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中國人工智能人才領先美國

(2024-03-23 08:20:42) 下一個

人工智能競爭中，中國人才培育趕超美國

孟建國, CADE METZ  

 

2023年7月，上海，世界人工智能大會。中國在人工智能教育方麵進行了大量投資。

在為ChatGPT這樣的聊天機器人提供動力的人工智能方麵，中國落後於美國。但在培養新一代仿人技術背後的科學家方麵，中國已經開始領先。
 
新的研究表明，從某些指標來看，中國已經超越美國成為人工智能人才的最大出產國，幾乎培養了全球一半的頂尖人工智能研究人員，相比之下，約18%研究人員來自美國本科院校。該研究來自保爾森基金會旗下的麥克羅波洛智庫，保爾森基金會是一家致力於促進中美之間建設性關係的機構。
 
研究結果表明，中國培養的人才數量出現躍升，三年前，中國培養的人才約占世界頂尖人才的三分之一。相比之下，美國基本保持不變。這項研究基於2022年神經信息處理係統大會上發表論文的研究人員的背景。該會議主要關注神經網絡方麵的進展，而神經網絡是生成式人工智能最近發展的基礎。
 
人才失衡的現象已經持續了將近十年。在2010年代的大部分時間裏，美國受益於大量中國頂尖人才前往美國大學攻讀博士學位。他們當中大多數人留在美國。但研究顯示，這一趨勢也開始發生轉變，越來越多中國研究人員留在了中國。
 
隨著中國和美國爭奪人工智能領域的領先地位，未來幾年的發展可能至關重要——人工智能技術有可能提高生產率、增強產業實力並推動創新——從而使研究人員成為地緣政治意義上全球最重要的群體之一。
 
生成式人工智能讓矽穀和中國的科技行業趨之若鶩，引發了融資和投資狂潮。穀歌等美國科技巨頭以及OpenAI等初創公司引領了這股熱潮。專家們說，這可能會吸引中國的研究人員，盡管北京與華盛頓之間日益緊張的關係也可能使一些人望而卻步。
 
《紐約時報》起訴了OpenAI和微軟侵犯其人工智能係統相關新聞內容的版權。
 
中國培養了如此多的人工智能人才，部分原因是中國在人工智能教育方麵投入了巨資。麥克羅波洛智庫的主任馬暘說，自2018年以來，中國新增了2000多個本科人工智能項目，其中300多個在最精英的大學，不過他指出，這些項目並沒有把重點放在那些推動ChatGPT等聊天機器人取得突破的技術上。
 
他說：“很多項目都是關於人工智能在工業和製造業中的應用，而不是目前主導美國人工智能產業的生成性人工智能。”
中國菏澤，李樓煤業一個使用了人工智能技術的監控攝像頭。中國菏澤，李樓煤業一個使用了人工智能技術的監控攝像頭。 MARK R CRISTINO/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK
 
雖然美國在人工智能領域率先取得了突破性進展，最近的成果是聊天機器人不可思議的類人能力，但其中很大一部分工作是由在中國接受教育的研究人員完成的。
 
研究顯示，目前在美國工作的頂尖人工智能研究人員中，來自中國的研究人員占38%，美國人占其中37%。三年前，在美國工作的頂尖人才中，來自中國的研究人員占27%，美國研究人員占31%。
 
“這些數據表明，中國出生的研究人員對美國的人工智能競爭力有多麽重要，”卡內基國際和平基金會研究中國人工智能的研究員馬特·希恩說。
 
他還說，這些數據似乎表明美國仍具吸引力。“我們是人工智能領域的世界領導者，因為我們繼續吸引和留住來自世界各地的人才，尤其是中國的人才，”他說。
 
加州大學伯克利分校教授、人工智能和機器人初創企業Covariant創始人彼得·阿比爾表示，在美國頂尖公司和大學內部，與大量中國研究人員一起工作被視為理所當然。“這是很自然的情況，”他說。
 
過去，美國國防官員並不太擔心來自中國的人工智能人才，部分原因是許多大型人工智能項目並不與機密數據打交道，還有部分原因是他們認為能夠擁有最優秀的人才是最好的。此外，許多人工智能領域的領先研究也是公開發表的，這也打消了他們的擔憂。
 
特朗普政府曾頒布禁令，禁止中國一些與軍方有聯係大學的學生進入美國，此外，新冠疫情期間，中國學生進入美國的人數相對減少，但研究顯示，大量最有前途的人工智能人才繼續來到美國學習。
 
但本月，根據一份聯邦起訴書，一名曾擔任穀歌工程師的中國公民被指控試圖將人工智能技術（包括關鍵微芯片架構）轉移到一家總部位於北京的公司，該公司秘密向他支付了報酬。
 
關注美國競爭力的專家表示，在美工作的中國人工智能研究人員人數眾多，這給政策製定者提出了一個難題，他們既想打擊中國間諜活動，又不想阻止中國頂尖計算機工程師繼續湧入美國。
“中國學者在人工智能領域幾乎處於領先地位，”亞利桑那州立大學教授、人工智能研究者蘇巴拉奧·坎巴邁帕蒂說。如果政策製定者試圖阻止中國公民在美國進行研究，他們就是在“搬起石頭砸自己的腳”，他說。
 
美國政策製定者的過往記錄好壞參半。因為錯誤起訴一些教授，特朗普政府旨在遏製中國工業間諜活動和知識產權盜竊的政策受到了批評。中國移民表示，此類計劃鼓勵了一些人留在中國。
研究顯示，目前，大多數在美國完成博士學位的中國人都留在美國，這有助於美國成為全球人工智能中心。研究顯示，即便如此，美國的領先地位也已經開始下滑，目前它擁有全球約42%的頂尖人才，低於三年前的59%。

In One Key A.I. Metric, China Pulls Ahead of the U.S.: Talent

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/technology/china-ai-talent.html#:~:text=

China has produced a huge number of top A.I. engineers in recent years. New research shows that, by some measures, it has already eclipsed the United States.

Several men in suits sit on a stage at a conference.The World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July 2023. China has invested heavily in A.I. education.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Paul Mozur reported from Taipei, Taiwan, and Cade Metz from San Francisco.

 
When it comes to the artificial intelligence that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, China lags behind the United States. But when it comes to producing the scientists behind a new generation of humanoid technologies, China is pulling ahead.

New research shows that China has by some metrics eclipsed the United States as the biggest producer of A.I. talent, with the country generating almost half the world’s top A.I. researchers. By contrast, about 18 percent come from U.S. undergraduate institutions, according to the study, from MacroPolo, a think tank run by the Paulson Institute, which promotes constructive ties between the United States and China.

The findings show a jump for China, which produced about one-third of the world’s top talent three years earlier. The United States, by contrast, remained mostly the same. The research is based on the backgrounds of researchers whose papers were published at 2022’s Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. NeurIPS, as it is known, is focused on advances in neural networks, which have anchored recent developments in generative A.I.

The talent imbalance has been building for the better part of a decade. During much of the 2010s, the United States benefited as large numbers of China’s top minds moved to American universities to complete doctoral degrees. A majority of them stayed in the United States. But the research shows that trend has also begun to turn, with growing numbers of Chinese researchers staying in China.

 

What happens in the next few years could be critical as China and the United States jockey for primacy in A.I. — a technology that can potentially increase productivity, strengthen industries and drive innovation — turning the researchers into one of the most geopolitically important groups in the world.

Generative A.I. has captured the tech industry in Silicon Valley and in China, causing a frenzy in funding and investment. The boom has been led by U.S. tech giants such as Google and start-ups like OpenAI. That could attract China’s researchers, though rising tensions between Beijing and Washington could also deter some, experts said.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

China has nurtured so much A.I. talent partly because it invested heavily in A.I. education. Since 2018, the country has added more than 2,000 undergraduate A.I. programs, with more than 300 at its most elite universities, said Damien Ma, the managing director of MacroPolo, though he noted the programs were not heavily focused on the technology that had driven breakthroughs by chatbots like ChatGPT.

“A lot of the programs are about A.I. applications in industry and manufacturing, not so much the generative A.I. stuff that’s come to dominate the American A.I. industry at the moment,” he said.

People look at a multipaneled screen showing a red rectangle over a man with the word “human” over the shape. A camera using artificial intelligence at the Lilou Coal Mine in Heze, China.Credit...Mark R Cristino/EPA, via Shutterstock

While the United States has pioneered breakthroughs in A.I., most recently with the uncanny humanlike abilities of chatbots, a significant portion of that work was done by researchers educated in China.

Researchers originally from China now make up 38 percent of the top A.I. researchers working in the United States, with Americans making up 37 percent, according to the research. Three years earlier, those from China made up 27 percent of top talent working in the United States, compared with 31 percent from the United States.

“The data shows just how critical Chinese-born researchers are to the United States for A.I. competitiveness,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies Chinese A.I.

He added that the data seemed to show the United States was still attractive. “We’re the world leader in A.I. because we continue to attract and retain talent from all over the world, but especially China,” he said.

Pieter Abbeel, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a founder of Covariant, an A.I. and robotics start-up, said working alongside large numbers of Chinese researchers was taken for granted inside the leading American companies and universities.

“It’s just a natural state of affairs,” he said.

Pieter Abbeel, wearing a gray long-sleeved T-shirt and bluejeans, poses with his hands in his front pockets. Pieter Abbeel, a founder of Covariant, an A.I. and robotics start-up, said working alongside Chinese researchers was taken for granted at U.S. companies and universities.Credit...Balazs Gardi for The New York Times

In the past, U.S. defense officials were not too concerned about A.I. talent flows from China, partly because many of the biggest A.I. projects did not deal with classified data and partly because they reasoned that it was better to have the best minds available. That so much of the leading research in A.I. is published openly also held back worries.

Despite bans introduced by the Trump administration that prohibit entry to the United States for students from some military-linked universities in China and a relative slowdown in the flow of Chinese students into the country during Covid, the research showed large numbers of the most promising A.I. minds continued coming to the United States to study.

But this month, a Chinese citizen who was an engineer at Google was charged with trying to transfer A.I. technology — including critical microchip architecture — to a Beijing-based company that paid him in secret, according to a federal indictment.

The substantial numbers of Chinese A.I. researchers working in the United States now present a conundrum for policymakers, who want to counter Chinese espionage while not discouraging the continued flow of top Chinese computer engineers into the United States, according to experts focused on American competitiveness.

“Chinese scholars are almost leading the way in the A.I. field,” said Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor and researcher of A.I. at Arizona State University. If policymakers try to bar Chinese nationals from research in the United States, he said, they are “shooting themselves in the foot.”

The track record of U.S. policymakers is mixed. A policy by the Trump administration aimed at curbing Chinese industrial espionage and intellectual property theft has since been criticized for errantly prosecuting a number of professors. Such programs, Chinese immigrants said, have encouraged some to stay in China.

For now, the research showed, most Chinese who complete doctorates in the United States stay in the country, helping to make it the global center of the A.I. world. Even so, the U.S. lead has begun to slip, to hosting about 42 percent of the world’s top talent, down from about 59 percent three years ago, according to the research.

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

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