US vs. China

The rapid ascent of China has been astonishing. Within a few years, the economy may be larger than the United States, and a key part of the growth will be AI. The Chinese government has set forth the ambitious goal of spending $150 billion on this technology through 2030.¹³ In the meantime, there will continue to be major investments from companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

Even though China is often considered to not be as creative or innovative as Silicon Valley—often tagged as “copycats”—this perception may prove to be a myth. A study from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence highlights that China is expected to outrank the United States in the most cited technical papers on AI.¹⁴

The country has some other advantages, which AI expert and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee has pointed out in his provocative book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order¹⁵:

• Enthusiasm: Back in the 1950s, Russia’s launch of Sputnik sparked interest in people in the United States to become engineers for the space program. Something similar has actually happened in China. When the country’s top Go player, Ke Jie, lost to the AlphaGo AI system, this was a wake-up call. The result is that this has inspired many young people to pursue a career in AI.
• Data: With a population of over 1.3 billion, China is rich with data (there are more than 700 million Internet users). But the country’s authoritarian government is also critical as privacy is not considered particularly important, which means there is much more leeway when developing AI models. For example, in a paper published in Nature Medicine, the Chinese researchers had access to data on 600,000 patients to conduct a healthcare study.¹⁶ While still in the early stages, it showed that an AI model was able to effectively diagnose childhood conditions like the flu and meningitis.
• Infrastructure: As a part of the Chinese government’s investment plans, there has been a focus on creating next-generation cities that allow for autonomous cars and other AI systems. There has also been an aggressive rollout of 5G networks.

As for the United States, the government has been much more tentative with AI. President Trump has signed an executive order—called the “American AI Initiative”—to encourage development of the technology, but the terms are vague and it is far from clear how much money will be committed to it.