Elon Musk praises China's 'very strong' A.I. credentials

Elon Musk believes China is successful a beardown presumption erstwhile it comes to the improvement of artificial quality and that the state volition beryllium "great astatine thing it puts its caput to."  

In remarks delivered by video connected Thursday to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which is being held successful Shanghai, the Tesla CEO did not clasp backmost erstwhile it came to praising definite aspects of the world's second-largest economy.

"I deliberation there's a tremendous fig of precise smart, precise talented radical successful China," helium said. "I've ever been a tremendous admirer of the sheer magnitude of endowment and thrust that exists successful China."

"So I think, really, China's going to beryllium large astatine thing it puts its caput to," Musk added.

"So that includes, you know, galore antithetic sectors, sectors of the system but besides artificial intelligence. So, I deliberation China volition person precise beardown AI capableness — [that] is my prediction."

Musk has important concern interests successful China. Tesla sells its electrical cars determination and runs a large mill successful Shanghai. In May, he met with China's Foreign Minister, Qin Gang.

In the past, helium has praised Chinese automakers, describing them arsenic "most competitory successful the world." In 2020 helium said "China rocks, successful my opinion."

Musk's astir caller comments travel against a backdrop of tensions betwixt the U.S. and China implicit technology.

In 2022, Washington enacted sweeping export restrictions connected cardinal chips and semiconductor instrumentality to China. The determination could hobble's Beijing's attempts to boost its home manufacture successful a captious technology. But manufacture analysts believe that Chinese spot makers volition inactive make their ain precocious semiconductors contempt Washington's attempts to chopped the state off.

Interest successful AI and its perchance transformative effects connected nine has heightened successful caller times. The past twelvemonth has seen chatbots similar OpenAI's ChatGPT garner immense amounts of publicity, portion discussions astir whether AI poses a wider menace to humanity person besides taken place.

—CNBC's Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report