竞赛越来越激烈，美国有实力强大的Open AI，中国有便宜又好用的Deepseek。谁能跑赢这场竞赛？

《经济学人》最新刊发的深度分析报告颠覆了传统认知。

文章认为，决定AI竞赛胜负的关键，可能不取决于谁家的模型更酷炫，而在于技术能否大规模融入真实应用场景中。

在这场“落地能力”的比拼中，中国与美国的差距远比大多数人预想的要小。

The true winner of the AI race, however, may not be the country that invents the best models. It is more likely to be the country where governments, businesses and ordinary people use AI at scale every day. On that front, the race is closer than many in America believe.

这篇文章从三个维度论证中国在AI落地应用方面的独特优势。

❶政府推动：AI成为公共服务“新基建”

《经济学人》提到，中国地方政府已成为AI技术的重要客户。

据估算，Deepseek的AI模型约半数需求来自政务系统：医院用AI整理电子病历，警务系统借助AI寻人，社区服务平台部署智能应答——这些实践让AI从实验室走向民生服务第一线。

The state, by one estimate, accounts for roughly half of the demand for DeepSeek's model. Local governments are already using AI for all manner of things, from rationalising hospital records to answering citizens' questions and finding missing persons.

❷消费者市场：低成本+高接受度

相比美国ChatGPT的付费模式，中国AI应用呈现“普惠”特征：字节跳动将AI服务价格降至美国同行的1%，微信内置智能助手，直播平台广泛采用虚拟主播。

调查显示，81%中国消费者能识别AI产品功能（美国仅39%），反映出市场教育的深度渗透。

With more demand and easier supply, Chinese consumers have lots of AI options. In the past year ByteDance has released at least seven apps with AI functions. Tencent has promoted its chatbot within its WeChat platform. They are hardly alone: American tech firms, from Google to Meta, are stuffing their products with AI-powered features. But Chinese consumers seem more aware of these changes than those in the West: 81% of them know which types of products use AI, compared with 39% of Americans, according to Ipsos, a pollster.

❸制造业转型：AI激活新动能

制造业是除政府和消费者以外，AI在中国的第三大应用市场。

《经济学人》指出了这一中美关键差异，中国43%的AI风投流向制造业，相比之下，去年美国同领域投资只有3%。

After the state and consumers, the manufacturing sector is the third big customer for Chinese AI services. This marks a radical departure from America. According to our analysis of information from PitchBook, a data provider, last year 3% of America’s venture-capital dollars in AI went into manufacturing. In China the equivalent share was 43%.

目前，中国已占据全球制造业近30%的份额，工人人均工业机器人数量超过几乎所有发达国家。

Already China has a nearly 30% share of global manufacturing. It has more industrial robots per manufacturing worker than almost any other rich country. Now it is pushing ahead in new fields.

亚洲部分实业界人士认为，在AI应用领域，制造业可能是中国与美国拉开差距最大的赛道。

Some industrialists in Asia see manufacturing as the area where China may break away most from America in terms of AI adoption.

“软件补硬件”成破局关键

《经济学人》指出，在美国技术封锁背景下，“软件补硬件”的策略成为中国破局关键。

2019至2023年，中国进口美国资本设备的实际价值下降超20%，导致企业难以获取最新硬件。但AI驱动的软件升级让旧设备焕发新生：AI传感器能预判设备故障，智能工具可降低能耗。数据显示，中国制造业软件采购量比十年前翻了一番。

In 2019-23 (the latest available data) Chinese imports of American capital equipment fell by more than 20% in real terms, depriving Chinese firms of the latest hardware. But better software, powered by AI, allows them to get more out of old kit. AI sensors can detect when hardware is about to break, for instance; other tools help to reduce energy consumption. From Chinese economic data, we estimate that China’s manufacturing sector buys twice as much software as a decade ago.

AI的决胜赛道不在高科技园区

文章也指出，美国在基础研发投入、企业软件生态、数据中心建设等领域仍具规模优势。

四大科技巨头亚马逊、谷歌母公司Alphabet、微软、Meta今年计划豪掷3000亿美元投向新技术（重点押注AI），而阿里、百度、字节、腾讯的合计投入仅为其六分之一。咨询公司Dell'Oro数据显示，去年美国AI服务器采购额超出中国近四倍，数据中心数量更是十倍于中国。

America still has a big advantage: brute force. This year Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta will invest some $300 b in new technologies, with much going on AI. Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent will invest about one-sixth of that. According to data from Dell’Oro Group, a firm of analysts, American spending on AI servers outstripped Chinese investment almost fourfold last year. America has ten times China’s number of data centres.

中国在技术落地过程中也面临诸多障碍：数据孤岛难以打通，大量企业尚未完成数字化转型。但中国凭借需求侧的响应效率、成本控制能力、监管灵活性，已在许多垂直应用领域形成了独特的发展路径。

China still faces many obstacles to adoption: data can be hard to access and combine, and many of its companies are not yet digitised. But the widespread belief that America will be faster to take advantage of the new technology is open to question.

文末，作者重申了一个关键判断：决定AI竞赛的关键并不在最前沿的高科技园区，而在AI找到真实应用场景的普通城市。

所以，纵使美国拥有最先进的AI模型，如果没有多少人应用，那又有何用？

The AI race will not be won in the high-tech clusters of Palo Alto or Hangzhou. Instead it will be won in places like Dayton and Zhengzhou, where ordinary companies and consumers harness the technology to do extraordinary things. Even if America has the best AI models, what good are they if not enough people use them?

编辑：左卓

来源：经济学人

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