China Accelerates A.I. Ambitions

Could China overtake the United States in shaping the future of artificial intelligence? The New York Times sees a very real possibility:

The balance of power in technology is shifting. China, which for years watched enviously as the West invented the software and the chips powering today’s digital age, has become a major player in artificial intelligence, what some think may be the most important technology of the future. Experts widely believe China is only a step behind the United States. […]

Beijing is backing its artificial intelligence push with vast sums of money. Having already spent billions on research programs, China is readying a new multibillion-dollar initiative to fund moonshot projects, start-ups and academic research, all with the aim of growing China’s A.I. capabilities, according to two professors who consulted with the government on the plan.

China’s private companies are pushing deeply into the field as well, though the line between government and private in China sometimes blurs. Baidu — often called the Google of China and a pioneer in artificial-intelligence-related fields, like speech recognition — this year opened a joint company-government laboratory partly run by academics who once worked on research into Chinese military robots.

It has long been an article of faith that China’s top-down, heavily regulated system is a barrier to the kind of technical innovation that can flourish in a place like Silicon Valley. But the NYT article makes it clear that China’s A.I. push is not just about throwing money at over-regulated, micromanaged boondoggles. China has also been recruiting (and generously funding) top-level Western talent to open labs in China, investing money into promising U.S. startups to gain a foothold in the American A.I. sector, and relaxing rules that have hobbled research in the past.

The Times is not the only one taking notice: The Atlantic noted in February that China has made rapid advances in A.I. research over the past three or four years. And the Pentagon recently sounded the alarm in a report warning about Chinese inroads into the U.S. tech sector, which could allow Beijing to gain access to critical A.I. technologies with military applications—or allow China to better track citizens and impose censorship at home.

Unfortunately, China’s A.I. push comes at a time when the U.S. is preparing to reduce its investments: the proposed Trump budget would reduce the National Science Foundation’s spending for such research by 10%, even as China prepares to spend billions of dollars on the issue. Spending alone is no guarantee of supremacy, of course, but it does seem that Beijing is thinking more strategically about how to develop the technology of the future—and that America’s long-held advantage in A.I. could be slipping.