Will China be leading the world in Artificial Intelligence by 2030?
Beyond the on-going trade war between China and the United States (US) lies a competition for global dominance. China’s re-emergence as a global superpower has caused much unease in Washington. Apart from their ambitions to lead the Eastern Hemisphere through the Belt Road Initiative (BRI), China recognises the strategic imperative of developing deep technologies such as quantum computing and communication capabilities, 5G networks and most importantly Artificial Intelligence (AI) superiority. Their Sputnik moment came in March 2016 when Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo won Lee Sedol, the greatest Go player of the decade. This prompted government officials to craft a national AI strategy that would build China into a leader in the field of AI by 2030.
Across the globe, nations are recognizing the importance that AI could play in the near future in terms of employment and economic productivity and have likewise crafted their own national strategies in dealing with the change that AI would bring. In 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin made a bold statement claiming the nation that leads in AI will be the ruler of the world and as dramatic as it sounds, he is not alone. The US realized the possibility of AI becoming a significant military advantage and has established the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) on August 2018 to research and advance the development of AI technologies that address the national security and defence needs of the US.
Enter the Dragon: Deciphering the Chinese Dream
It has never been easy to decipher China’s intentions apart from their prominent use of economic statecraft. Which begs the question, what is China’s vision of world order? The Chinese word for China is Zhong Guo which literally means central state. Historically, the concept of “Tian Xia” as depicted by Confucian thinkers was used to refer to the unified world in which China sits in the centre of. Today, the idea of “Tian Xia” could be elicited from Xi Jin Ping’s proposed concept of ‘a community with a shared future for mankind’ that was written into the United Nations security resolutions. It reflects the potential future to ‘connect the prospects and destinies of every nation and country closely together’. China’s ambitions to be at the centre of this unified world is bound to escalate tensions within the region as its other Asian member countries become increasingly muscular.
More importantly, what is the Chinese dream? China’s grand vision, ‘The Great Rejuvenation’ as Chinese President Xi describes it in his book on the governance of China; is about harnessing the collective power of the people and their spirit of hard work to forge ahead in building a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advance and harmonious. The dream seems to be focused on reviving China back to its former glory ever since its “100 years of humiliation”. But beyond just recovering from its humiliation as discussed in a recent panel held at the Milken Institute on the Asian dream, the average Chinese does not seem to have a clear idea besides aspiring for more luxury goods. What next? There are many proponents of the idea for having a Chinese version of the American dream where everyone has equal opportunities to achieve their highest aspirations and goals. Central to that dream includes promoting individualism and entrepreneurship while viewing state capitalism and government led investments as evils. However, we must not forget that it was precisely because of these investments that millions were pulled out of poverty and viewing the Chinese dream using an American lens might be disastrous for China. In order to maintain an egalitarian society as its citizens evolve beyond crass wealth, China must be mindful of corruption particularly at the provincial level while it defines the Chinese dream.
Advancing Beyond the Imitation Game
China has been infamously known for copying inventions and infringing on intellectual property rights. Many critics claim that China is just a follower and after it is done with copying, it would stagnate because it is unable to innovate new ideas to lead the world with. However, that does not seem to hold up on the telecommunications front which is a strategic industry for most nations as Huawei is currently leading the world in its 5G communication speeds.
MIT Technology review reports that 9 of the biggest technology firms in the world are from China and they are leading in developing technologies in the field of facial recognition and financial technology as acknowledged by Eric Schmidt, chairman of the NSCAI. Ping An Insurance is probably the biggest company involved in Artificial Intelligence that you have not heard of. They are a financial services company and was ranked 7th in the Forbes global 2000 rankings for listed companies. They recently received global recognition for their achievements in AI processing of human language in the healthcare field and the group is expected to invest more than RMB100Billion in technology research and development in the next decade to consolidate its leadership in the financial services industry.
China is also home to 4 Chinese AI start-ups leading in facial recognition technologies that are valued at more than $1billion each. Coupled with the Chinese drone maker DJI who controls about 70% of the consumer drone market and the huge troves of data that the Chinese government collects, it is no wonder that the US is paranoid at the possibilities that China can create.
Racing to become the Next AI Superpower
Lately, there have been a lot of discussion as to whether China is capable of surpassing the US in developing AI technologies. Unknown to many, China currently publishes more AI research papers compared to the US, however they have been criticized for lacking in quality as it usually focuses on incremental innovation rather than breakthrough innovations and are rarely cited in the research world. In order to build a competitive AI ecosystem, a country needs to control 4 main factors. Its ability to manufacture hardware components like chips, have a strong pipeline of academic talents such as world class researchers, a thriving venture capital community with strong financial fire power and data, lots of data.
China’s immediate concern seems to be in its ability to master the production of hardware. After Investing billions of dollars over the past decades into building up its semi-conductor industry, China is still struggling to keep up with the world in competitively producing its own Computer Processing Unit (CPU) chips. This is because unlike manufacturing a toy or a car, it is extremely difficult to reverse engineer the complex process of turning sand into chips. However, things seem to be changing with AI chips that specialise in training and running deep neural networks. China does not seem to be playing catch up as Alibaba unveils its first AI chip a month ago and it claims it can perform computing tasks 12 times faster than what is available on the market.
How is the US holding up? Despite the fact that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been experimenting with AI for the past few decades, the US seems to be lacking in a comprehensive national AI strategy to maintain its lead in the field. As much as the US is allergic to state capitalism and government led investments, it cannot leave the private sector to compete on strategic industries without having an industrial policy. Looking back, many of the key inventions like the Global Positioning System and the Internet came from the research budget of the department of defense.
Such synergies that can be achieved when there is an alignment between the government’s political will and the market forces should not be underestimated. In 2011 when China announced that it wanted to lead the world in renewable energy production by 2015, the world found it ironic that the country with one of the most polluted cities would lead the way. But much to many critics’ surprise they were able to achieve their goals through a host of policies that ensured the market was supporting China in the direction it wanted to move towards.
Innovation: The Missing Piece to China’s Grand Strategy
Among all the other factors, innovation is the key to China building a sustainable competitive advantage in the field of AI. In his speech to the members of the Chinese academy of engineering in 2014, President Xi spoke about China’s transition to an innovation driven growth. He mentioned that China cannot constantly depend on the scientific and technological achievements of others to fuel its own progress or they would constantly be trailing behind others. Hence, China has no choice but to innovate independently.
A large majority of western research has shown that psychological safety and a relatively flat hierarchical organisational structure is crucial for boosting creativity. But in China, where conformity is one of the pillars of Confucianism and authoritative cultures are a norm, Are the Chinese even capable of creativity? Recent research shows that benevolent and moral leadership behaviors within organisation cultures with authoritarian traits can moderate the negative effects that such authoritarian leadership traits creates on the employee’s perception of psychological safety. Thus China’s drive and ambitions to strive for something much bigger than itself could actually help it to overcome its perceived inability to innovate.
Artificial Intelligence: The Final Frontier
“Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.” Stephen Hawking.
More often than not, we tend to think linearly and overestimate what can be done in the short term and underestimate what can be achieved in the long run. As we progress into the fourth industrial revolution, the divide would no longer simply be between the rich and the poor but rather the technology literate and illiterate. Recently at MIT Technology Review’s Leadership Summit 2019, Axel Karlsson, a senior partner at McKinsey and Company shared that the future is in Asia. It is not a matter of if, but when Asia will overtake the US. The US is well aware that with the current methods used to make machines learn, immense amount of data would be required to train them, and China would eventually take the lead given their monopoly over the data they control. But as David Cox, IBM Director at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab acknowledges, current machine learning techniques are not efficient as it requires huge data sets containing thousands of images before being able to differentiate between a cat and a dog, which is vastly different from how a child learns. He notes that the US has to reinvent the way machines learn if it were to level the playing field brought about by their data deficit.
However, many thought leaders and academics oppose the binary mentality of viewing the development of AI as a problem between the two leaders (China and the US), because of the profound impacts that the technology has on the world. Thus, it is crucial that we consider the perspectives of the various nations and cultures in the process of crafting guidelines for the development of these technologies as well as the mitigation of the risks associated. While it is prudent to consider the risks and ramifications for the increased integration with AI, it should not be used as a tool for fear mongering but rather as a guide to produce more human centric solutions. The jury is still out on whether China will realize its dream of rejuvenation by 2049 when it marks its centenary, but there is no doubt that we are currently witnessing the era of the Chinese Renaissance.
Written by: Sheldon Chin (16/12/2019)
