Two important things happened on January 20, 2025. In Washington, D.C., Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States. In Hangzhou, China, a little-known Chinese firm called DeepSeek released R1, an AI model that industry watchers called a "Sputnik moment" for the country's AI industry. "Whether we like it or not, we're suddenly engaged in a fast-paced competition to build and define this groundbreaking technology that will determine so much about the future of civilization," said Trump later that year, as he announced his administration's AI action plan, which was titled "Winning the Race." There are many interpretations of what AI companies and their governments are racing towards, says AI policy researcher Lennart Heim: to deploy AI systems in the economy, to build robots, to create human-like artificial general intelligence.

The Navigation on Autopilot isn't perfect, but it's pretty "impressive" and a preview of more advancements to come. Beyond a simple product review, Sundin's video is giving his followers a close-up view into the production race that has sped up among Chinese car companies over the past year. And whether they are electric vehicle makers or self-driving tech startups, they all seem fixated on one goal in particular: launching their own autonomous navigation services in more and more Chinese cities as quickly as possible. In just the past six months, nearly a dozen Chinese car companies have announced ambitious plans to roll out their NOA products to multiple cities across the country. While some of the services remain inaccessible to the public now, Sundin tells MIT Technology Review "the watershed could be next year."