Chinese firms are aggressive investors in AI and show a ‘thirst for talent’, says MIT-BCG report

Chinese companies are “aggressively investing” in artificial intelligence (AI) applications and show more thirst for talent, a joint study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows, at a time when the race for AI superiority is in the spotlight around the world.

The conclusion – based on a survey of over 3,000 participants in 126 countries and 300 executives from China – shines a light on China’s ambitions in AI, which is seen as a major driver of the new economy, and the perceived competitive threat the country poses to other big economies.

“China's rapid rise in AI has been a wake-up call for nations, industries and corporate executives globally,” says the report, which was released on Tuesday and titled Artificial Intelligence in Business Gets Real. “Indeed, many recent national programmes to advance the development of AI refer to China as a competitive threat.”

Betting big on the core technology behind an array of cutting-edge applications from autonomous driving to facial recognition, China’s State Council last July laid out a three-step road map to AI supremacy. It included the goals of building a domestic AI industry worth about US$150 billion and to make the country an “innovation centre for AI” by 2030. China’s AI ambitions have captured the attention of US President Donald Trump in his escalating trade spat with the country.

The study found that Chinese AI pioneers invest more aggressively, put greater focus on business model transformation, and are particularly good at “centralising the housing and governance of data for their AI engines”, compared to European and US peers.