The arms race

In 2010, US authors in top-rated AI journals outnumbered Chinese counterparts by two to one. That ratio has now reversed. Last year, 1,073 AI experts based at Chinese universities were credited in AI journals such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers's Transactions on Neural Networks, compared to 492 US authors. Australia and Israel also do well on this metric. When experts are ranked according to their'H-index' – a metric of productivity and the citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar – Americans occupy 626 of the 1,000 top spots, including all of the top ten spots at the time of our analysis. New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Finland's AI academics are also highly ranked.