US chokehold on China’s AI progress ‘unlikely to succeed’, says Washington-based think tank

China’s robust academic advancement and state-backed funding have made the nation a major challenger to the US in AI, according to ITIF

Reading Time:2 minutes

An exhibit of an AI model for lunar sciences at a Big Data industry expo in Guiyang, southwest China’s Guizhou province. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 6:00pm, 16 Sep 2024

US efforts to hold back China’s artificial intelligence (AI) advancement “are unlikely to succeed”, as the mainland finds ways to skirt Washington’s export curbs and nurture local innovations, rapidly challenging American dominance in the technology, according to recent research by a US think tank.

Since Microsoft-backed US start-up OpenAI unveiled its groundbreaking ChatGPT chat bot in late 2022, China has been increasing investments nationwide to catch up in the field of generative AI (GenAI).

The US government, in turn, has restricted the shipments of advanced AI chips to China and barred a list of mainland AI chip designers from accessing the manufacturing services of world-leading foundries.

Such measures, introduced on national security grounds, have had “limited success” in curbing China’s AI development, according to a report published in last month by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington-based non-profit think tank.

The US administration under President Joe Biden has tightened export controls targeting China’s access to advanced technology. Photo: EPA-EFE

The report – which analysed data including published scientific articles, patents, talent and infrastructure – found that China’s robust academic foundation, innovations and state-backed funding are propelling the nation to become a major challenger to US leadership in the AI sector.

China led the world in AI research-publication output between 2017 and 2022, with over 234,000 papers published, according to the ITIF report, citing research by the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. The US came in second with more than 172,600 publications.