China may match or beat America in AI

AT THE start of this year, two straws in the wind caught the attention of those who follow the development of artificial intelligence (AI) globally. First, Qi Lu, one of the bosses of Microsoft, said in January that he would not return to the world's largest software firm after recovering from a cycling accident, but instead would become chief operating officer at Baidu, China's leading search engine. Later that month, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence postponed its annual meeting. The planned date for the event in January conflicted with the Chinese new year. These were the latest signals that China could be a close second to America--and perhaps even ahead of it--in some areas of AI, widely considered vital to everything from digital assistants to self-driving cars.