theatlantic | China’s rapid rise up the ranks of AI research has people taking notice. In October, the Obama White House released a “strategic plan”
for AI research, which noted that the U.S. no longer leads the world in
journal articles on “deep learning,” a particularly hot subset of AI
research right now. The country that had overtaken the U.S.? China, of
course.
It’s not just academic research. Chinese tech
companies are betting on AI, too. Baidu (a Chinese search-engine company
often likened to Google), Didi (often likened to Uber), and Tencent
(maker of the mega-popular messaging app WeChat) have all set up their
own AI research labs. With millions of customers, these companies have
access to the huge amount of data that training AI to detect patterns
requires.
Like the Microsofts and Googles of the world, Chinese
tech companies see enormous potential in AI. It could undergird a whole
set of transformative technologies in the coming decades, from facial
recognition to autonomous cars.“I have a hard time thinking of an
industry we cannot transform with AI,” says Andrew Ng, chief scientist
at Baidu. Ng previously cofounded Coursera and Google Brain, the
company’s deep learning project. Now he directs Baidu’s AI research out
of Sunnyvale, California, right in Silicon Valley.
