"China's tech giants do not operate independently of government, and there is much uncertainty there. Their U.S. counterparts are freer on many important dimensions."
-Joshua Gans, business professor at the University of Toronto and co-author of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/china-ai...op-it.html
Despite government apathy, tech innovation and research projects are taking place all over America, unlike only at a "few big companies and government labs as in China," Wadhwa said. "In risk-taking and technology development, China is only a child, where America is the leader."
Gans said the freer hand of U.S. companies may also be an advantage. "China's tech giants do not operate independently of government, and there is much uncertainty there," he said. "Their U.S. counterparts are freer on many important dimensions."
There is, however, little disagreement over the potentially damaging long-term impact of the U.S. immigration policies, an area where America's loss could be China's gain.
"America's immigration policies are clearly slowing down progress by sending great people home and preventing the world's best and brightest from coming here," Wadhwa said. "This is real stupidity. The closest thing America has had to a free lunch is immigration."
Conversely, China is going all out to actively woo A.I. talent from across the globe. The country has been recruiting highly skilled engineers of Chinese descent currently working in Silicon Valley to return to China.
China stealing more than US talent
China's blatant disregard for IP rules and trade-secret thefts have long angered the United States. As a stiff penalty for stealing, U.S. President Donald Trump recently proposed the imposition of hefty tariffs on Chinese imports.
"China steals like no other country," Wadhwa said.
Gans takes the U.S. gripe with China about tech IP theft with a pinch of salt. "The damage is overstated," he said. "In effect, to do business with the West, Chinese companies must comply with IP laws, so while there may be a lax environment initially, when the companies succeed, they end up complying."
There is evidence that Chinese nationals have hacked foreign companies to steal IP. Claims of the Chinese government's complicity have led to real business consequences in 2018, from the massive Qualcomm-NXP deal being stopped by the U.S. government due to national security threats, to the Pentagon banning the Chinese telecom companies ZTE and Huawei from selling to members of the military, and the government still considering a wider ban against them.
IP expert Weightman said U.S. firms weren't without blame. "My research has found little evidence that the Chinese government forces foreign companies to transfer technology in exchange for market access on the scale that many would lead us to believe," he said. "Although many firms enter into joint venture agreements with Chinese partners, their loss of IP is usually a result of foreign companies not doing their due diligence or feeling compelled for financial reasons to take the risk of entering the agreement without proper IP protection."
A ready example of that would be U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, which gets a fifth of its business from China, and routinely trains Chinese scientists and gives away samples of their A.I. technology as part of business deals, according to a South China Morning Post report.
Weightman further argued that the common perception that China doesn't have strong IP enforcement mechanisms is outdated. "Reforms to rules of evidence, statutory damages, and the creation of specialized IP courts have enabled China's judicial system to better handle IP cases in a professional and fair way and strengthen IP protection," he said.
There is plenty of space for collaboration and scientific exchange. "As China races to close the gaps in its A.I. capabilities, a closer look at the sector also shows more cross-pollination between the superpower [the U.S.] and the emerging challenger than the casual observer might expect," the Eurasia Group wrote in a recent whitepaper.
Matt Scott, co-founder and chief technology officer for Chinese A.I. company Malong Technologies, which has offices in Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, says there is a sense of collaboration in the field that cuts across borders. "Irrespective of where we're located, we are aware of each other's work," he said. "Sometimes we collaborate, challenging one another and inspired by one another."
Scott, a New Yorker who worked on machine learning at Microsoft for 10 years before relocating to China, said the idea of walling off regions of the global A.I. community would result only in the withering and dying of enterprises.
"There's a mutual interdependence based on transparency in pursuit of the best ideas that contribute the most to humanity," he said. "That is what drives progress more than any competition at a national or international level."
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本帖最後由 EL34 於 2018-7-12 10:58 編輯 ]