This chapter explores the intersection of Hindu philosophy and practice with the development of artificial intelligence (AI). The chapter first introduces aspects of technological growth in Hindu contexts, including the reception of ‘Western’ ideas about AI in Hindu communities before describing key elements of the Hindu traditions. It then shows how AI technologies can be conceived of from a Hindu perspective and moves from there to the philosophical contributions Hinduism offers for global reflection on AI. Specifically, the chapter describes openings and contentions for AI in Hindu rituals. The focus is the use of robotics and/or AI in Hindu pūjā (worship of gods) and the key practice of darśan (mutual seeing) with the divine. Subsequently, the chapter investigates how Hindu philosophers have engaged the distinctive qualities of human beings and their investigation into body, minds and consciousness/awareness. The chapter concludes by raising questions for future research.

The anesthesia workstation, commonly referred to as the “anesthesia machine,” is a complex and very specialized piece of equipment that is relatively unique in medical practice. It is, in essence, a device to control the delivery of medical gases to patients, including oxygen, air, nitrous oxide, and volatile anesthetics, along with a specialized ventilator adapted to operating room conditions. The safe use of the anesthesia workstation requires proper training, preuse checkout, and continuous monitoring of its function. The medical literature is replete with examples of patient harm from inappropriate use of the anesthesia workstation and from mechanical or electrical failure of its components. Additionally, volatile anesthetics, while valuable in medical practice, have a very low therapeutic index and manifest severe, and even fatal, side effects when administered improperly. Finally, many patients under general anesthesia are paralyzed for surgery and ventilated through an endotracheal tube. Their safety is completely dependent on the anesthesia professional’s use of the anesthesia workstation to deliver breathing gases, remove carbon dioxide from exhaled gas, and precise administration of volatile anesthetics.

Chapter 4 employs an originally constructed data set, the China Global Finance Index, to conduct cross-national tests spanning eighteen Latin American countries from 1990 to 2017. The index characterizes Chinese policy loans by their ?nancing channel (state-to-state vs. market-based) for each national-level investment project.The chapter ?nds that China’s state-to-state loans, as a share of a country’s external public debt, are positively correlated with budget de?cits, supporting the primary hypothesis that China’s patient capital expands governments’ ?scal policy space. In exchange for this lack of policy conditionality, however, policymakers tend to have more extensive commercial conditionality. Notably, when Chinese ?nancing is instead directly booked with corporate enterprises through private procurement in the marketplace, these commercial conditions are less extensive. China’s patient capital behaves more like long-term equity capital given the underlying private sector competition promoted by domestic procurement laws. National governments do not gain additional ?scal space and are more likely to comply with policy conditionality.

How does China’s emergence as a global creditor a?ect national policymaking? The international and comparative political economy literature has long debated the extent to which international capital mobility constrains national autonomy, but has mainly focused on private capital ?ows. Incorporating China’s state-led capitalism into this political economy framework, I expect that Chinese credit enhances national governments’ room to maneuver. It is a distinct form of long-term capital characterized by a risk-tolerant ?nancial system that marshals China’s patient form of domestic capital internationally. Its lack of policy conditionality endows governments with more ?scal space to intervene in their economies. For developing country governments facing strong redistributive pressures, su?cient ?scal space to supply more jobs, higher wages, and better public services is often key to political survival.However, patient capital has its costs. The ?ne print of these state-to-state deals often involves commercial conditions, ranging from contracting with Chinese ?rms and suppliers to providing state guarantees or commodity collateral, that risk intensifying national debt and dependency.

Chapter 7 assesses the cost and bene?ts of China’s commercial conditionality by employing extensive qualitative evidence, including more than 200 interviews with Chinese creditors and Latin American debtors, and in some cases, examining the original loan contracts. This chapter also evaluates the extent to which China can foster good governance and sustainable development without policy conditionality. For example, these loan provisions, which typically involve some combination of Chinese foreign content and commodity guarantees, are designed to improve the global competitiveness of Chinese ?rms. However, they may also impose costs on Latin American countries. Preferential treatment for Chinese capital inputs and machinery may undermine Latin America’s industrial competitiveness. At the same time, commodity guarantees embedded in loans-for-oil agreements risk eroding commodity proceeds that could otherwise be channeled toward domestic spending or reinvestment in state energy ?rms. Perhaps most important, China’s tendency to focus on commercial rather than policy terms may encourage governments to spend beyond their means, catalyzing future debt problems.

This book’s macroeconomic analysis suggests Chinese ?nancing could o?er nations a development opportunity by exploiting Western ?nance’s Achilles's heel: the maturity mismatch between the capital market’s short-term ?nancing and debtor nations’ long-term development goals. Chinese policy banks have the capacity to ?nance big-ticket public infrastructure projects over a long-term horizon. However, Chinese capital also has its drawbacks given its tendency to secure its lending with microeconomic ties or commercial conditions embedded in its loan contracts.Popular attention has also focused on the question of whether Chinese lending is a form of "debt-trap" diplomacy used as a coercive economic tool to acquire long-run strategic assets. Rather than debt-trap diplomacy, however, this book argues, China’s tendency to invest in maximizing long-run markets rather than short-run profits has at times ensnarled its policy banks in creditor traps where they must lend defensively to recover their initial investments. Chapter 8 also examines how these creditor-debtor relationships have changed over time and how they are likely to continue to evolve in a post-coronavirus world.

This chapter provides an overview of this book, which examines China’s economic expansion into the Western Hemisphere from both the creditor and debtor perspectives while making several contributions. First, this study brings new and original data to bear on the classic question of states’ room to maneuver under ?nancial globalization, a question that is increasingly pertinent given the rise of state-led ?nance over the past two decades. Second, employing a mixed-method approach, this book sheds light on the behavior of state-led ?nancing, particularly how its commercial conditionality rather than policy conditionality a?ects national-level governance decisions. Finally, it makes an important theoretical contribution by disaggregating the structure of global ?nance. The globalization scholarship suggests local state capacity and institutional development can mitigate "race to the bottom" pressures, but this study ?nds that the type of international investment (state vs. market) can also in?uence the extent of policy discretion. The emergence of China’s state-led ?nancing endows governments with greater ?scal space, or the ability to sustain their spending through volatility.