US, China need each other for future development of AI, Hong Kong professor says

Despite an ongoing squabble between the US and China over the intersection of technology and national security, the world’s two largest economies will need each other to develop artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies in the future, according to an AI expert.

Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Council of American Chambers of Commerce’s business summit in Hong Kong on Monday, Pascale Fung, director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that academics and the private sector will continue to work together, even if their governments do not see eye to eye.

The US and China are expected to dominate the development of AI in the future because the two countries spend the most in terms of percentage of gross domestic product on research and development and they are the two largest markets in the world, giving the countries a vast amount of potential data to mine.

“AI is going to change the world. It affects all of our lives. It needs to be a joint effort between different industries and different countries,” Fung said. “To prevent an AI dystopia and to maximise the benefit of AI, China and the US need to continue working together, even if not at the government level, at the academic level, at the company level in the private sector.”

The US and China have been engaged in a trade war for much of the past 12 months, with Washington claiming that Beijing engages in unfair trade practices, such as the forced sharing of technology.