The United States’ approaches to advance AI technology holistically are meager in their operational bounds of institutional efficacy yet allude to potential promising returns in acceleration. President Trump proposed to increase the rates of AI by increasing government spending to institutions developing AI technology. However, the proposition did not include specific details as to where

and how these funds would be allocated. As an indirect approach, recruiting immigrants who display an affinity for, or a deftness in subjects pertaining to the related fields of AI research would broaden the rate of growth in the United States. However, the prospect is met with staunch opposition and scrutiny under the president because of its national security risk.

On another token, regulating or even centralizing AI development could perhaps yield faster production rates. But, centralizing knowledge in the United States could paradoxically stymie the rate at which new information is synthesized, requiring steep legislation and reallocation depending on the degree of prioritization. Put succinctly, the United States’ institutional role in the global community is different than that of China’s;

it promotes a free and unbinding landscape to compete and produce the most attractive services to consumers. In purity, private researchers derive data from existing projects, thus exponentiating advancements in the field. Centralizing AI development could lead to a decrepitating rate and range of total production that retracts the global community’s reflexive improvements.

If there is a finitude at which AI development can be superseded by a recursive self-improving entity, then the method of rapprochement to make improvements in this field are apt to be redefined by this bound. The country that is first able to reach the ‘finish line’ of super-intelligence, in a quantifiable or unquantifiable fashion, will experience unprecedented modes and rates of global preeminence. Perhaps the ‘Holy Grail’ of all human endeavors, achieving such a

goal is immeasurable in its influence. As food for thought, the emergence of a super intelligent entity could perhaps be the final invention man need to create. Its advent would redefine globalization in realms unknown to our current understanding. The race will reshape the course of humanity, its importance unquantifiable and insurmountable, and its conception unfathomable in our pursuit of attaining it.

AT THE WORLD’S top computer-vision conference last June, Google and Apple sponsored an academic contest that challenged algorithms to make sense of images from twin cameras collected under varied conditions, such as sunny and poor weather. Artificial intelligence software proficient at that task could help the US tech giants with money-making projects such as autonomous cars or augmented reality. But the winner was an institution with very different interests and allegiances: China’s National University of Defense Technology, a top military academy of the People’s Liberation Army.

That anecdote helps illustrate China’s broad ambitions in AI and recent prominence on the field’s frontiers. In 2017 the country’s government announced a new artificial intelligence strategy that aims to rival the US in the crucial technology by 2020. The latest data on the output of US and Chinese AI researchers suggest China is on track.

Chinese researchers have published more AI research papers than the US for several years, but questions have lingered about the quality and influence of those publications. A new analysis by the Allen Institute for AI shows that China’s share of top AI publications is rapidly approaching that of the US. If current trends continue, the two nations will produce an equal share of top AI publications by 2020.

The Allen Institute analyzed data on more than 2 million AI research publications through the end of 2018 from its Semantic Scholar academic search engine. Comparing US and Chinese AI publications makes it clear that China was an emerging powerhouse of AI research well before the recent national strategy was launched. The country has published more AI papers than the US since 2005, according to Semantic Scholar data.

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If there is a finitude at which AI development can be superseded by a recursive self-improving entity, then the method of rapprochement to make improvements in this field are apt to be redefined by this bound. The country that is first able to reach the ‘finish line’ of super-intelligence, in a quantifiable or unquantifiable fashion, will experience unprecedented modes and rates of global preeminence. Perhaps the ‘Holy Grail’ of all human endeavors, achieving such a

goal is immeasurable in its influence. As food for thought, the emergence of a super intelligent entity could perhaps be the final invention man need to create. Its advent would redefine globalization in realms unknown to our current understanding. The race will reshape the course of humanity, its importance unquantifiable and insurmountable, and its conception unfathomable in our pursuit of attaining it.

Greg Allen, an adjunct senior fellow at think tank the Center for a New American Security, says the Allen Institute analysis should drive home the message that China’s AI ambitions are serious. Lofty bureaucratic strategies and targets like those detailed in China’s AI plan can seem curious when viewed from the US, but they can be effective. “That’s what happens when you call something a national priority and you mean it,” Allen says.
Allen recently published a report  on how China’s military and national security apparatus are central to the country’s evolving AI strategy—as evidenced by the military university winning the contest sponsored by Apple and Google. He found that the country’s defense ministry is investing deeply in new AI research, for example, by setting up two new research centers in Beijing dedicated to AI and unmanned systems. A paper released by one of them in December

tried to explain the inner workings of Alphabet’s AlphaZero system that is capable of superhuman performance in both chess and Go.
Data from the Stanford-affiliated Al Index, which tracks the trajectory of AI development using dozens of measures, shows how China’s government is growing its already central role in the country’s research. Government-affiliated AI research papers increased 400 percent between 2007 and 2017, dwarfing the growth from Chinese corporate labs, although China’s state-funded academic institutions still produce most of the country’s research output.
In the US, by contrast, companies such as Alphabet play a much more significant role. The share of AI publications that come from corporations is seven times higher in the US than in China.