(FILE) China's President Xi Jinping attends the opening ceremony of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge at the Zhuhai Port terminal on October 23, 2018. Source: AFP

(FILE) China’s President Xi Jinping attends the opening ceremony of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge at the Zhuhai Port terminal on October 23, 2018. Source: AFP

China’s Xi reiterates AI ambitions

LAST July, China announced its ambitions to become the dominant player in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) by the year 2030.

The country has made developments in AI as one of its top priorities, and has been aggressively crafting policies as well as allocating funds for research in the sector towards achieving that vision.

In line with that intent, Chinese President, Xi Jinping on Wednesday issued a renewed demand for the country to achieve an in-depth understanding of AI.

CGTN reported the president referring to the industry as, “an important driving force for the new round of scientific revolution,” at the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee’s political bureau group study session.

Developing the tech alone is not sufficient for China as President Xi wants AI to be “deeply integrated” with China’s economic and social developments.

According to him, the country’s economy is switching from “high-speed growth” to “high-quality growth,” and AI technology is crucial to facilitate this shift.

Growth and developments in related sectors have enabled AI to present features such as deep learning, cross-border integration, man-machine coordination, and autonomous control.

With these new features, the impact AI has on the economic and social development, as well as international politics is understandably massive.

And thus, it is crucial, for China to speed up the development of new generations of AI to win the global science and technology race.

Local industries will be upgraded and optimized along with it, which will translate to improved national productivity.

Urging innovation in the sector, Xi asked the industry to focus on core technologies in order to achieve “transformative and disruptive breakthroughs” in directions of AI research, theory, method, tools, and systems of AI.

To support the development of this scale, the country should also have highly skilled human capital. The president clearly understands this and stressed the importance of training talent in China.

“We should build multiform platforms, with greater determination and stronger measures, for training high-level personnel, and strengthen the efforts in training reserve personnel, to provide adequate support for scientific and industrial development,” he said.

China, since rolling out its strategic roadmap titled “New Generation AI Development Plan” last year, has been firing on all cylinders in a bid to leapfrog the United States as the global leader in AI.

Though the deadline they set for themselves is 2030, judging by Beijing’s tenacity, they just might get there ahead of schedule.