The Morning Download: AI Future Is Now on China’s Factory Floor

What's up: Anthropic has a new AI model; White House issues new AI executive order; sovereign AI takes off.

Good morning. As companies in the U.S. and Europe strain to see what lies ahead on the road to AI, many manufacturing and industrial companies in China are living that reality now.

The U.S. maintains the lead in developing frontier models, and its AI leaders dream of curing cancer and poverty. “China is focused on something more prosaic: making better washing machines,” Brian Spegele writes in The Wall Street Journal, even as it races ahead toward the same long-term goals that prevail in the U.S.

The story is packed with examples of how companies in China are using AI:

A clothing designer reports slashing the time it takes to make a sample by more than 70% with AI. Washing machines in China’s hinterland are being churned out under the command of an AI “factory brain.”

At one of China’s biggest ports, shipping containers whiz about on self-driving trucks with virtually no workers in sight, while the port’s scheduling is run by AI.

Executives involved in China’s efforts liken the future of factories to living organisms that can increasingly think and act for themselves, moving beyond the preprogrammed tasks at traditionally-automated factories. It could further enable the spread of “dark factories,” with operations so automated that work happens around the clock with the lights dimmed.

China is way ahead when it comes to the use of robots and AI in factories:

China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, nearly nine times as many as the U.S. and more than the rest of the world combined, according to the International Federation of Robotics…

Of 131 factories and industrial sites recognized by the World Economic Forum globally for lifting productivity through cutting-edge technologies such as AI, 45 are in mainland China, while three are in the U.S.

The application of AI and robotics appears to be driving a clear return on investment, and while there’s a risk that it will sideline too many human workers, the greater concern appears to be a shortage of human labor in key manufacturing sectors that could reach 30 million this year.

The focus is on the immediate application of technology that’s available now. It’s not that concerns about AI governance, labor-market impact, and public- and private-market valuations are frivolous or misplaced. But the rest of the world isn’t hitting “pause” while we sort out such dilemmas. And the range of what’s possible with AI and robotics is wider than what we typically see domestically, a few outliers notwithstanding.

And some of the highly skilled technologists who moved to the U.S. are heading back home to great effect.

Midea’s Jingzhou washing-machine factory works under an AI “factory brain” that manages 14 virtual agents that figure out the best ways to carry out tasks.

“You feed in all the data, and let AI figure it out,” said Xi Wei, director of the Midea Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. With a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Xi spent years living in Silicon Valley before returning to China to develop advanced robots for Midea.

The U.S. can have it both ways, deploying AI and taking the time to address broader social questions about use, as its society demands. But it needs to do so with much greater urgency and speed.

As the U.S. and China race ahead in artificial intelligence, many countries are seeking “sovereign AI” by building out their own AI capabilities to avoid dependence on the two superpowers.

South Korea has emerged as a leading test case, leveraging its advanced tech sector, semiconductor dominance and strong political backing, WSJ reports. President Lee Jae Myung has framed AI as an urgent national priority, tripling next year’s AI budget to $6.8 billion and launching a $102 billion growth fund for high-tech industries, WSJ reports.

Other nations are also pursuing sovereign AI to increase resilience, protect data, and reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. France’s Mistral AI and Germany’s SAP have teamed up to launch a sovereign AI platform to protect European data in the public sector and regulated industries. India is developing its own foundational AI model and expanding domestic computing capacity.

Anthropic says its new AI model is the best for coding and agents.  OpenAI is leaning into the holiday season with a shopping guide and making more hints about a new device.

Anthropic says Claude Opus 4.5, its newest AI model unveiled Monday, surpassed all human candidates on the startup’s internal engineering test, CNBC reports. Beyond coding, the model is designed to assist users with complex, multistep enterprise tasks, the company said, adding that it is targeting professional software developers and knowledge workers. The new model is available to Max, Team and Enterprise users.

OpenAI continues to make a push into America’s pastime: Shopping. Almost two months after rolling out a feature that lets users shop directly within ChatGPT, the company announced a research tool in which users generate their own shopping guides that can be tailored based on their budget, CNBC reports.

Alibaba said its Qwen app, a relaunched AI assistant, positioned as a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, reached 10 million downloads within a week of its public beta launch, emerging as a popular consumer AI tool in China, WSJ reports.

That mysterious AI device OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple design chief Jony Ive hinted at earlier this year now has a finalized design and could launch in under two years, Verge reports.

The White House issued an executive order that aims to turbocharge scientific discoveries with AI. 

Amazon Web Services said it will invest $50 billion in its AI infrastructure for its U.S. government customers. The plan will add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of new data center capacity, WSJ reports. The move comes as AWS continues to accelerate its AI spending, adding 3.8 gigawatts of capacity over the last 12 months. Last month, Amazon said it expected capital spending to come to $125 billion by the end of 2025 before increasing in 2026.

The White House issued an executive order on Monday aimed at building “an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets.” The administration frames the “Genesis Mission” as the most ambitious mobilization of U.S. scientific resources since the Apollo program. The administration previously has cut billions of dollars in federal funding for scientific research, the Associated Press reports. 

Character.AI, a chatbot company with 20 million monthly users, has cut off chatbot access for users under 18 due to mental-health concerns. “It was a complicated decision, but it wasn’t hard because I think this is the right thing to do for the next generation,” Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand tells the Journal.

Apple has eliminated dozens of sales jobs over the past couple weeks, even as it reported record sales for the previous quarter.  The company didn't provide specifics on the cuts, Bloomberg reports.