TAPPING THE AI TALENT POOL
He added that China has the world’s largest pool of AI engineers.
Every year, there are about 3.7 million STEM (science, tech, engineering and mathematics) graduates in China, said Fang. The United States, in comparison, produces 800,000.
“Annually, China publishes the highest number of AI academic papers in the world, more than the US,” he added. “However, in terms of highly-cited papers, the US takes the top spot, and China is second.”
But at the top end of the AI talent pool, China is losing to the US.
A 2022 survey found that among the top 2 per cent of AI talent worldwide, only 12 per cent work in China, whereas 57 per cent work in the US.
It is still an improvement from 2019, when China did not feature among the leading countries.
While China trails the US in high-end AI research, it is making great strides in applying AI in real-world scenarios.
China has various advantages including its huge consumer market and vast data resources, “which can be fed into the algorithm which makes it more precise and accurate”, said Patrick Liu, a researcher at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.
“The more data you have, the more precise and accurate your product would be, which means it would achieve better market performance,” he told CNA’s East Asia Tonight.
“(Then,) you would attract more consumers to use your product, which in turn generates more data to feed into your algorithm, (making) it a positive cycle.”
