China’s reliance on US-origin platforms for deep learning raises questions about country’s AI push

Source:https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/3038772/chinas-reliance-us-origin-platforms-deep-learning-raises-questions

Tech

China’s reliance on US-origin platforms for deep learning raises questions about country’s AI push

This is the second instalment in a four-part series examining the brewing US-China war over the development and deployment of artificial intelligence technology

Dependence on US frameworks for deep learning seen as significant gap in China’s AI ecosystem, potentially hampering efforts to close the AI tech gap with the US by 2030

Minghe Huin BeijingandZen Sooin Hong Kong

Published: 5:30am, 22 Nov 2019

Updated: 3:30pm, 22 Nov 2019

Concerns around China’s relative weakness in basic AI infrastructure are growing, with some in the industry saying the country needs to create a popular machine learning framework or strengthen existing ones to protect against a doomsday scenario. Illustration: SCMP

When engineer Kuang Kaiming was assigned to a team developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology for a Shanghai start-up, the company went with two leading open-source software libraries, Google’s TensorFlow and Facebook’s Pytorch.

The decision to adopt US core technology over Chinese alternatives was telling of China’s weakness in basic AI infrastructure, despite the country’s success in producing AI companies that are commercially successful.

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