Artificial intelligence (AI), which now encompasses everything from robots to medical diagnostic tools, is a rapidly growing field that is playing an increasingly critical role in many aspects of our lives. AI is particularly important for both a country and its citizens, while the power of this technology is escalating in various fields, such as the economic and military sectors. This is why AI technology has become a competitive “weapon” between countries. A typical example is the US and China. China seems poised to lead the way in research and use of artificial intelligence, due to its national plan for AI dominance and the billions of dollars that the government has invested in this field, compared to the US, which focuses on private sector development.
Until last year, the two superpowers were largely interdependent on AI technology. It’s an area that has attracted attention and investment from major tech powers on both sides of the Pacific, including Apple, Google and Facebook in the US and SenseTime, Megvii and YITU Technology in China. However, a combination of political tensions and the rapid spread of COVID-19 in both nations is fueling a further divide between them, which will have implications for both technological advancements and the world’s power dynamics for years to come.
Georg Stieler, CEO of Stieler Enterprise Management Consulting China, said that these new technologies will create a new landscape within the next three to five years, while the people who develop them will be able to control various parts of the world.
China's rapid rise in interest in AI technology can be traced to a few key moments starting four years ago.
The first was in March 2016, when AlphaGo, a machine learning system created by Google that uses algorithms and reinforcement learning to train on huge data and predict outcomes, defeated world Go champion Lee Sedol. This was broadcast across China and generated a lot of interest. Both sides highlight how quickly technology has advanced and suggest that because Go involves strategies and tactics that resemble warfare, artificial intelligence could potentially be useful in making decisions related to warfare.
The second moment came seven months later, when the administration of former US President Barack Obamareleased three reports on preparing for an AI-dominated future, developing a national strategic plan and outlining the potential economic impact. Some Chinese policymakers took these reports as a sign that the US was further along in its AI strategy than expected.
This culminated in July 2017, when the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping released a development plan that aimed to make the nation the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, including investing billions of dollars in startups and research parks.
Lian Jye Su, principal analyst at global technology market consultancy ABI Research, said China has noticed that the IT industry is originating from the US and exerting soft influence around the world through various innovations from Silicon Valley. He added that as an economy that relies solely on its manufacturing capabilities, China is eager to find a way to diversify its economy and provide more innovative and cutting-edge ways to showcase its strengths to the world. AI is a good way to achieve this.
Despite the competition, the two nations have occasionally worked together. China has vast amounts of data and much looser regulations on its use, so it can often implement AI trials more quickly. But the nation still relies heavily on American semiconductors and open-source software to power its AI and machine learning algorithms.
And while the U.S. has the edge in quality research, universities, and engineering talent, top AI programs at universities like Stanford and MIT attract many Chinese students, who often go on to work for tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook.
China’s fears of a major US AI project have not materialized. In February 2019, US President Donald Trumpissued an executive order on the American AI Initiative, calling on the heads of federal agencies to prioritize AI research and development in their 2020 budgets. However, he did not provide new funding to support these measures or further details on how these plans would be implemented. And not much has happened at the federal level since then.
Meanwhile, China has been in decline, with AI companies like SenseTime, Megvii and YITU Technology raising billions. However, AI investment in China declined in 2019 as the US-China trade war escalated and hurt investor confidence in China. At the time, the Trump administration made it harder for US companies to export certain types of AI software in an effort to limit Chinese access to American technology
During the COVID-19 pandemic, China turned to some of its AI and big data tools in efforts to contain the virus, such as contact tracing, diagnostic tools, and drones to enforce social distancing. However, there was a lot of propaganda about all of this in both the media and social media.
The US and other nations are grappling with the same technologies, and the privacy, security and surveillance concerns that come with them, as they appear to be hit harder than other countries by the virus. The ways in which China is leveraging artificial intelligence to combat COVID-19 are in many ways worrisome. The immediate impact may be in areas such as pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturing. But it will ultimately affect artificial intelligence, as a technology that spans so many sectors and applications.
Despite the economic impact of the virus, global AI investment is projected to increase from $22.6 billion in 2019 to $25 billion in 2020. The biggest consequence may be an acceleration of the decoupling process between the US and China, in terms of AI and everything else.
The US still has advantages in areas such as semiconductors and AI chips. However, amid the trade war, the Chinese government is reducing its reliance on foreign technologies, developing domestic startups and adopting more open source solutions. Cloud AI giants such as Alibaba are using open source computing models to develop their own data center chips. Chinese chipset startups such as Cambricon Technologies, Horizon Robotics and Suiyuan Technology have also entered the market in recent years and have raised a lot of capital.
But complete decoupling is not expected to happen anytime soon. One of the problems with referring to all of this as an AI arms race is that many of the underlying platforms, algorithms, and data sources are open source. The vast majority of AI developers in China use Google’s TensorFlow or Facebook’s PyTorch, and there is little incentive to participate in domestic options that lack the same networks.
The US remains the global AI superpower for now. But the trade war may end up hurting American AI companies more than expected, according to experts.
