As China Marches Forward on A.I., the White House Is Silent

But six months after China seemed to mimic that Obama-era road map, A.I. experts in industry and academia in the United States say that the Trump White House has done little to follow through on the previous administration's economic call to arms. "We are still waiting on the White House to provide some direction" on how to respond to the competition, said Tim Hwang, who worked on A.I. policy at Google and is now the director of the Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, a new organization created by the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and others to fund ethical research in artificial intelligence. China's embrace of A.I. comes at a crucial time in the development of the technology and just as the lead long enjoyed by the United States has started to dwindle. For decades, artificial intelligence was more fiction than science. In the past few years, however, dramatic improvements have prompted some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley and Detroit -- and China -- to invest billions on everything from self-driving cars to home appliances that can have a conversation with a human.