Here’s what China is doing to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities

While corporate chieftains and leading scientists will converge on the White House on Thursday morning US time to attend a meeting convened by President Donald Trump to discuss the state of artificial intelligence (AI) in the US, “top-down” government-driven commitment to one of the key drivers of the new technology economy is never short in China.

Trump’s AI conference, which will draw on the insights from around 40 US tech companies including Amazon, Facebook and Google as well as a selection of leading academics, is expected to “inform federal government efforts to maintain US leadership in AI development and deployment”, according to a draft White House schedule.

The development of AI, or technologies which perform tasks that are characteristic of human intelligence such as understanding language and recognising objects and sounds, has been one of the priorities of China’s national strategies since July 2017. For the Trump Administration, the question is has it done enough to help domestic players stave off intensified competition from China as the global economic powerhouses battle for technological supremacy.

“As Trump gets into a trade fight with China, he wants to make sure he is not simply penalising Chinese companies but also working to actively support US companies facing increased competition from the country,” said Peter Harrell, a former senior official of the US State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs and now adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Security, a Washington DC-based think tank.

Harrell added that the White House’s conference on AI, practical applications of which include the technologies behind self-driving cars and smartphone assistants than can talk like humans to book an appointment for a haircut, reflects the fact that the Trump Administration views the US as being in direct competition with China on AI and a number of other major technology areas.