In The News

China’s AI Unicorns Can Spot Faces. Now They Need New Tricks.

Wired

December 12, 2019

The largest problem Chinese AI companies face “may be the dawning realization on investors that, although it seems promising, in most areas AI just isn’t ready for the big time,” says CSET’s Helen Toner.

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A warehouse in an industrial park about an hour’s drive north of downtown Beijing offers a paradoxical picture of China’s much-hyped, and increasingly controversial, artificial intelligence boom.

Inside the building, a handful of squat cylindrical robots scuttle about, following an intricate and invisible pattern. Occasionally, one zips beneath a stack of shelves, raises it gently off the ground, then brings it to a station where a human worker can grab items for packing. A handful of engineers stare intently at code running on a bank of computers.

The robots and the AI behind them were developed by Megvii, one of China’s vaunted AI unicorns. The impressive demo might seem like further evidence of China’s AI prowess—perhaps even proof that the country is poised to eclipse the US in this critical area. But the warehouse also points to a fundamental weakness with China’s AI. Amazon has been using similar technology in US fulfillment centers for several years.

Read the full article in Wired.

AI is Getting Caught Up in Politics

 November 2019

Tarun Chhabra, Senior Fellow at CSET, spoke with Axios about the asymmetry between the U.S. and Chinese approaches to funding emerging technology. “[T]he Chinese Communist Party’s whole technology worldview is driven, not merely charged, by the imperative of consolidating social control and emerging dominant in geopolitical competition,” he said.

Beijing’s hopes for AI dominance may rest on how many US-educated Chinese want to return home

 December 2019

While China enjoys a number of great universities and companies, especially in certain AI subfields, “many people remain hesitant to move to China due to the political environment, quality of life concerns & workplace issues,” says Remco Zwetsloot.

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on “Technology, Trade, and Military-Civil Fusion: China’s Pursuit of Artificial Intelligence, New Materials, and New Energy”

 June 2019

CSET’s Helen Toner, Jeff Ding, and Elsa Kania testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on U.S.-China Competition in Artificial Intelligence: Policy, Industry, and Strategy.

Will China win the military AI race on the back of commercial technology?

 June 2019

“We can think of AI as next wave of software improvements,” suggested Helen Toner, Director of Strategy at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Without a clear inflection point for when AI transitions from capable software to a unique capability, many of the changes will in nature and implementation resemble software upgrades.