China is overtaking the US in AI, warns Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Apple and Google being overtaken by China's National University of Defense Technology

Investments by China's government into artificial investment from more than a decade ago are starting to pay off, with the country expected to overtake the US by some measurements this year.

According to the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), founded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, researchers in China already publish more papers on AI than researchers from the US.

While much of the research has been classified as "medium" or "low" quality, research from China is expected to beat the US in terms of the most cited 50 per cent of papers this year - and the most cited 10 per cent next year, and the most cited one per cent by 2025.

"Citation counts are a lagging indicator of impact, so our results may understate the rising impact of AI research originating in China," wrote the authors of the study, Field Cady and Oren Etzioni, in a blog post.

The rising quality of research reflects big investments by China's government in AI for more than a decade, and the widespread application of AI across the country, providing a market and, therefore, a business ecosystem for artificial intelligence.

That rise was reflected in last year's academic contest, sponsored by Apple and Google, to find the best algorithms to identify images captured on camera. But the winner wasn't a US university, of a submission from Apple or Google engineers, but China's National University of Defence Technology.

Indeed, according to Cady and Etzioni, of the top ten academic research institutions in China for AI, four are based in Hong Kong, although the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University are way out in front with 252,737 and 211,264 citations each. Only around five per cent of papers had co-authors from both China and the US.

"By most measures, China is overtaking the US not just in papers submitted and published, but also in the production of high-impact papers," concluded the authors.

They added: "Recent US actions that place obstacles to recruiting and retaining foreign students and scholars are likely to exacerbate the trend towards Chinese supremacy in AI research."

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