SHANGHAI — If all goes as planned, China hopes to be the world leader inartificial intelligence by 2030. If successful, Beijing’s “moonshot” initiative– recently unveiled by the government – has the potential to be a game-changernot just for Chinese society but for global geopolitics as well. My bet is thatChina will indeed reach its goal over the next decade, in part because of howfar it has already come. While so much of the world today lacks cleardirection, China has an edge in its ability to combine strong, top-downgovernment directive with vibrant grassroots-level innovation. Beyond this,China has an abundance of data to train AI-learning algorithms because of itshuge population of Internet users – more than 700 million. China’s thrivingmobile Internet ecosystem also provides a test bed for AI researchers tocollect and analyze valuable demographics and transactional and behavioral bigdata and to conduct large-scale experiments at a much higher level than foreigncounterparts. 

This combination places Beijing in a unique position to dominateAI in just over a decade. It would be imprudent to expect otherwise. Tounderstand why, look no further than the country’s current technologicaladvancements. China is investing in AI at the local level Today, a number oflocal governments in China are offering financial incentives to encourageAI-related innovations. With the government’s assistance, Guizhou, one of thepoorest provinces in the country, has become known as China’s “big data hub.”Major Internet companies such as Apple, Alibaba, Tencent and Qualcomm have setup new big data centers in the province, in large part due to this initiative. And in 2016, government data reported a 10.5 percent growth in Guizhou’s grossdomestic product, one of the highest GDP increases among China’s provinces andmunicipalities. Another example is the municipality of Chongqing. It was one ofthe first municipalities in China to establish a bureau to support local AIdevelopment. In May, Chongqing partnered with Baidu, a local search engine, tofoster AI and big data. Elsewhere in China, Xiong’an New Area, a newlyestablished district near Beijing, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater BayArea, a city cluster, have also incorporated AI in their development plans as akey economic growth engine.

China is inspiring tech to prioritize AI TheChinese government’s favorable policies have inspired innovations across a widerange of tech players in the country. Leading Internet giants such as Baidu,Alibaba and Tencent, rising start-ups like iCarbonX and SenseTime, as well as“unicorns” – companies that have reached $1 billion valuation – like DidiChuxing and Xiaomi are either adopting AI technology already in theiroperations or investing in it. Baidu, for example, has shifted its companystrategy from “mobile-first” to “AI-first.” Some of its initiatives includeDuerOS, a conversational AI system that can be integrated into smart devicessuch as speakers, televisions and refrigerators; Project Apollo, an open sourceplatform for the research and development of autonomous vehicles; and BaiduBrain, an AI platform with 60 different AI-enabled services. Its rival Tencenthas also established its own AI lab, which developed the software that famouslydefeated high-ranking Japanese “Go” player Ryo Ichiriki earlier this year.Additionally, Chinese health care start-up iCarbonX is building a digital“ecosystem” using AI technology to collect users’ biological and psychologicaldata, provide personalized health analysis and predict users’ health status. 

And SenseTime, a Chinese AI start-up founded in 2014, focuses on innovativecomputer vision and deep learning technology. In July, SenseTime claimed it hadraised the largest single round investment in AI globally at $410 million.Still, there are some significant gaps to close before China becomes the worldleader in AI. According to a recent AI report from Tencent Research Institute,the number of AI companies in China lags behind those in the United States,especially in the areas of core components and processes. China still fallsshort of the U.S. when it comes to new ideas and research related to AI butappears to have the upper hand in the application and implementation of theseAI technologies. Another potential challenge is geopolitics. According to anunreleased Pentagon report cited by Reuters, the U.S. government views Chineseinvestments in American AI start-ups as a potential threat to nationalsecurity. As a result, the U.S. wants to scrutinize cross-border investment insensitive AI technologies. On top of that, the Trump administration hasproposed a 10 percent cut to the National Science Foundation’s spending on“intelligent systems.” This could present potential opportunity for China,through strong government support and financial incentives, to attract U.S.talent to set up AI labs and conduct pilots in China. 

China has some work to dobefore it successfully harnesses the potential of AI. But it has the resourcesand talent to reach its goal – and now it has the political will to make it anational priority. That combination will be hard to beat. This was produced byThe WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The WashingtonPost.