Worth Knowing
Beijing’s Plans for R&D, AI and Chips: China’s annual legislative sessions — the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the gathering of the National People’s Congress — convened earlier this month, bringing with them important implications for AI and the semiconductor industry. Headlining the sessions was China’s 14th Five Year Plan, which was released earlier this month and approved last week. The plan (a draft of which CSET translated in December) lists AI, quantum computing and integrated circuits among the areas critical to China’s national security. On March 5, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced a target of 7% annual growth in R&D spending over the next five years, higher than China’s GDP growth target and its budget increase for the military — 6% and 6.8%, respectively — but a significant scaling-back from the years of double-digit growth the country had maintained. The China Development Bank, meanwhile, announced its intention to offer $60 billion in loans for firms working in strategic technologies, plus plans to invest an additional $30 billion in microchip development. Some observers noted that this year’s proposals hinted at the failure of the 13th Five Year Plan’s “Made in China 2025” campaign, which had set ambitious targets for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. With the country still producing only 16% of its chips domestically, modest increases in R&D spending and investment are unlikely to springboard China to its 70% target by 2025.
- More: China’s restrictions on overseas academic exchanges ‘could harm policy’ | ByteDance team to develop AI chips as China aims for self-reliance | Made in China 2025 and Semiconductors: A 2020 Progress Report
- Chinese AI research continues to grow. After overtaking the United States in total AI journal publications in 2017, China took the top spot for total number of AI article citations in 2020. While this finding has received some public attention, observers noted that total citations is a poor proxy for quality (see also here) and U.S. and European publications maintain consistent leads in weighted measures of citation impact.
- AI scholars are flocking to private industry. The percentages of new North American AI PhD graduates joining academia and industry were roughly equal in 2010, but have diverged dramatically over the past decade. In 2019 — the most recent year for which data was available — 65.7% of graduates went into private industry, compared to 23.7% who remained in academia.
- The field of AI still struggles with diversity. In 2019, only 2.4% of U.S. AI PhD graduates were Black, and only 3.2% were Hispanic. Meanwhile, women made up 22.1% of North American AI PhD graduates in 2019, a proportion that has changed little over the last decade.
- Despite increased investment overall — up to $40 billion in 2020, an increase of 9.3% compared to 2019 — the number of newly funded companies fell for the third year in a row. After peaking above 4,000 in 2017, fewer than 1,000 new AI companies received funding in 2020.
- The United States continues to receive the lion’s share of private AI investment, drawing $23.6 billion compared to second-place China’s $9.9 billion and the third-place U.K.’s $1.9 billion.
- More: Global AI Vibrancy Tool | Measurement in AI Policy: Opportunities and Challenges
Government Updates
White House Issues Interim National Security Strategic Guidance: The Biden administration has issued its interim national security strategic guidance, naming artificial intelligence as part of “a revolution in technology that poses both peril and promise” and emphasizing the necessity of maintaining the United States’ technological advantage. The interim guidance — meant to help federal agencies align their priorities with the White House before it releases its full national security strategy later this year — promises a shift in both emphasis and funding from “unneeded legacy platforms” to new technologies; a streamlined development, testing and acquisition process; changes in training; and rules and normative frameworks to ensure the new technologies are “used responsibly.” Both the guidance and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s speech introducing it emphasized plans to work with allies and partners to shape the rules around emerging technologies. While the White House has not yet given an intended publication date for its full National Security Strategy, Secretary Blinken said it would be finalized “over the next several months.”
U.S. Court Reverses Xiaomi Ban: Last Friday, a U.S. District Court granted a preliminary injunction against restrictions imposed on the Chinese consumer electronics maker Xiaomi that would have prevented all U.S. investment in the company. In the final days of the Trump administration, the Department of Defense added a number of companies, including Xiaomi, to a list of “Communist Chinese military companies” (CCMC), subjecting them to President Trump’s November executive order that banned U.S. investment in Chinese military-linked entities. Xiaomi’s restrictions were set to take effect Monday. In granting the injunction, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia criticized the Pentagon’s explanation of its decision, writing that the department had failed to provide the “required rational connection—or any connection” between “the facts found and the choice made.” There is speculation that the decision could open the door for other CCMC-designated companies, such as Huawei Technologies Co. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), to challenge their own Trump administration-imposed restrictions.
Senators Introduce Bill to Create Tech Partnership Among Democracies: On March 4, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced the Democracy Technology Partnership Act. The bill aims to confront China’s technological influence by creating a partnership of democratic countries that would set international standards and coordinate export controls on critical technologies, including artificial intelligence. Sens. Bennet, Cornyn, Menendez, Rubio, Sasse, Schumer and Young joined lead sponsor Sen. Warner in co-sponsoring the bill, which would establish an International Technology Partnership Office at the State Department — headed by a Special Ambassador for Technology and staffed by officials from various agencies — tasked with building the “technology-based partnership of democratic countries.” The act would also establish a $5 billion fund for supporting joint research projects and investing in technology in third-country markets.
In Translation
CSET’s translations of significant foreign language documents on AI
CSET’s translations of significant foreign language documents on AI
2018 PRC Central Committee Reorganization Plan: CCP Central Committee Publishes Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Agencies. This document is the final, authoritative version of China’s 2018 Party and state agency reorganization plan. It continues and expands upon the Xi Jinping-era trend of merging Party and government agencies with similar functions and creates a number of new ministries. This final reorganization plan is much more modest in scope than the plan the PRC government originally proposed, indicating that the PRC leadership decided the original plan was too ambitious.
What We’re Reading
Article: He got Facebook hooked on AI. Now he can’t fix its misinformation addiction, Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review (March 2021)
Report: Where are the women? Mapping the gender job gap in AI, Erin Young, Judy Wajcman and Laila Sprejer, The Alan Turing Institute (March 2021)
Report: Military-Civil Fusion Terminology: A Reference Guide, Alex Stone, China Aerospace Studies Institute (March 2021)
What’s New at CSET
REPORTS
- Academics, AI, and APTs: How Six Advanced Persistent Threat-Connected Chinese Universities are Advancing AI Research by Dakota Cary
- Understanding Chinese Government Guidance Funds: An Analysis of Chinese-Language Sources by Ngor Luong, Zachary Arnold and Ben Murphy
- Chinese Government Guidance Funds: A Guide for the Perplexed by Ngor Luong, Zachary Arnold and Ben Murphy
- Lessons from Stealth for Emerging Technologies by Peter Westwick
- A three-part series by Tim Rudner and Helen Toner:
- Key Concepts in AI Safety: An Overview
- Key Concepts in AI Safety: Robustness and Adversarial Examples
- Key Concepts in AI Safety: Interpretability in Machine Learning
- CNAS: A National Cloud for All by Tina Huang
- Journal of Conflict Resolution: Reputations for Resolve and Higher-Order Beliefs in Crisis Bargaining by Remco Zwetsloot
- Senate Foreign Relations Committee: CSET Research Fellow Saif M. Khan testified before Congress on Wednesday. Read Khan’s testimony and watch the full committee hearing.
CSET has launched a crowd forecasting platform. Sign up as a forecaster, and take a look at some of the predictions so far:
- (New) How many new H-1B visa applications submitted by the “Big 5” tech companies will the U.S. grant in FY 2022 (September 2021 through October 2022)?
- (New) How many U.S. job postings requiring machine learning skills will be published between July 1 and December 31, 2021, inclusive?
- (New) What will total U.S. trade volume with China (imports and exports of goods) be in 2022?
- (New) What percentage of O visas will go to Chinese nationals in FY 2022 (September 2021 through October 2022)?
- (New) Will Li Keqiang be a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee on December 31, 2022?
- (New) Will Hu Chunhua be a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee on December 31, 2022?
- (New) Will Chen Min’er be a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee on December 31, 2022?
IN THE NEWS
- FedScoop: CSET’s big leadership news made headlines at FedScoop. The outlet covered CSET Founding Director Jason Matheny’s move to the Biden administration to become deputy assistant to the president for technology and national security, deputy director for national security in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and coordinator for technology and national security at the National Security Council, and the appointment of Dewey Murdick, formerly CSET’s Director of Data Science, as Interim Director.
- National Journal: Will Hunt spoke to the National Journal about Congressional plans for funding domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
- National Defense Magazine: For an article about the Pentagon’s plans to go after enemies’ AI systems, National Defense Magazine cited Andrew Lohn’s recent report Hacking AI: A Primer for Policymakers on Machine Learning Cybersecurity.
- The Sun: The British tabloid reached out to CSET’s Dahlia Peterson for a piece about China’s Sharp Eyes surveillance program.
- FedScoop: Another FedScoop piece about the U.S. Army’s integration of AI cited an October interview with Margarita Konaev, as well as her October policy brief, U.S. Military Investments in Autonomy and AI: Costs, Benefits, and Strategic Effects, co-authored by Husanjot Chahal, Ryan Fedasiuk, Tina Huang and Ilya Rahkovsky.
- Insider: For a piece about covert competition between the United States, Russia and China, Insider spoke to research analyst Dakota Cary about his new issue brief, Academics, AI, and APTs.
Upcoming Events
- March 18: CSET, Legal, Illegal and Extralegal: China’s Pursuit of its Tech Future featuring Ryan Fedasiuk, Emily Weinstein and Anna Puglisi
- March 23: Asser Institute, Trusted Partners: Human-Machine Teaming and the Future of Military AI featuring Margarita Konaev
What else is going on? Suggest stories, documents to translate & upcoming events here.