Artificial intelligence is one of the most important technological social changes in the world today, and it is also a focus area of competition between China and the United States. China and the United States have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of development level, industrial layout, policy guidance, talent reserves, and innovation capabilities in artificial intelligence, but overall, the United States is still in a leading position in the world, while China has shown strong potential and vitality in catching up. This article will compare the gap between China and the United States in artificial intelligence from the following aspects:
1. Top-level design: Both China and the United States have taken artificial intelligence as a national strategy and introduced corresponding plans and policies to promote the development of artificial intelligence at the national level. As early as 2016, the United States released two reports, "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence" and "Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy", which clarified the vision, goals, principles and action plans of the United States in the field of artificial intelligence. In February 2019, the United States issued the "Accelerating America's Leadership in Artificial Intelligence" executive order, emphasizing the need to maintain the United States' global leadership in the field of artificial intelligence and promote the coordinated development of innovation, investment, education, employment and ethics. In July 2017, China released the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, which puts forward the goal of building a world artificial intelligence innovation center by 2030, as well as key tasks and measures in basic theory, core technologies, major products, and high-end equipment. In addition, China has also issued a series of policy documents on artificial intelligence industry planning, innovation platform construction, technology application and promotion, etc., to guide the healthy and orderly development of the industry.
2. Industrial development: Both China and the United States have a large number of artificial intelligence companies, covering all aspects of the basic layer, technology layer and application layer. According to data from Tsinghua University, as of mid-2018, the total number of artificial intelligence companies in the world reached 2,542, of which the United States had 1,078, accounting for 42%; China is the second with 592, accounting for 23%. There is a difference of 486 between China and the United States. The remaining 872 companies are located in Sweden, Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, India and other countries. From the perspective of industrial layout, the United States has strong technical reserves and innovation advantages in various fields such as basic layer (mainly processors/chips), technology layer (natural language processing / computer vision and image / technology platform) and application layer (machine learning application / intelligent drone / intelligent robot / automatic driving assisted driving / speech recognition), especially in core technologies such as chips and algorithms, with NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and other global leading enterprises. China performs better at the application layer, especially in the fields of computer vision, intelligent robotics and autonomous driving, with Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, Megvii Technology, SenseTime, Horizon Robotics, Pony.ai and other internationally influential enterprises. China is relatively weak in the basic layer and technical layer, especially in terms of chips, still relying on imports and lacking independent innovation capabilities.
3. Talent pool: Talent is a key factor in the development of AI and the focus of competition between China and the United States. According to data from Tsinghua University, there are only 18,232 Chinese intelligent talents, 56.5% more in the United States than China, and the number of outstanding talents in the field of Chinese intelligence is 977, less than one-fifth of the United States, and the proportion of outstanding talents is only 5.4%, which is a big gap between 17.1% and the United States. The main reason is that the level of scientific research and education in the field of Chinese industrial intelligence is not as good as that of the United States, and there are fewer human resources. 77% of the world's AI experts work in academia and 23% in industry, resulting in universities and scientific research institutions becoming the core elements of AI talent competition, and 40% of China's top AI talents rely on the introduction of scientific research institutions from US universities. The United States is more attractive to top AI talent: American colleges and universities have trained 44% of AI top authors but attracted 46% of AI top authors to work in the United States, proving that the United States is leading the way in attracting top talent. China is lagging behind as a whole, but the attraction of talents from leading manufacturers is growing, such as Baidu has attracted a large number of authoritative AI scientists such as Dr. Wang Haifeng, Dr. Wu Hua, and Dr. Jia Lei.
4. Innovation ability: Innovation is the core driving force for the development of artificial intelligence, and it is also an important indicator to measure the competitiveness of a country or region in the field of artificial intelligence. From the perspective of paper publications, patent applications, top conferences and journals, China and the United States have high innovation activity and influence. The United States remains a global leader in basic theory and algorithms, with the largest number of publications and citations, and dominates top conferences and journals. China has risen rapidly in recent years, surpassing the United States in the number of papers published, and also has a great advantage in the number of patent applications, and has also performed well in some subdivisions such as computer vision and natural language processing. However, China still has a clear gap with the United States in terms of paper quality and influence, a low proportion of top conferences and journals, and a lack of originality and breakthroughs in basic theories and algorithms.
To sum up, the gap between China and the United States in artificial intelligence is still relatively obvious.