Keyu Jin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Can you speak to the thing you mentioned a few times, which is the difference in American versus Chinese or maybe Western versus Chinese approach to entrepreneurship, zero to one versus one to N? Maybe can you explain that and what will it take for China to become a consistent zero to one innovator for the individual entrepreneurs to create totally new things versus doing the things you mentioned about speed and scale? The US will lead for some time on breakthroughs on disruptive technologies, the zero to one technologies that ultimately change the world. But innovation is a process. It goes from invention to production and commercialization and diffusion, diffusing technology throughout all parts of the economy. And on those two stages, I think that China has a unique advantage, even if it still can’t do the zero to one breakthroughs, because in the end, how much this technology is adopted by the countries and by the various parts of the economy is fundamentally crucial to how much productivity will be unleashed. And China’s innovation currently, the DeepSeek is really one example, and I think it’s really the beginning of the scale-based leading edge technology, cost-cutting driven kind of innovation model, could be just as powerful, maybe even more effective and powerful than the breakthroughs. And it’s a very different approach to innovation. The Chinese companies focus on solutions, problem-solving. Again, that comes back to the education system, right? You’re giving a problem. I’m going to find the answer. The Chinese students can do it. You want them to write their own question, they can’t do it, right? I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it’s a little like that, right? They see a problem. They’re going to go after it. They’re going to find the best solution. And that’s really, really useful, right? Because we don’t need, or developing countries especially don’t need these frontier technologies that they can’t use. And China currently has this AI Plus program, which is about pushing AI into every single plausible sector with the help of the state. So adoption diffusion is very important. Why China can’t do breakthroughs or can’t do zero to one technologies? I think at the root of it, and there are some deeper, we talked about the proximate reasons, the short, flat, fast, for instance, right? You don’t want to spend too much time on investigating something that you don’t even know if it’s commercially viable. So basic research is still weaker than in the US universities, but also this kind of intrinsic motivation. It’s very different, right? In China, it’s driven by extrinsic motivation. You are rewarded by compensation, financial compensation, all these kind of extrinsic motivation is what drives you. But intrinsic motivation, pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, that was deep in the Confucius philosophies. But of course poverty has changed all that. The profound commitment to scholarship, to research, which we know is very much true in the US universities, it’s starting. It’s starting, but it’s not there. So I think these two approaches are actually quite compatible with each other. I don’t know what all this fuss is about, right? China uses technology very well. It can scale up and reduce costs, and then it can spread it around. And the US makes the highest value added by inventing these technologies. But again, diffusion matters. Well, yeah. The things you mentioned, the scale, the manufacturing, the diffusion, from a economics perspective, you wonder which is the more important skill to have. And it seems like the cost-cutting, the efficient, large scale, fast manufacture, the diffusion is much more important for the success and the growth of the economy.…

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