Think tank: Nearly 40 percent of U.S. AI experts come from China

(Tokyo) An analysis by an American think tank shows that the United States and China are in fierce competition in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), while the United States can still maintain a dominant position in the field of AI, and Chinese college students in the United States have played a key role.

According to Nikkei Asia, an analysis report by MacroPolo, an internal think tank of the Paulson Institute in Chicago, pointed out that nearly 40% of top AI researchers in US companies and research institutions come from Chinese universities, and the proportion of Chinese university graduates even exceeds that of local graduates in the United States.

Among them are Fei-Fei Li, a well-known Stanford University professor and co-founder of World Labs, and Deng Li, chief scientist of AI at Microsoft.

According to the report, in 2019, 27% of the top AI experts in the United States came from Chinese universities. By 2022, that percentage had risen to 38 percent, surpassing the 37 percent from U.S. universities. The researchers appear to have completed their undergraduate studies in China before going to graduate programs in the United States and eventually finding jobs in the United States.

In response, Masashi Sugiyama, head of Riken's Integrated Research Center for Innovative Intelligence, said: "Obviously, there are a certain number of outstanding young researchers in China who are contributing to the development of AI research in American companies and institutions."

However, the US still dominates AI research. The 2024 Nobel Prizes in physics and Chemistry were awarded for AI-related research, and most of the winners were from the United States.