China close behind US in Global AI Innovation Index

China is emerging as a global powerhouse in the AI ​​race, second only to the United States, a report released on Thursday showed.

Globally, the US still dominates the AI ​​industry, according to the 2020 Global AI Innovation Index Report that was released at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. It was way ahead of the 45 other surveyed countries with a score of 66.31 points with China coming in second with 50.6.

The report was co-drafted by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China and the Peking University.

As a developing country, China outperformed the other developed countries, and is currently in the best position to challenge the US as it has been accelerating building data infrastructure, making technological breakthroughs and expanding its talent pool, the report said.

South Korea was third in the category with points between 30 and 60, followed by Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Israel, Japan, France, Sweden, Finland, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Twenty-four countries with points between 15 to 30 were in the third-tier. Most of them were West European countries, notably Luxembourg, Belgium and Austria. From the BRICS bloc, Russia ranked 24th, India came in at 26th and Brazil at 33rd.

Seven countries were in the fourth-tier: Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Argentina, Romania, Mexico and Indonesia.

In four key indicators, China was excellent in "AI infrastructure," "AI R&D," and "AI industrial application," ranking No. 4, No. 3 and No. 3, respectively. But it was in eighth place for "AI innovation resource and environment."

Infrastructure is basic and essential, and China grabbed the first spot in the list of countries with the most advanced supercomputer centers. By July 2020, 226 of China's supercomputer centers had entered the global top 500 list, twice the number than the US.

China has also grown in the field of AI R&D. In 2019, Chinese scholars released 55,200 AI-related papers, including 3,555 in top academic journals and meetings, becoming the most prolific AI scholars in the world.

As a highly competitive industrial player, China has the world's second-highest number of AI companies. By September 2020, China had 823 AI companies with at least ten workers. The AI companies in China had totally obtained an investment of US$37.7 billion.

However, China lagged in AI education.

For every 1 million workers, only 290 were engaged in the AI industry. Contrast that with Singapore, which topped in this category, with 7,133 AI practitioners for every 1 million people. Also, China was only capable of fostering 17 top AI scholars for every 1 million university students, while Luxembourg, the world's No. 1 in this category, could mane 567 of them.

In the world's top 200 universities for math, physics and neuroscience, the US stood out with 49, 57 and 70 universities, respectively. China scored 27, 8 and 6.