The AI Race

Aligned with the recent global trend towards nationalism over globalization, we have seen stark changes in various nation's reactions to Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and trade in particular. There is a reason and one of them is the advances in AI. In July of 2017, China Vice Minister of Science of Technology, Li Meng, expects that China's AI technology and research centers will match other countries by 2020. To get there, they are seeping $150 billion into the project in the next few years (NBD). This is compared to the Trump Administration's 10% cut to the National Science Foundation's funding for intelligent systems research, totaling only $175 million.