This demonstrated how the Chinese system frames medical and social rights collectively with focus on the concrete well-being of society as a whole, where privacy concerns are often subordinated to practical healthcare outcomes. By contrast, western liberal notions of individual rights and stricter privacy protections often limit the degree to which medical data can be centralized and integrated into AI systems. Without immediate access to these types of large data sets, physicians rely more heavily on peer-reviewed studies, personal experience, and consultations with other professionals. 

These visits to AI enterprises prompted important questions for our group: in what sense does China’s socialist model of AI development fundamentally differ from that of capitalist economies such as the US? Many of the AI products we encountered appeared to be directed toward consumer markets and the supplementation of intellectual labour — alleviating tasks such as grading papers, voice translation services, or integrating AI into expensive consumer products like automobiles. These seemed to be the most profitable and commercially viable areas of development, leading some of us to question why there appeared to be less innovation directed toward alleviating unpaid domestic labour.