Talent is core to U.S. competitiveness in artificial intelligence, and international graduate students are a large source of AI talent for the United States. Graduate student retention has been a historical U.S. strength, but that strength is endangered by recent trends, finds a new CSET report.

A recent CSET report concludes that 80% of international students remain in the U.S. after graduation. Yet recent events threaten the U.S. AI talent advantage, including a potential end to the OPT program. "This would be a really bad development for the U.S. from an AI competitiveness perspective," says lead author Remco Zwetsloot.

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.

China isn’t spending as much as it says it is on AI R&D, according to a new CSET report. Authors Zachary Arnold and Ashwin Acharya dispute the common belief that China is pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI.

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.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Hewlett Foundation, CSET is launching a new Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence project to be led by Ben Buchanan. The project will examine the potential risks of AI in cyberspace and national security.

CSET’s Ben Buchanan joined Federal Drive to discuss the new project he’s spearheading, CyberAI. It will examine the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

The article references a recent CSET report by Zachary Arnold and Ashwin Acharya. “The researchers have high confidence that their analysis at least confirms that China’s spending is nowhere near existing claims.”

"Reports of China’s expenditure on AI may be overblown,” finds a recent CSET report by Zachary Arnold and Ashwin Acharya. China "has probably not been dramatically outspending the US government on AI R&D since it unveiled the national plan."

The article references research by Zachary Arnold and Ashwin Acharya on Chinese public AI R&D spending, which concluded that “Chinese spending in 2018 was on the same order of magnitude as U.S. planned spending for FY 2020.”