How China tried and failed to win the AI race: The inside story

Chances are you've seen the stories, with headlines like "AI-driven technologies reshape city life in Beijing" or "Robots serving up savory food at Chinese artificial intelligence eateries" splashed across the page, a photo of a robot ominously beckoning you to believe one message: China is winning the artificial intelligence (AI) race in its quest to become the global superpower.

You would be wrong.

Since 2017, China has made an aggressive push to position itself as a global AI superpower, with a government plan investing billions of dollars in the field. But upon digging deeper, it's not difficult to find that the US remains at the forefront of the AI race, with more investment sources, a larger workforce, more thorough research papers, and more advanced chipsets.

"There are countless industries where they said 'We want to become world leaders,' and it did not work—they basically burned billions," said Georg Stieler, managing director of Stieler Enterprise Management Consulting China, referencing China. "You need an institutional framework and cultural foundations so that many independent actors can coordinate their work. China's still not there yet."

Read the full article and more in TechRepublic.