A couple of months ago, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, was talking to the US congress. He indicated that, in terms of AI, China may be only 1 year behind the USA. Schmidt was worried that the USA may lose in the next years to China the leading position in AI that they are having at present.
In this post, we are going to explore how the world has reached this situation. We will review the plan of China on AI for the next years, what are the reasons behind it, what it involves and what is its current state.
China’s AI awakening moment
According to Kaifu Li, ex-director of Google China, it all started in 2016 when a reinforcement learning program created by DeepMind won the game of Go to the world human champion, Lee Sedol. For Chinese people, a computer winning a person at this ancient game was shocking. It was at this moment when China realized the importance of AI and how their future as a country depended on leading it.
Moved by that realization, in 2017 China’s government released their strategic plan to lead the world of AI by 2030. They called it: New Generation AI Development Plan for 2030.
In this strategic document, China’s government states that being a leader in AI technology is critical for their military and economic position in the world.
Their goal, states the document, is to become an AI power by embedding AI in all aspects of life, industry and commerce.
China’s advantages and drawbacks
Advantages
They plan to leverage their advantage to other countries on four aspects:
First, a large amount of data that they are generating both online and offline. As you probably know, China has already a society that functions based on the mobile internet. Chinese can pay for anything and everything with their phone. This feature generates a lot of data from each transaction that Chinese people do on it. And this data is not only related to online purchases and actions, but also offline payments made at the supermarket, the barber or the cinema.
Second, a race of startup gladiators, as Kaifu Lee calls them in his book AI superpowers. Those are all the startup leaders that are used to compete against each other in the most difficult conditions, trained in an environment where copying others is seen as the normal thing to do. This implies that for a Chinese startup to survive, they have to thrive even more, move faster, innovate faster, and take possession of the market faster. Otherwise, another startup will copy them and take them out of the game.
A committed government, which is willing to put the resources to achieve the success of the plan by providing the infrastructures and the supporting conditions for companies to flourish. In order to better understand this point, let me clarify that the government AI plan acts more like a wish list rather than an actual list of commands. The government indicates a list of technologies they would like to see built, and then incentivises local officials to promote in the private sector the development of those technologies, by using subsidies, public contracts, and AI-friendly policies.
A society hungry for success. People in China want to be rich, and they will go wherever there is a chance to become one, and they will put all their effort into it.
Drawbacks
Having indicated the advantages of China to lead the AI of the world, the document also indicates the drawbacks they are facing:
1. A Lack of cutting-edge AI talent: The Government of China identifies that they lack people trained in AI and related fields. So in order to solve this problem, they launched in 2018 the AI Innovation Action Plan for Colleges and Universities with which they plan to train 500 teachers and 5.000 students in 5 years.
as for their 2020 report, they have achieved 103 non-university scientific research institutions in the field of AI
