Artificial intelligence is growing rapidly in China, but there are still wide gaps in industrial application.

China's best known AI companies are Sensetime, Megvii, Cloudwalk, Yitu, ByteDance, and the BAT companies -- China's first generation of internet giant: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. But there's another giant of artificial intelligence that is rarely discussed in the same breath as the companies mentioned above. The state-owned electric utility monopoly State Grid Corporation of China (hereafter State Grid) is the largest utility company in the world, ranking second on the 2018 Fortune Global 500 List. Less celebrated is that State Grid was the only Chinese company ranked in the top 20 in artificial intelligence (AI) patent applicants, per the World Intellectual Property Organization. In an article (in Chinese) published last year titled "State Grid Corporation of China: A hidden giant in AI," Lǐ Shāng 李熵 gives a portrait of a company whose AI initiatives could change the world.

Over the last year, there have been a growing number of media reports on Chinese advances in artificial intelligence (AI), as well a state-led push to boost the industry. The results: "China lags far further behind than many had imagined." In related news, Reuters says that internet giant Baidu, one of China's leading AI firms, will form a "7 billion yuan ($1 billion) private equity fund together with China Life Insurance Group, one of the country's biggest insurers. The find will focus on "unlisted companies with'significant association;' with China, in the internet sector, including mobile internet, artificial intelligence, and internet finance." For more on AI in China, listen to these Sinica Podcast episodes with Kai-fu Lee 李开复 and Andrew Ng.

To answer these and many other questions, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Andrew Ng, founder and chairman of Coursera, an associate professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University, and the chief scientist of Baidu, where he heads up the company's research on deep learning and AI. The discussion delves into the differences between Chinese and American engineers, entrepreneurial culture in China, artificial neural networks, augmented reality, and the role big internet companies and their resources play in advancing AI. Check out the SupChina backgrounder on their conversation here.