Editor's Notes: As China’s 14th Five-Year Plan nears completion and the 15th Five-Year Plan comes into view, Bridging News is launching a Global Vision special series, “China’s New Blueprint,” featuring international experts who unpack key themes such as China’s modernization path, international cooperation, technological innovation, and green development for overseas readers.
Chongqing - Ten years ago, the publication of Big Data propelled Viktor Mayer-Schönberger to global prominence, earning him recognition as a pioneer—often described as the “father of big data.” The book reshaped how societies understood information and triggered a worldwide shift in thinking. A decade on, artificial intelligence has taken center stage. The question is no longer whether data exists, but how it can be transformed into meaningful value.
At this inflection point, Bridging News spoke with Professor Mayer-Schönberger of the Oxford Internet Institute to explore the evolution of data as a new factor of production, the growing concentration of AI power, and the one human capability that AI still cannot—and will never—replicate.
Reflecting on his visits to China a decade ago, Mayer-Schönberger recalled that discussions at the time focused largely on the availability of data—how much existed, who owned it, and whether it could be accessed. Today, he noted, the landscape has changed entirely. “We are no longer just talking about whether data exists,” he said. “We are talking about a tool that can take the data and turn it into something meaningful. That tool is AI.”
For Mayer-Schönberger, AI is the instrument that unlocks data’s potential. If big data reshaped how people perceive the world, AI is now reshaping how they act within it.
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan places strategic emphasis on strengthening the supply of data and computing power while building an open, shared, and secure national integrated data system. Mayer-Schönberger views this direction as notably forward-looking. “The Chinese government is doing exactly the right thing,” he said.
He contrasted this approach with developments in the United States and parts of the West, where vast datasets are controlled by publishers, governments, and corporations that charge increasingly high licensing fees. As a result, only a small number of tech giants can afford the data required to train advanced AI models. “If only the very large AI companies can afford data licenses,” he warned, “that means you don't have small AI companies, you don't have startups, you don't have new ideas.”
By making more data available to smaller firms at low cost, China could lower barriers to entry, stimulate innovation, and foster a more dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem. Mayer-Schönberger pointed to history for comparison. Silicon Valley’s rise, he argued, was made possible when the U.S. government required Bell Laboratories to open its transistor patents—an intervention that enabled countless startups to enter the semiconductor industry and ultimately ignited the computer revolution. Today, an open data market could play a similarly catalytic role in the AI era.
As large models and massive computing resources increasingly concentrate in the hands of a few global players, concerns over technological centralization continue to grow. Yet Mayer-Schönberger believes humans retain an irreplaceable advantage. “AI looks into the past to help us with the present,” he said. “But when the present requires imagination and dreaming, only the human mind can do that.”
Human progress, he noted, has always depended on breakthroughs without precedent—from landing on the moon to inventing vaccines, designing computers, and building airplanes. In his view, humanity’s future depends not on memory or computation, but on imagination. “The future of humanity depends on our ability to imagine what isn’t there and then make it happen,” he said. AI can analyze patterns and optimize systems, but it cannot dream with intention.
As China advances its 15th Five-Year Plan and the world enters a new phase of AI-driven transformation, Mayer-Schönberger’s reflections offer a clear reminder: AI will not replace humanity, but it will redefine how humanity moves forward. Innovation will favor those who embrace both data openness and the power of imagination. AI can process the past—but the future belongs to those who can imagine it.