Chinese AI Talent in Six Charts

Matt Sheehan:

Debates over Chinese and American artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities have been long on bombast and short on data.

That’s why at MacroPolo we have created an original dataset based on published papers at what many experts deem the top annual AI conference, NeurIPS 2018, bringing more data to bear on assessing the quantity and quality of AI research talent in China and the United States.

Research talent is often overlooked but is in fact a core building block of any AI ecosystem (see our ChinAI project). Given that leading AI research is relatively open source, talent is one of the most directly quantifiable of those building blocks. Insights gleaned from the data on published research can better inform a well-grounded and data-driven public debate around the state and flow of global AI talent.

The charts below are a first look at the raw data, followed by key takeaways from the data.