China is now also challenging the U.S. in terms of both the number of patents and publications in the field. True, the quality of some of those publications might still lag behind the U.S., but China has been catching up, and the rate of its advancements in the field over the last few years has been simply staggering.

The desire to dominate AI space is quite understandable — after all, the idea that AI would one day enable a whole new world of possibilities has been around for decades. Until recently, however, it was largely relegated to the realm of science fiction and the works of select few researchers & futurists. It all started changing in the early 2010s when the technology and, perhaps equally as important, the computational resources, finally caught up, and we got AI (or rather, machine learning) capable of solving real-world problems for the first time.

As it usually happens with any kind of game-changing advancements, however, different countries have found themselves facing new opportunities and challenges offered by AI in vastly different circumstances.

For the rich western democracies, the emergence of machine intelligence offers opportunities to explore new frontiers, build a new generation of successful companies, and further improve their societies. However, it also means having to face the dangers that AI could pose to their citizens if applied recklessly. In the last few years, that meant increasingly prioritizing the “no harm” approach when devising the AI policy — the West, with its emphasis on individualism and strong human rights record, simply has more to lose and less to gain when it comes to AI, compared to other places. While the West, and more specifically, the U.S. might still lead the way in AI research, it’s the implementation that is going to be harder and more challenging, considering a different level of expectations it faces around ethics & privacy concerns.

In contrast, China is facing a different set of challenges altogether: given its historical context and the stage of economic development, the opportunities potentially stemming from AI often outweigh the dangers of its abuse, which in turn has led to embracing AI and executing an aggressive investment and deployment strategy.

It’s also worth noting here that with the broad AI deployments, China and the West might be optimizing for different results. In China, it would often be optimized to deliver the best results for society as a whole, even if it means inadvertently harming minorities in the process. On the contrary, the West focuses on human rights and fair treatment of every person, including any outliers, which in turn creates unique challenges for AI adoption.

As for the rest of the world, most countries today fall somewhere in between the extremes represented by the West and China.

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Now, let’s dig a bit deeper into the key factors that will determine the leader in the currently unfolding global AI arms race.

Building on what we’ve discussed above, we propose segmenting the world into 3 major groups: the West, China & the rest of the world. Obviously, such segmentation is quite subjective, but we believe it frames the conversation around AI policy in a useful way.

Now, when thinking of any problem that could be tackled using machine learning, there are three building blocks to be considered: data, people, and money.