The great game of artificial intelligence — Jonathan Yen

Malay Mail

05-05-2025

MAY 5 — As the world remains embroiled in the US-China trade spat, an interesting live broadcast took place in Moscow recently. At the 'Youth Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club's New Generation Project', a peculiar topic caught my attention — a discussion on artificial intelligence and technology.
Contrary to popular view, AI is not viewed with the same rose-coloured lenses by Generation Z, like myself. An AI-driven future is not one that provides us with the comfort of job security as well as our privacy. Thus, when a topic like this is being discussed in a country like Russia, it arguably deserves closer attention.
The Great Game
In order to truly appreciate the emergence of new superpower competition in the 21st century, we need to go back to the 'Great Game', which marked the rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires and their influence over Central Asia then.
Today, AI could become a new battleground for influence, raising the collateral consequences of escalating geopolitical tension between the US and China. As each side seeks to improve and commercialise its AI models, it will have to rely on other nations to supply the unique data and resources required to effectively turn them into 'digital colonies'.
In other words, we are witnessing a new form of geopolitical influence: an AI-driven 'metropolisation' of our societies and economies. While it is understandable that many countries are keen to jump on the AI bandwagon, it could come at the cost of their national sovereignty. In the past, physical land and resources were prized possessions. Today, by adopting foreign AI models and regulations, as well as selling off land and resources for foreign-built data centres, are they not, in essence, surrendering their sovereignty? According to the symposium mentioned above, this could also be viewed as a 'soft form' of colonisation.
There is no doubt that the US and China currently lack mutual trust. Yet, our future and economic well-being are deeply intertwined with these competing superpowers. In their race for dominance, it will be hard for them to resist using AI to tighten their grip on future generations as a form of control.
AI could become a new battleground for influence, raising the collateral consequences of escalating geopolitical tension between the US and China. — Reuters pic
AI colonisation
Colonisation can be defined as a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples for the purpose of cultivation, exploitation, trade and in some cases, settlement.
What is AI colonisation?
The panelists noted that AI development has become a fiercely competitive battleground among nations, particularly between the United States and China. Due to AI's data and resource-intensive nature, only major powers could possess the capacity to build AI models domestically. While the commercial entities developing AI is undeniable, control often remains closely tied to their respective governments.
What about smaller countries like those in South-east Asia? The simpler and more economical path is to adopt AI models commercially. This approach is not only more efficient, but it can also provide substantial foreign investment, primarily in the form of data centres funded and operated by tech giants.
However, AI models have their own ecological uniqueness which carries the cultural blueprint of the country of origin. Take China's Deepseek model as an example. Deepseek is able to illustrate both Oriental and Western folklore. Yet, it struggles when asked to depict characters from say, a Slavic folklore such as Kolobok, due to insufficient data from that cultural domain.
This suggests that AI is currently limited by its own enclosed ecosystem, confined only to the inherent features of its parent nation. As time goes by, the more it learns from other cultures, the more the ecosystem expands in its knowledge and capabilities. The more information it absorbs, the more persuasive its influence becomes. We already know that Chinese models like Deepseek follow China's party line, and American models like OpenAI have strong political biases.
Is the global race for AI dominance leading us into a modern-day version of the 19th-century 'Great Game'? Is Generation Z at risk of being caught in a digital conflict driven by external powers as part of the great game towards 'AI colonisation'?
* This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.