China Has No Artificial-Intelligence Bubble, Ex-Head of Google China Says

Lee Kai-Fu has always been very bullish about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in China. He started off his keynote speech at an AI conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in November by predicting that self-driving cars will become a mass phenomenon in the U.S. in 15 to 20 years. But in China, he said, it will take "more like 10 years." "Although there are concerns about whether there is an emerging AI bubble in China, I'd say there isn't one," he told Caixin. Lee is a real insider when it comes to assessing the state of AI development in both North America and China. He completed his doctorate in computer-aided speech recognition at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) in 1988 and went on to work at Apple Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc. and Microsoft Corp., and head Google Inc.'s China business.