China has vowed to boost the development of its artificial intelligence sector but it is facing a shortage of software engineers in the country.
The latest illustration: Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) has recently launched a “Vancouver Plan” to relocate a number of top AI specialists from Beijing to its new laboratory in Vancouver, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing some people familiar with the plan. The report said the plan was launched due to heightened political tensions between the US and China.
Chinese state media and some commentators say the relocation of MSRA specialists shows that a global AI race is heating up – a trend that will push China to nurture more AI experts.
After all, no one thinks there are enough of them – and that’s the basic handicap slowing Chinese progress. Elon Musk says China is only 12-month behind the US in artificial intelligence but other experts are more pessimistic.
Touchy subject
Following the publication of the original FT story, Microsoft told the newspaper that it has nothing called a “Vancouver Plan” but is establishing a new lab in Vancouver, which will be staffed with people from other MSR labs around the world, including China. It added that the reported number of Chinese employees who will move to Canada – the original sources had said 20-40 – was not accurate, but it did not provide a corrected number.
Founded in 1998, MSRA conducts research in areas central to Microsoft’s long-term strategy and future computing vision, including natural user interface, AI, cloud and edge computing, big data and knowledge mining, computer science fundamentals, intelligent multimedia and computational science.
Concern that MSRA’s sharing approach might be insufficiently protective of US intellectual property goes back several years. In April 2019, MSRA was accused by a US-based think tank of working with the National University of Defense Technology (NUDR), a Chinese military-run university, on AI research that could be used for surveillance and censorship in Xinjiang.
‘Great strides’
The Global Times is taking an optimistic approach to news of the MSRA move. “Claiming that the relocation of some researchers from a single lab ‘threatens’ China’s talent training is pure exaggeration,” the newspaper says in a commentary published Monday. “China has made great strides in expanding its high-tech talent pool in recent years and the country has unique advantages with its massive market and growing high-tech sector to both train local talent and attract those from overseas.”
Global Times says China does not have inherent advantages in attracting global talent but the United States’s containment strategy has stimulated China’s talent cultivation for independent technological innovation, as well as government investment in high-tech fields.
“Some people think Microsoft is worried about the world’s escalating geopolitical conflicts while some others think the company does not want its top AI specialists to join its competitors in China,” a Hebei-based columnist writes in an article published Sunday. “No matter what, the decision to relocate its staff shows that Microsoft is lacking self-confidence.”
He says that three years ago, the company took the initiative to dismiss the rumor that it would leave the Chinese markets. With its staff relocation plan, Microsoft is now no different from the US government, which wants to suppress China’s AI development, he says.
“The proposed staff relocation may weaken Microsoft’s support for China’s technology sector, but it may also prompt Chinese companies to increase the cultivation and investment of local talents,” a Shandong-based writer says in an article published Saturday.
However, he adds that the MSRA was once a model of Sino-US high-tech research cooperation and has played a positive role in promoting the development of China’s technology industry. He says the MSRA’s latest move reflects a reduction in that kind of bilateral cooperation.
Brain drain
Back in 2019, a research report published by MarcoPolo, a think tank of the Paulson Institute in Chicago, pointed out that China faced a brain drain problem as most of its AI talents were choosing to stay in the US after completing their studies.
The report said 10 of the top 113 AI specialists selected for oral presentations at NeurIPS 2018, an annual AI conference, were Chinese-born while all of them were affiliated with US institutions or are about to join them.
It said 58% of Chinese upper-tier researchers attended graduate school in the US, with 35% attending graduate school in China and 7% in other countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom. It said 78% of the Chinese AI researchers who completed graduate studies in the US were currently at US institutions, with only 21% at Chinese institutions.
Renrui Human Resources Technology, a Hong Kong-listed recruitment agency, said in a research report published in April this year that China will face a shortage of 5.5 million AI engineers in 2025, compared with 4.3 million in 2022. The report said that in 2025 it will be possible to fill only one out of 2.6 AI-related job positions.
“China always highlights its AI development but I think the country is seriously lacking mathematicians,” Shi Yuzhu, chairman and founder of the Giant Network Group, said in a speech in Wuxi on Monday. “The shortage of computational mathematicians will continue to be a bottleneck for the future development of China’s AI sector.”
Shi said in recent years, his company has used AI technologies to develop most of its online games and to monitor players’ responses.
He added he had donated 50 million yuan (US$7 million) to his alma mater, Zhejiang University, five years ago and encouraged it to groom more AI talent.
Technology gap
Last month, Tesla’s founder Elon Musk told CNBC that China is lagging about 12 months behind the US in terms of AI development. He said it’s hard to say whether and when China can narrow the gap.
A Chinese IT columnist surnamed Wang writes in an article that the US has strengthened its leading status in the AI sector over the past two years, especially after the Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT last November.
Wang says US firms have huge funds to build and train their AI programs. He says the English-speaking world also enjoys an advantage as it has accumulated a large database of English documents over the past century.
Qiu Xipeng, head of the Fudan University’s research team that is developing a ChatGPT-like model called MOSS, said on May 31 that OpenAI’s GPT-4 is far more advanced than Chinese chatbots, which cannot catch up within months.
Zhang Zhen, founder of Beijing Whaty Technology, said any breakthroughs in AI chatbots must be done by algorithms and have nothing to do with computing power.
Zhang said other firms can catch up with GPT-3.5 within a year only if they can hire OpenAI’s core software engineers.
On May 5, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, in a meeting, chaired by party secretary Xi Jinping, called for boosting the AI sector.
The Beijing municipal government issued a document on May 19 and two more on May 30 to support AI firms. Other cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu also unveiled their supportive measures.
Read: Nvidia to turn Taiwan into a world-class AI hub
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3