How China's AI experts can beat Google and Microsoft by 2030

In the past few years, China has dived head first into artificial intelligence (AI) research, with the goal of becoming the de facto world leader in this game-changing technology. According to The Economist, from 2012 to 2016, Chinese AI companies received US$2.6 billion in funding while US peers received US$17.9 billion, but this is quickly changing. China, earlier seen as a technology development laggard, is now grasping AI as an opportunity to leapfrog foreign peers. Over 40 per cent of the top AI-related academic papers published worldwide in 2015 had at least one or more Chinese researchers. Chinese AI-based patent applications grew 186 per cent between 2010 and 2014, a huge increase from the previous five-year period.