A new report by the Center for Data Innovation has said China, the European Union (EU), and the United States (US) were now emerging as clear competitors and in the lead for global leadership in artificial intelligence (AI).
Overall, the US currently leads in AI, but China is catching up, while the EU is at No:3. The US leads in four of the six categories of metrics the report examines (talent, research, development, and hardware), China in two (adoption and data), and the EU leads in none — although it is closely behind the US in talent, according to an announcement on the Center’s Website.
Out of 100 total available points in this report’s scoring methodology, the United States leads with 44.2 points, followed by China with 32.3 and the European Union with 23.5.
The report attributes many reasons for the US being in the lead:
It has the most AI start-ups, with its AI start-up ecosystem having received the most private equity and venture capital funding
It leads in the development of both traditional semiconductors and the computer chips that power AI systems
While it produces fewer AI scholarly papers than the EU or China, it produces the highest-quality papers on average.
While the United States has less overall AI talent than the European Union, its talent is more elite.
China is ahead of the European Union in AI and appears to be quickly reducing the gap. That’s because it has more access to data than the EU and the US, which, said the report, is important because many of today’s AI systems use large datasets to train their models accurately.
In venture capital and private equity funding, Chinese AI start-ups received more funding than U.S. start-ups in 2017, but not in 2016 or 2018. China, however, is clearly behind both the US and the EU in high-quality AI talent. Several EU member states, including Italy, have more AI researchers ranked in the top 10 percent internationally than China as of 2017. That not withstanding, China was making clear progress relative to the US in most metrics, and significantly outpaces the EU in funding and AI adoption.
You may click here to download the report.
Image Credit: Google Advisory Council