“The previous administration was preparing for a future with artificial intelligence,” said Subbarao<br />Kambhampati, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial intelligence.<br />By PAUL MOZUR and JOHN MARKOFFMAY 27, 2017<br />HONG KONG — Sören Schwertfeger finished his postdoctorate research on autonomous robots in Germany,<br />and seemed set to go to Europe or the United States, where artificial intelligence was pioneered and established.<br />The Defense Department found that Chinese money has been pouring into American artificial intelligence<br />companies — some of the same ones it had been looking to for future weapons systems.<br />Having already spent billions on research programs, China is readying a new multibillion-dollar initiative to fund moonshot projects, start-ups<br />and academic research, all with the aim of growing China’s A. I.<br />capabilities, according to two professors who consulted with the government on the plan.<br />This past week, the Trump administration released a proposed budget<br />that would slash funding for a variety of government agencies that have traditionally backed artificial intelligence research.<br />Baidu — often called the Google of China and a pioneer in artificial-intelligence-related fields, like speech recognition — this year<br />opened a joint company-government laboratory partly run by academics who once worked on research into Chinese military robots.<br />Chinese tech giants like Baidu, Tencent and Didi Chuxing have opened artificial intelligence labs in America, as have some Chinese start-ups.
