South Korean media: "China owns 47% of the world's top AI talents and will achieve technological independence within 5 years!"
On June 20, South Korean media Seoul Economic Daily published an article stating that the core of China's AI competitiveness that global investment bank Morgan Stanley is paying attention to lies in four major areas: data, power supply, computing power including semiconductors, and talent. Since 2017, China has formulated medium and long-term strategies and made large-scale investments, enabling these four areas to possess unparalleled global competitiveness.
The report "Chinese Artificial Intelligence: The Awakening Giant" released by Morgan Stanley pointed out that "data" is the first mentioned, its importance can be likened to "the crude oil of artificial intelligence". China has a population of 1.4 billion people and 1.1 billion users of mobile applications, ensuring massive data required for AI model training. In terms of power supply, which is crucial for stable operation of data centers, China is building more nuclear power plants than the total number globally. In terms of talent, China is also successfully attracting key personnel with huge funds. The report shows that 47% of the world's top AI researchers are either Chinese or reside in China, and China also accounts for 50% of the global AI patent total.
The only area where self-sufficiency is progressing relatively slowly is hardware computing including semiconductors, but its weaknesses seem to be improving as well. For example, due to U.S. restrictions on China, advanced GPUs are difficult to obtain, while Chinese developers are overcoming resource constraints by mixing old GPUs and domestic GPUs. Morgan Stanley analyzes that "China's self-sufficiency rate of AI GPUs will be only 34% in 2024, but it will rise to 82% by 2027".
China has set a goal to achieve "complete autonomy" in the AI field by 2030. Due to restrictions such as Western countries' export controls, using the most advanced technologies has become difficult, which actually drives Chinese enterprises to shift towards more efficient and lower-cost structures. The report uses the example of Chinese generative AI company DeepSeek, which spent only $5.6 million to develop a model comparable to ChatGPT.
A clear difference is that the United States emphasizes "technological hegemony", while China stands in stark contrast as pursuing "practical benefits". China actively opens up AI technology and strives to expand the ecosystem. While China actively applies AI to various industries, it also focuses on commercialization. Morgan Stanley explained: "China places more emphasis on bringing AI to market first rather than building the most powerful AI capabilities", "The United States is moving towards a closed and strictly controlled AI system, while China is rapidly developing through embracing open-source AI."
In fact, according to predictions, by 2050, China will account for 30% of the global market share, and China is developing at the fastest pace in this field. Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2050, the size of this market will approach $5 trillion.
Morgan Stanley predicts that AI will also be used to overcome China's long-term growth weaknesses, such as aging and weakening productivity. Morgan Stanley predicts that through AI innovation, China will be able to achieve an additional 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points of GDP growth annually. Morgan Stanley predicts that "based on China's wage level in 2024, AI will create economic effects equivalent to approximately 6.7 trillion RMB in labor value."
Source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1835455595244544/
Disclaimer: This article represents the views of the author alone.