Against the odds, some in China are questioning the top-down push to get aboard the artificial intelligence (AI) hype train. In a tightly controlled media environment where these experts can easily be drowned out, it is important to listen to them.
Across the US and Europe, loud voices inside and outside the tech industry are urging caution about AI’s rapid acceleration, pointing to labor market threats or more catastrophic risks, but in China, this chorus has been largely muted, until now.
China has the highest global share of people who say AI tools have more benefits than drawbacks, and they have shown an eagerness to embrace it, and as I have written before, it is hard to overstate the exuberance in the tech sector since the emergence of DeepSeek’s market-moving reasoning model earlier this year. Innovations and updates are unfurling at breakneck speed, and the technology is being widely adopted across the country, but not everyone is on board.
Illustration: Yusha
Publicly, state-backed media has lauded the widespread adoption of DeepSeek across hundreds of hospitals in the country, but a group of medical researchers tied to Tsinghua University published a paper in the medical journal JAMA in late April gently questioning if this was happening “too fast, too soon.”
It argued that healthcare institutions are facing pressure from “social media discourse” to implement DeepSeek to not appear “technologically backward.” Doctors are increasingly reporting patients who “present DeepSeek-generated treatment recommendations and insist on adherence to these AI-formulated care plans.” The team argued that as much as AI has shown potential to help in the medical field, this rushed rollout carries risks. They are right to be cautious.
However, it is not just the doctors who are raising doubts. A separate paper from AI scientists at the same university, last month found that some of the breakthroughs behind reasoning models — including DeepSeek’s R1, as well as similar offerings from Western tech giants — might not be as revolutionary as some have claimed. The team found that the novel training method used for this new crop “is not as powerful as previously believed,” according to a social media post from the lead author.
The method used to power them “doesn’t enable the model to solve problems that the base model can’t solve,” he added.
This means the innovations underpinning what has been widely dubbed as the next step — toward achieving so-called artificial general intelligence — might not be as much of a leap as some had hoped. This research from Tsinghua holds extra weight: The institution is one of the pillars of the domestic AI scene, long churning out keystone research and ambitious start-up founders.
Another easily overlooked word of warning came from a speech given by Zhu Songchun (朱松純), dean of the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence, linked to Peking University. Zhu said that for the nation to remain competitive, it needs more substantive research and less laudatory headlines, according to an in-depth English-language analysis of his remarks published by the independent China Media Project.
These cautious voices are a rare break from the broader narrative, but in a landscape where the deployment of AI has long been government priority, it makes them especially noteworthy. The more Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) signals that embracing the technology is important, the less likely people are to publicly question it. This can lead to less overt forms of backlash, like social media hashtags poking fun at chatbots’ errors, or it can result in data centers quietly sitting unused across the country as local governments race to please Beijing — as well as a mountain of AI public relations stunts.
Perhaps the biggest headwind facing the sector, despite the massive amounts of spending, is that AI still has not altered the earnings outlooks at most of the Chinese tech firms. The money cannot lie.
This does not mean that AI in China is propaganda. The conflict extends far beyond its tech sector — US firms are also guilty of getting carried away promoting the technology, but multiple things can be true at once. It is undeniable that DeepSeek has fueled new excitement, research and major developments across the AI ecosystem, but it has also been used as a distraction from the domestic macroeconomic pains that predated the trade war.
Without guardrails, the risk of rushing out the technology is greater than just investors losing money — people’s health is at stake. From Hangzhou to Silicon Valley, the more we ignore the voices questioning the AI hype train, the more we blind ourselves to consequences of a potential derailment.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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