Scientists, corporations and countries around the world are racing to explore and exploit the possibilities of artificial intelligence technology. China is working on an extremely aggressive solution multi-billion dollar plan for government investments in artificial intelligence research and applications. The U.S. government acted slower.
The Obama administration spent approx artificial intelligence report near the end of his term. Not much has happened since then – until approx Executive Order of February 11 from President Donald Trump encouraging the country to maneuver forward with artificial intelligence.
The executive order has several parts, including directing federal agencies to speculate in artificial intelligence and train staff “in AI-relevant skills,” making federal data and computing resources available to artificial intelligence researchers, and directing the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create standards for artificial intelligence systems that are reliable and work well together. These are all good ideas, but they lack financial resources and bureaucratic structure. So later examining how large organizations use artificial intelligence over the last five years, in my opinion the implementing regulation alone is unlikely to do it change the American approach to AI.
Government spending
China is doing much greater than just talking about artificial intelligence. In 2017 in the country announced the national government he desired to create a country and its industry world leaders in AI technology by 2030. The latest government enterprise capital fund is expected to speculate over $30 billion in AI and related technologies in state-owned corporations, and this fund joins even larger state-funded VC funds.
Only one Chinese country announced that it’ll allocate $5 billion to the development of artificial intelligence technologies and enterprises. City Beijing committed $2 billion to develop an industrial park focused on artificial intelligence. The major port of Tianjin is planning this will invest USD 16 billion in your local AI industry.
Reuters/China Stringer Network
These government programs will support ambitious large-scale projects, start-ups and academic research in artificial intelligence. Domestic efforts also include the use of artificial intelligence in China’s defense and intelligence industries; the country’s leaders do not hesitate to make use of artificial intelligence for purposes social and political control. For example, each AI-based facial recognition and catch passers-byAnd “social credit” – AI-based credit scoring that takes social behavior into account – are already in use.
US investment plans, mainly in the defense industry, are dwarfed by China’s efforts. DARPA, a research arm of the Department of Defense, has sponsored artificial intelligence research and competitions for many years and has a $2 billion fund called “AI Next” to assist develop the next wave of AI technologies in universities and corporations. It is not yet clear how much progress his efforts have made.
Private sector contribution
The United States is intensively engaging the private sector in this technology. There are for example many more AI corporations in the US than in China.
US investment also appears strong. For example, in 2015, the total research and development spending of US-based Google, Apple, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon was $54 billion. A big a part of this expenditure he went into artificial intelligence researchbut some work actually happened in China and elsewhere outside the United States. We are used to this work personalize ads, improve search results, recognize and tag faces and in general make products smarter.
In China, the private sector is much more closely tied to government plans than in the US. asked the Chinese government 4 large AI-focused corporations in China – Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba and iFlytek – to develop AI hardware and software to support autonomous driving and language processing so that other corporations can leverage these skills.
China can also have surpassed America’s historic advantage in enterprise capital investing. In 2018, US AI startups received $9.3 billion in enterprise funding – a record amount, but the variety of deals was down in comparison with 2017. However, one report from China suggests that in the first half of 2018 .Chinese enterprise investments – many of which were in AI – were higher than in the USA Data from 2017 indicate this Chinese AI corporations have received more enterprise funding than U.S. corporations, although U.S. funds went to many more corporations.
Outside of investment money
There are aspects apart from investment that determine a country’s long-term competitiveness in AI. Talent is vital. The United States has historically had an advantage in this regard, with strong technical universities, many tech employers and relatively open immigration policies.
Recent LinkedIn data evaluation suggests that there are many more artificial intelligence engineers in the US than in China. However, China is rapidly closing this gap by offering a number of solutions education and training programs starting in primary school. The Trump administration’s immigration restrictions are encouraging some of the world’s best artificial intelligence researchers to remain home slightly than come to the U.S.
Another element of AI’s long-term success is how regions build mutually reinforcing communities of corporations, university ecosystems, and government agencies. Silicon Valley is the world leader in this regard, and China has nothing yet to match it. Both the United States and China could learn from efforts in Canada, equivalent to the work of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, which has provided corporations with access to facilities, enterprise capital and research partnerships with universities to speed up the development of artificial intelligence in the city.
Reuters/Thomas Peter
The final key element of AI progress is data: the more data corporations in a country have, the higher they are capable of develop efficient AI systems. Chinese web corporations have vast amounts of consumer data on which they’ll train machine learning algorithms. Due to the very large variety of inhabitants, the intensive use of digital services by this population and more loose regulatory environmentChina is clearly ahead of the US in terms of knowledge.
I still consider that, at this point, the United States has an advantage over China in terms of AI capabilities. However, as much as I’d love for the United States to win this race in the long term, if I were placing bets, I’d bet on China. As I describe in my recent book “The advantage of artificial intelligence“China is implementing its AI strategy, while the United States is still struggling to create it. China also advantages from a determined government, an infinite pool of cash, a growing cadre of intelligent researchers, and a large, technology-hungry population.
Perhaps if U.S. government leadership devoted the same attention and investment to artificial intelligence as other vital priorities, the United States could maintain its leadership position in this field. However, this seems unlikely in the next few years.
