Will China become the World leader in the development of AI technology?

Terms like artificial intelligence and machine learning have quickly moved from becoming household world to becoming part of the household itself. But the use of artificial intelligence has rapidly encompassing all spheres of life from those standard and benign like banking and shopping to more sinister ones, like the use for military purposes.

From its inception, development and use of artificial intelligence was mainly under the domain of the United States. But in the recent period, things seem to be rapidly changing, with one world country quickly catching up with US, and openly aiming to become the world leader in the field of artificial intelligence development. That country is China.

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China not only has plans it is actively working on them

The signs that China is going to make serious attempts to become the strongest contender in the artificial intelligence race were becoming evident quite quickly. As was graphically presented by Washington Post in its report from 2016, in the period between 2007 and 2015 it was only China that was significantly keeping pace with the United States with the number of publications on artificial intelligence and number of publications with at least one citation.
The data actually came from the strategic plan prepared by the departing Obama administration aimed to further advance the US involvement in the development of artificial intelligence. One of the reasons for such a plan was actually the data and information that indicated that China is rapidly catching up with the US.
As Forbes reported, China quickly realized that it does not want to find itself in the situation as when it quickly lost to keep up with the pace set by the US in the development of the Internet. As stated by Kai-Fu Lee, former Microsoft executive with whom the magazine spoke, at the moment China hosts around 43% of all trained AI scientists in the world. As he noted, China sees the leading role in AI development as crucial, “because what we know as AI will greatly exceed direct technological applications” and will affect industries and spheres of life “from banking to insurance, healthcare and, media”.

The Chinese government actually took formal steps to let its intentions concerning AI technology get publicly known. In July 2017, The State Council of the People’s Republic of China announced its plan to make its country the global leader in the development of AI by the year 2030. The Council stated that it will invest $150 billion for that purpose, that should let China match the rest of the world in this field already by 2020. And by 2030, the plan provides that AI should lay the ground for China to achieve economic dominance.

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Chinese advantages in the field of AI
While this plan in the way it is formulated may sound like a standard five-year plan practiced in former Communist countries, as the MIT Technology Review finds, Chinese ascendancy in the field is well underway. While the US still holds the edge in the development of the most advanced algorithms and techniques, the Chinese companies are rushing ahead in the commercial use of AI technologies, pumping in additional funds in research and development.

This was confirmed by a report prepared by McKinsey & Company’s Global Institute, which noted China’s vast population resources and vast industry mix that can generate huge volumes of data, as well as provide an enormous market.

This ability to provide large quantities of data is exactly one of the advantages the Chinese have in the development of AI. The reason for that is the fact that mass pattern recognition algorithms on which AI development is based require a very large information pool, needed so that the agents could be able to recognize the pieces of identity. For example, the city of Shanghai runs a number of databases that contain 3000 million pieces of information on about 25 million local residents and 1.8 million companies.

Another key element is the fact that almost all key Chinese companies like Baidu (Chinese Google alternative), Alibaba (online shopping giant), Didi (Chinese version of Uber) and Tencent (developer of the extremely popular messaging app WeChat) are all aligned with the Chinese government’s AI development plan and actively participate in it. For example, Tencent gives researchers and students access to WeChat data, and in return, it gets to apply the results of some of the most innovative research these labs come up with.

Source: Tencent official site

According to Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu, the Chinese companies also have the advantage of being able to ct more quickly when shipping new features is concerned, since “the window of time you have to respond is usually very short — shorter in China than in the United States”. When he spoke to Forbes, Kai-Fu Lee gave the example of driverless cars, where the US had a head start, but are losing ground due to all regulatory battles and obstructions form automobile industry.

One specific advantage to which Ng drew attention was the fact that concerns AI research papers. While almost all Chinese researchers in the field know English language and can access practically all of published research in the language. On the other hand, most of the recent research papers originating in China are written in Chinese and in that respect are not that easily and quickly accessible to researchers in the US for example.

Growing concerns in the US

These advantages are just a part of concerns that trouble all concerned with AI development in the US. The other part, as MIT Technology Review points to is the slashing of research funding by the current US administration. Among other things, the mentioned Obama strategic plan for the development of AI is not to be found anymore on the White House online site.

Then in a way contradicts with the concerns expressed recently about what the developed AI capabilities would mean for the Chinese army, and what kind of effect that could have on the overall military balance in the world.
Whether the Chinese national AI strategy will achieve its goals is yet to be seen, but what is certainly evident at the moment is that its artificial intelligence development is much more than hot air state official statements can be filled with sometimes.