Eric Schmidt says China is now just 6 months behind the U.S. in AI

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the U.S.-China AI gap has narrowed from about two years to roughly six months. He credits China with efficient algorithms that achieve comparable results using about a tenth of the energy, while the U.S. is held back by power and data center capacity.

• Schmidt now puts China about six months behind the U.S. in AI, down from two years
• China achieves similar results with roughly one-tenth of the energy, he said
• The U.S. needs 60–80 GW of power by 2030–2031, at about $50B per gigawatt
• Schmidt called the AI race the defining competition of the millennium