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中国人工智能人才领先美国

(2024-03-23 08:20:42) 下一个

人工智能竞争中，中国人才培育赶超美国

孟建国, CADE METZ  

 

2023年7月，上海，世界人工智能大会。中国在人工智能教育方面进行了大量投资。

在为ChatGPT这样的聊天机器人提供动力的人工智能方面，中国落后于美国。但在培养新一代仿人技术背后的科学家方面，中国已经开始领先。
 
新的研究表明，从某些指标来看，中国已经超越美国成为人工智能人才的最大出产国，几乎培养了全球一半的顶尖人工智能研究人员，相比之下，约18%研究人员来自美国本科院校。该研究来自保尔森基金会旗下的麦克罗波洛智库，保尔森基金会是一家致力于促进中美之间建设性关系的机构。
 
研究结果表明，中国培养的人才数量出现跃升，三年前，中国培养的人才约占世界顶尖人才的三分之一。相比之下，美国基本保持不变。这项研究基于2022年神经信息处理系统大会上发表论文的研究人员的背景。该会议主要关注神经网络方面的进展，而神经网络是生成式人工智能最近发展的基础。
 
人才失衡的现象已经持续了将近十年。在2010年代的大部分时间里，美国受益于大量中国顶尖人才前往美国大学攻读博士学位。他们当中大多数人留在美国。但研究显示，这一趋势也开始发生转变，越来越多中国研究人员留在了中国。
 
随着中国和美国争夺人工智能领域的领先地位，未来几年的发展可能至关重要——人工智能技术有可能提高生产率、增强产业实力并推动创新——从而使研究人员成为地缘政治意义上全球最重要的群体之一。
 
生成式人工智能让硅谷和中国的科技行业趋之若鹜，引发了融资和投资狂潮。谷歌等美国科技巨头以及OpenAI等初创公司引领了这股热潮。专家们说，这可能会吸引中国的研究人员，尽管北京与华盛顿之间日益紧张的关系也可能使一些人望而却步。
 
《纽约时报》起诉了OpenAI和微软侵犯其人工智能系统相关新闻内容的版权。
 
中国培养了如此多的人工智能人才，部分原因是中国在人工智能教育方面投入了巨资。麦克罗波洛智库的主任马旸说，自2018年以来，中国新增了2000多个本科人工智能项目，其中300多个在最精英的大学，不过他指出，这些项目并没有把重点放在那些推动ChatGPT等聊天机器人取得突破的技术上。
 
他说：“很多项目都是关于人工智能在工业和制造业中的应用，而不是目前主导美国人工智能产业的生成性人工智能。”
中国菏泽，李楼煤业一个使用了人工智能技术的监控摄像头。中国菏泽，李楼煤业一个使用了人工智能技术的监控摄像头。 MARK R CRISTINO/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK
 
虽然美国在人工智能领域率先取得了突破性进展，最近的成果是聊天机器人不可思议的类人能力，但其中很大一部分工作是由在中国接受教育的研究人员完成的。
 
研究显示，目前在美国工作的顶尖人工智能研究人员中，来自中国的研究人员占38%，美国人占其中37%。三年前，在美国工作的顶尖人才中，来自中国的研究人员占27%，美国研究人员占31%。
 
“这些数据表明，中国出生的研究人员对美国的人工智能竞争力有多么重要，”卡内基国际和平基金会研究中国人工智能的研究员马特·希恩说。
 
他还说，这些数据似乎表明美国仍具吸引力。“我们是人工智能领域的世界领导者，因为我们继续吸引和留住来自世界各地的人才，尤其是中国的人才，”他说。
 
加州大学伯克利分校教授、人工智能和机器人初创企业Covariant创始人彼得·阿比尔表示，在美国顶尖公司和大学内部，与大量中国研究人员一起工作被视为理所当然。“这是很自然的情况，”他说。
 
过去，美国国防官员并不太担心来自中国的人工智能人才，部分原因是许多大型人工智能项目并不与机密数据打交道，还有部分原因是他们认为能够拥有最优秀的人才是最好的。此外，许多人工智能领域的领先研究也是公开发表的，这也打消了他们的担忧。
 
特朗普政府曾颁布禁令，禁止中国一些与军方有联系大学的学生进入美国，此外，新冠疫情期间，中国学生进入美国的人数相对减少，但研究显示，大量最有前途的人工智能人才继续来到美国学习。
 
但本月，根据一份联邦起诉书，一名曾担任谷歌工程师的中国公民被指控试图将人工智能技术（包括关键微芯片架构）转移到一家总部位于北京的公司，该公司秘密向他支付了报酬。
 
关注美国竞争力的专家表示，在美工作的中国人工智能研究人员人数众多，这给政策制定者提出了一个难题，他们既想打击中国间谍活动，又不想阻止中国顶尖计算机工程师继续涌入美国。
“中国学者在人工智能领域几乎处于领先地位，”亚利桑那州立大学教授、人工智能研究者苏巴拉奥·坎巴迈帕蒂说。如果政策制定者试图阻止中国公民在美国进行研究，他们就是在“搬起石头砸自己的脚”，他说。
 
美国政策制定者的过往记录好坏参半。因为错误起诉一些教授，特朗普政府旨在遏制中国工业间谍活动和知识产权盗窃的政策受到了批评。中国移民表示，此类计划鼓励了一些人留在中国。
研究显示，目前，大多数在美国完成博士学位的中国人都留在美国，这有助于美国成为全球人工智能中心。研究显示，即便如此，美国的领先地位也已经开始下滑，目前它拥有全球约42%的顶尖人才，低于三年前的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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