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Is China Outsmarting America in AI? (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares an NYTimes article: Beijing is backing its artificial intelligence push with vast sums of money. Having already spent billions on research programs, China is readying a new multibillion-dollar initiative to fund moonshot projects, start-ups and academic research (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), all with the aim of growing China's A.I. capabilities, according to two professors who consulted with the government on the plan. China's private companies are pushing deeply into the field as well, though the line between government and private in China sometimes blurs. Baidu -- often called the Google of China and a pioneer in artificial-intelligence-related fields, like speech recognition -- this year opened a joint company-government laboratory partly run by academics who once worked on research into Chinese military robots. China is spending more just as the United States cuts back. This past week, the Trump administration released a proposed budget that would slash funding for a variety of government agencies that have traditionally backed artificial intelligence research.
... it is.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Every year we keep stupidly claiming that AI is just around the corner. Every year we are disappointed.
The truth is we have tricked ourselves. The rapid pace of Moore's law (computing power keeps doubling) has created incredible simulations. But paintings and statues do NOT spontaneously come alive, no matter how accurately they simulate a person. Neither do computer chips.
There is a fundamental difference between real AI and what computer chips can do. The ability of computer chips to parse written, audio, and visual information is amazing, and keeps growing but it is NOT real AI and will never be.
Computers will shortly be able to accept input via camera and microphone as accurately as they get it from a keyboard or mouse. That is not real AI. Nor is the amazingly complex search functions and databases we have created.
They are useful, and worth investing in, but more money has been wasted on them than is appropriate.
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