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An article published in the journal Nature analyzes the current AI development in China in detail from the aspects of paper influence, core applications, hardware and talents.
In p>217, China formulated the Development Plan for the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence, which described the grand blueprint for the development of artificial intelligence in China in the next decade and set the goal of "three steps":
By 22, the overall technology and application of artificial intelligence should be synchronized with the world advanced level;
by 225, the basic theory of artificial intelligence will achieve a major breakthrough, and the technology and application will reach the world leading level;
by 23, the theory, technology and application of artificial intelligence will reach the world's leading level and become the world's major artificial intelligence innovation center.
with the approaching of the first deadline, 22, how far has artificial intelligence developed in China?
The researchers have noticed an impressive leap in the quality of AI research in China, and they also predict that the ability of China to retain local talents will change.
However, observers warn that there are several factors that may hinder China's plan, including the lack of contribution to the theory of developing tools to support this field, and the reluctance of China enterprises to invest in the research needed to achieve fundamental breakthroughs.
scientists say that China's pursuit of artificial intelligence is not just a national power competition with the United States. Artificial intelligence technology is expected to make progress in the fields of medical care, transportation and communication, and countries that have made fundamental breakthroughs in this field may decide their future direction and gain the greatest benefits from it.
"There is no doubt that China regards artificial intelligence as one of the key technologies of this era, and hopes to rival the United States," said Jeffrey Ding, who studies the development of artificial intelligence in China at the Institute of Human Future at Oxford University.
After the release of the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan in 217, it promoted the introduction of more policies and billions of dollars of R&D investment from ministries, provincial governments and private enterprises.
the quality of AI research in China has been improved, and the core technology has fallen behind
An analysis of artificial intelligence papers collected by Microsoft Academic, an academic search engine, shows that China is making steady progress in the direction of having a significant impact. The analysis conducted by Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence found that among the top 1% of the most cited papers, the proportion of authors in China increased steadily. Its share reached a peak of 26.5% in 218, which is not far from 29% in the United States, while the share of the United States is declining. If this trend continues, China may surpass the United States in this indicator next year. Other analysis shows that the average citation of artificial intelligence papers in China has been increasing steadily, which is higher than the world average, but lower than that of American authors.
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Zheng Nanning, director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of Xi 'an Jiaotong University, said that China also has world-leading companies in computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing.
But China still lags behind in building the core technical tools of artificial intelligence. For example, TensorFlow and Caffe, open source platforms developed by American scholars and enterprises, have been widely used in industry and academia all over the world. Zheng Nanning said that PaddlePaddle developed by Baidu in China is a major open source platform, which is mainly used for the rapid development of AI products.
China is also backward in artificial intelligence hardware. Most of the world's leading artificial intelligence semiconductor chips are made by American companies such as NVIDIA, Intel, Apple, Google and AMD. Zheng Nanning said: "We also lack expertise in designing computing chips that support advanced artificial intelligence systems."
Zheng Nanning predicts that it may take 5-1 years for China to reach the innovation level of basic theories and algorithms in the United States and Britain, but this is an achievable goal.
Kristin Shi-Kupfer, a political scientist at the Mercator China Research Center in Berlin, said that contributing to these basic theories and technologies will be the key for China to achieve its long-term artificial intelligence goals. She said that if there is no real breakthrough in machine learning, China may face a growth ceiling in the field of artificial intelligence.
China's attraction to AI talents has increased
An equally important factor affecting China's progress is to retain talented researchers, and China seems to be more promising in this respect. According to the 218 China Artificial Intelligence Development Report jointly written by academia and industry, by the end of 217, China had the second largest group of artificial intelligence scientists and engineers in the world, with about 18,2 people, second only to the United States with about 29, people. But in terms of the number of top artificial intelligence researchers, China ranks only sixth. The so-called top is measured according to their H index, that is, the most productive and cited authors.
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Many computer scientists receive higher education in the United States and then stay there to work for global technology companies.
however, there are signs that the situation is changing. China's artificial intelligence research institutions are trying to attract some of them to return home with high salaries. For example, in the Robotics Center in Zheng Nanning, some professors earn 2-3 times as much as other university professors, he said.
Zheng Nanning said that the center also provides employees with a more comprehensive evaluation system than many universities in China. Compared with other standards, universities in China tend to reward high-risk models. He has also implemented a recruitment system, bypassing the centralized procedures of universities, allowing scientists to quickly form a team of engineers, and is currently offering undergraduate courses in artificial intelligence.
China has a unique deployment environment
Ding said that considering the growing professional skills of three core technology companies, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba, China's plan to have a leading artificial intelligence company in the world by 22 is also achievable. He said: "These companies have become global leaders in the field of artificial intelligence, although they have not yet reached the level of American companies such as Google and Microsoft."
according to p>CB Insights, there are at least 1 private AI start-ups in China with a valuation of more than $1 billion.
One of the advantages of China is its population size, which creates a huge potential labor force and unique opportunities for training AI systems, including a large patient data set for training software for predicting diseases. In February this year, researchers in China said that their NLP system can diagnose common childhood diseases from electronic health records, and its accuracy is comparable to that of experienced pediatricians. The data set includes nearly 6 thousand children's medical records visiting a hospital; In many other countries, it is very difficult to obtain so much data.
The principle of AI governance in China is emerging
If China wants to have global influence in the field of artificial intelligence, it is equally important to have proper governance, because it will allow researchers and companies in China to build the necessary trust to win users around the world and establish cooperation with researchers from other countries.
Like many countries, China has begun to formulate ethical principles for the development and use of artificial intelligence. In June this year, the National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Committee issued eight governance principles for artificial intelligence development, including harmony and friendship, fairness and justice, inclusiveness, respect for privacy, safety and controllability, responsibility, open cooperation and agile governance, which are similar to the measures issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in May this year.
To sum up, the research quality of artificial intelligence in China is getting higher and higher, the environment for applying and deploying AI is unique, and the ability to attract and retain talents is improving, but China is still catching up with the United States in terms of high-impact papers, talents and ethics.