This policy brief addresses the need for a clearly defined artificial intelligence education and workforce policy by providing recommendations designed to grow, sustain, and diversify the U.S. AI workforce. The authors employ a comprehensive definition of the AI workforce—technical and nontechnical occupations—and provide data-driven policy goals. Their recommendations are designed to leverage opportunities within the U.S. education and training system while mitigating its challenges, and prioritize equity in access and opportunity to AI education and AI careers.

This policy brief, authored in collaboration with the MITRE Corporation, provides a new perspective on the U.S. Department of Defense’s struggle to recruit and retain artificial intelligence talent. The authors find that the DOD already has a cadre of AI and related experts, but that this talent remains hidden. Better leveraging this talent could go a long way in meeting the DOD’s AI objectives. The authors argue that this can be done through policies that more effectively identify AI talent and assignment opportunities, processes that incentivize experimentation and changes in career paths, and investing in the necessary technological infrastructure.

A globally competitive AI workforce hinges on the education, development, and sustainment of the best and brightest AI talent. This issue brief compares efforts to integrate AI education in China and the United States, and what advantages and disadvantages this entails. The authors consider key differences in system design and oversight, as well as strategic planning. They then explore implications for the U.S. national security community.

A globally competitive AI workforce hinges on the education, development, and sustainment of the best and brightest AI talent. This issue brief provides an overview of the education systems in China and the United States, lending context to better understand the accompanying main report, “AI Education in China and the United States: A Comparative Assessment.”

Chinese and Russian government officials are keen to publicize their countries’ strategic partnership in emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. This report evaluates the scope of cooperation between China and Russia as well as relative trends over time in two key metrics of AI development: research publications and investment. The findings expose gaps between aspirations and reality, bringing greater accuracy and nuance to current assessments of Sino-Russian tech cooperation.

Since the mid-2000s, China has consistently graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in STEM fields. This paper explores the data on STEM PhD graduation rates and projects their growth over the next five years, during which the gap between China and the United States is expected to increase significantly.

Summer camps are an integral part of many U.S. students’ education, but little is known about camps that focus on artificial intelligence education. This data brief maps out the AI summer camp landscape in the United States and explores the camps’ locations, target age ranges, price, and hosting organization type.

Since 2011, China has dramatically grown its robotics sector as part of its mission to achieve technological leadership. The Chinese government has encouraged this growth through incentives and, in some cases, subsidies. Patents in robotics have surged, particularly at Chinese universities; by contrast, private companies comprise the bulk of robotics patent filers around the world. China has also seen a corresponding growth in robotics purchasing and active robotics stock. This data brief explores the trends in robotics patent families published from China as a measure of robotics advancement and finds that China is on track to emerge as a world leader in robotics.

AI technologies will likely alter great power competitions in foundational ways, changing both how nations create power and their motives for wielding it against one another. This paper is a first step toward thinking more expansively about AI & national power and seeking pragmatic insights for long-term U.S. competition with authoritarian governments.

China’s National Cybersecurity Center (NCC) resides on a 40 km2 plot in Wuhan. As one indication of its significance, the Chinese Communist Party’s highest-ranking members have an oversight committee for the facility. Over the next decade, the NCC will provide the talent, innovation, and indigenization of cyber capabilities that China’s Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Public Security, and People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force hacking teams lack. Though still under construction, the NCC’s first class of graduates will cross the stage in June 2022.