China Plans to Use Artificial Intelligence to Gain Global Economic Dominance by 2030
China Plans to Use Artificial Intelligence to Gain Global Economic
Dominance by 2030
The country’s government has announced a scheme to surpass
Western nations and shape the future of AI.
·
by Will
Knight July 21, 2017
·
Though
it is not yet as advanced as AlphaGo, Chinese researchers have developed their
own Go-playing AI champion, called FineArt.
Artificial
intelligence may have been invented in the West, but China seems determined to
own its future. Its rising AI community just got a tremendous shot in the arm,
in the form of a massive new government investment plan.
The State Council of the People’s
Republic of China has announced a bold
scheme (link in Chinese) meant to build an AI industry worth
$150 billion, and to make China the
global leader in the field by 2030.
Details
of the plan are sure to cause consternation among policymakers, business
leaders, and entrepreneurs in the U.S., especially as funding
for research is slashed by a science-averse
Trump administration. It will also, inevitably, stoke concerns about
China’s military ambitions, given the role AI is expected to play in the
evolution of warfare.
In
truth, however, China’s AI ascendancy is already well under way. While U.S.
researchers grab headlines for developing cutting-edge algorithms and
techniques, Chinese companies are have become adept
at commercializing AI
technologies and have shown a growing willingness
to invest in fundamental research and development.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve
visited big Chinese tech companies, startups, and academic research labs where
there is a clear focus not only on applications of AI, but also on fundamental
research. These research labs do seem to lag behind those found in the U.S.,
but they are catching up.
The State Council’s plan will certainly
add fuel to this trend. It states that by 2020 China should match the rest of
the world, and that five years later China should achieve “major breakthroughs”
in the technology. By 2030, the plan states, AI should lay the foundation for
China’s economic dominance. The plan also suggests that AI should be applied
across countless industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, logistics,
and finance.
If AI is deployed across China’s
economy, it could have a huge impact on the country’s economic progress. And if
the government’s ambitions are realized, then the effort is likely to shape the
course of one of the most important technologies of our time.
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