Every once in a while comes a general purpose technology
that changes everything. At the turn of the 20th
century it was electricity. Today it's artificial intelligence. AI is going to be the
foundation of all the really, really big new industries worldwide. Two countries aim to
dominate that technology, the United States and China. China has announced its plan or goal to be the world's
leader in AI by 2030. The Chinese government has
four times more engineers. They're putting massive amounts of money into AI transformations and digitization. The rapidly improving
power of computer systems has the potential to touch every facet of the 21st century economy
and the Chinese Communist Party has stated it wanted
to drive that advance. AI is what's gonna be key to
sustaining economic growth and continue China's rise
as an advanced economy, help it escape the middle income trap and also crucially for
maintaining performance legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. The US is the world leader in AI but they're looking over their shoulder because China's catching up and aiming to be number one by 2030. A match like no other
is about to get underway in South Korea. Lee Sedol, the long-reigning global- This guy is a genius. Will take on artificial
intelligence program, AlphaGo, in the ultimate human
versus machine smackdown. This is a huge moment.
In 2015, London-based artificial
intelligence firm DeepMind, which is owned by Google, set out to beat the
world's best Go player. And the number of possible configurations of the board is more than
the atoms in the universe. Go is probably the
world's oldest board game, originating in China some 4,000 years ago. Many people thought it was not possible to have a computer beat humans at Go. Eric Schmidt was executive chairman of Alphabet, Google's
parent company, at the time. They built an algorithm using something called reinforcement
learning that allowed them to play the game differently, and shockingly to many they
built the top human players of a game that was 2,500 years old. A computer hadn't just out-processed the human mind, it had out-imagined it. The interesting thing about the game is they played the game differently and they came up with new moves that had not been discovered
in thousands of years of human play. That's the future of what AI can do. At this tech forum in Wuzhen. Following the win,
DeepMind's AI went to China, so players could challenge
and learn from the machine. But since then, this sort of collaboration between East and West
is being overshadowed by an increasingly adversarial approach. In part because of the
transformative power of AI. It looks like we're ahead, but China's catching up very quickly. That's okay, let's stay ahead. Schmidt is the Chairman of the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. He's hawkish about China's AI ambitions. In the report he argues the
US must win the AI competition and that China's progress
should concern all Americans. We have a window to stay ahead. Now, what happens if we lose this one? How would you feel if all of the key drugs were first developed and patented in China and were available to Chinese
people and not in the West because of some political reason? It would be terrible. Medical research has
become a focus for AI, with analytical predictive
power being trained on vaccine and drug development. In early 2020, a team at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used AI to discover a structurally
unique antibiotic. They took 100 million chemical compounds, they fed it into the AI system, and it figured out how the proteins and the molecules and all
of the chemistry would work without them telling it. It literally discovered the rules. Most people thought that
this was not computable. Scientists see AI as a driving force behind helping us discover new drugs, treatments and consumer products. And just like in Washington, Beijing knows there's
everything to play for. The full strength of the
Chinese Communist Party is being focused on AI. The Chinese State Council
has ordered all corners of the People's Republic to
prioritize the development and implementation of AI. And the order makes clear
there's no time to lose. They see AI as a general
purpose technology, and GPTs historically like
electricity, the steam engine, they have presented opportunities for immense boost to productivity. And for Chinese leaders,
economic productivity, especially through new technologies like AI is what's gonna be key to sustaining economic growth
and continue China's rise as an advanced economy, help it escape the middle income trap. So move up to higher levels
of the manufacturing chain in terms of value-add, and also crucially for
maintaining performance legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. Jeffrey Ding is a researcher at Stanford's Center for
International Security and Cooperation. He argues there's a
misconception in the West that it's Beijing driving the innovation when most of it is coming
from Chinese companies. You're seeing companies lead the way, and it's not necessarily a
centralized top-down directive. In fact, before the July 2017 central plan for AI development, a lot of provinces, a lot
of cities had already issued their own AI development
plans and companies were already investing large
amounts of money into AI. So you see in a sense, a lot
of times the central government is following the direction that's already been set by other actors. The country has never
emphasized innovation more than they do today, right? Innovation is at the center of China's modernization. Robin Li is the co-founder of China's most popular
search engine, Baidu. And I think companies like
us, we invest more than 15% of our total revenue
every year, to do R&D. I think the government liked that. I truly believe that this
represents the future and we'll be able to make
big difference to China, to the society, to all the
people who can benefit from AI. Robin Li pointed to President Xi Jinping's ongoing crackdown on domestic industries as part of a broader effort by Beijing to accelerate its effort to become technologically independent. You just cannot imagine the
number one and number two guy, all of a sudden merge and gaining more than 90% of market share in the U.S. But that happened quite a
few times in China before, that's not good for innovation. So I think that the antitrust
push is kind of justified. Baidu is one of China's largest computer technology companies. But the recent detention of
Alibaba's CEO has highlighted that even the biggest companies
need to tread lightly. That degree of central
control helps Beijing focus China's huge resources
on certain challenges. But it could also hold them back. My guess is, and this is just my view, is that Chinese entrepreneurial nature, this entrepreneurship
that I've seen in China is so strong that they
will do well in spite of these restrictions, but the Chinese government
could always overreach. Concern over China's reach is being played out now in
the waters around Taiwan. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called bringing the self-ruled island
under Beijing's control an, "Inevitable outcome," as
rhetoric on both sides heats up. The future of AI plays
a part in that equation. Although the U.S. leads the world in AI, with China accelerating behind, it's Taiwan that makes
the advanced chips needed to run these systems. Today the key and smartest
chips in the world are built primarily in a
company called TSMC in Taiwan, It looks to us like America is a few generations behind them, and it looks to us like China is a few generations behind America. China has also been trying to catch up and they've spent billions
and billions of dollars, and they haven't been able to do it. As tensions rise in the region, and U.S. and Chinese militaries
explore possible scenarios, the use of AI could
give one side the edge. But what exactly that
would mean isn't clear. In general, part of the problem with AI and war is that everything's
gonna happen faster. I'll give you an example. Let's imagine you're on a
ship and you're a commander and you're intelligent and you're ready. And the computer says, there's
a weapon coming at you. You can't see it. I recommend you press this button. And if you don't press this
button, you will be dead. The odds of that human
pressing that button are very, very high. This compression of time is a key problem we're gonna face in our defense strategy. We wanna have enough time for informed and educated decisions. And yet these AI weapons can
make things happen faster than human decision time. And while the headlines focus on difficult issues like,
machine-directed weapons, perhaps the big gains
will be made elsewhere. Our eyes and attention are
drawn to the most conspicuous, most obvious things like the weapon. Whereas I think some of the
most transformative implications of AI for military affairs
will come through things like communications, and I
think we saw similar things with how electricity, another general purpose
technology affected warfare. People at the time thought
there would be electric rays of mass destruction, and that people would shoot
off electric death lasers. And that would be sort of
the weapon to end all wars, but actually the most important
and significant implications of electrical innovations for military affairs came
through communications. The electric telegraph, the radio, these were things that
fundamentally changed how military is communicated and were organized. With so much at stake, investment in AI is
expected to grow massively. Schmidt argues the U.S. needs to think big if it wants to stay ahead. He, like many leaders in Silicon Valley, would like the doors
thrown open to the best and brightest from across the world. This stuff is so painful to understand that you really need a
math or a physics PhD, computer science PhD. We need to get all of those
people into our country so that we can put them on these projects, both for the military and
for our commercial sector. For Schmidt, this technology race is also about values. He's called China's domestic use of AI a chilling precedent
for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty. They understand the value of efficiency and because the laws are different, they're able to violate
people's privacy, surveil people and so forth and amass
these very large databases. We took a position that we
need to do this consistent with American values. But if tech titans in Silicon Valley are concerned China is
going to take their spot, Ding argues they shouldn't. I would say that the U.S. is still very much the
technological leader in this space and that China is not
poised to overtake the US in this domain, contrary to what a lot
of people have predicted. Sabre rattling from Washington and Beijing is harming the
chance for global collaboration. Robin Li studied at
both Peking University. Beijing and the University
at Buffalo, New York. He sees any freeze in relationships
between the two powers as not just bad for business
but bad for progress. AI can help in a lot of
scenarios, in a lot of cases, and wherever you need high-end
chips, be it a data center or edge computing for
smart transportation, for energy sector, for education, or for finance, they all need
these kind of high-end chips to do complicated AI tasks. I don't have the crystal ball, but my preference is certainly that those countries can work together. And I think by working together, a lot of things can be done faster and that the world will be better off. Like you mentioned, I spent
quite a few years in the U.S. I know the US well, and I
love my country, I love China. I think, for Baidu's success, we obviously are rooted here in China. We will benefit from a
large, very large market and the government policy
to encourage innovation. But we also benefit
from our U.S. partners. They supply parts, so they
help us to grow faster. I would very much like to stay
coupled instead of decouple.
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AI is a broad technology. It has applications in many industry sectors including medicine, transportation, military, communications, energy and many more. US may be more advanced in some areas, but it is clearly years behind in implementation in areas such as self driving cars, facial recognition and factory robotics. As US falls further behind in its 5G implementations, it will further hamper the usage of AI in remote medical surgery, self driving cars and to a certain extent the military.
Is it even a race anymore?
Everything I've seen so far from China has been following in the USA's footsteps...several steps behind.
They will never catch up because the diversity of talent in the USA and its ability to attract top level talent globally, including from China, is unmatched. USA leads the world in tech for a reason.
"How would you feel if all new drugs where discovered and patented in China and not made available to America as a result of some political issue." - LITERALLY WHAT AMERICA IS DOING TO THE WORLD!