China’s AI dreams

Last year, China’s chief governing body announced an ambitious scheme for the country to become a world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) technology by 2030. The Chinese State Council, chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, detailed a series of intended milestones in AI research and development in its ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’, with the aim that Chinese AI will have applications in fields as varied as medicine, manufacturing and the military. These AI ambitions, made public in July 2017, came as little surprise. ‘Innovation’ has been a favourite buzzword of China’s leadership for several years, as the country seeks to transition from a production powerhouse to a centre of knowledge creation. But China’s AI aspirations are as economic as they are political, coming at a historic stall in the country’s previously rapid growth — in 2016, the economy grew at its slowest rate since 1990. By 2020, the State Council’s plan forecasts, the value of China’s core AI industries should have exceeded 150 billion yuan (US$22.7 billion), and the total for all related industries should be 1 trillion yuan. By 2030, it is hoped those figures will be 1 trillion yuan and 10 trillion yuan, respectively. Much suggests that China is already on the right track. In 2014, the country overtook the United States in terms of the number of research publications it produced — and, crucially, the number of those that were cited — on the subject of deep learning; in the past two years, Chinese teams have dominated the prestigious ImageNet AI contest, in which researchers compete to see which algorithms can best recognize images; and Beijing-based technology giant Baidu, which in 2017 announced it was launching a deep learning research laboratory in collaboration with the Chinese government, says it will have self-driving vehicles powered by AI technology on Chinese public roads by 2020. But in its quest to become a leader in technology that does the job of people, China is uncharacteristically low on one thing: people. According to a recent LinkedIn report (see go.nature.com/2jvdcxe), there were more than 50,000 people in China’s AI workforce in the first quarter of 2017. In the United States, a country with less than one-quarter of China’s population, that number was above 850,000. India is home to an AI workforce of more than 150,000. “For the time being, talent remains a major bottleneck in China’s advances in AI,” says Elsa Kania, a Washington DC-based analyst specializing in China’s emerging technologies and defence innovation. She says that it is a lack of experience as well as a lack of people that is afflicting the country’s AI sector. Indeed, LinkedIn found that 38.7% of those working in China’s AI sector have more than 10 years’ experience, compared with 71.5% in the United States. That, she says, “will continue to necessitate active efforts to recruit foreign talent from Silicon Valley and elsewhere”. In Beijing’s tech hub Zhongguancun, steps have already been taken. In 2016, the local government made it easier for foreigners to gain permanent residency status, and in 2017 it introduced an advice service to support entrepreneurial newcomers with everything from Chinese company registration and taxation to finance and intellectual property rights. Indeed, strengthening talent is considered a matter of “utmost B Y O W E N C H U R C H I L L