An example: At the moment, 9 of the top 10 algorithms for Stanford Question Answering Dataset, including all of the top 5, are by Chinese teams. (2 of them by Microsoft Asia which is based in Beijing and the other 7 are by Chinese companies).
https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/
I wrote this about 3 months ago and the trend becomes quite concrete faster than I thought:
> Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace.
> ...
> My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. ...
> ...
> The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or potential talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead.
Full comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339
Edit: they do fund a lot of PhD research in US universities, including fellowship for PhD students. But one can't expect a company, even Google, to overhaul the entire system
Unfortunately, when it comes to legislation and budget considerations (including education), lobbying works.
As it stands, US education is all over the place, and worse, it's more and more only becoming available to the elite; social mobility is low, that is, if you're born poor chances are you'll end up poor yourself.
This is unlike where I came from, where my dad was a low paid metalworker but I got an effectively free college education and repaid that government funding multiple times over in income taxes in just a few years, whilst simultaneously bringing a lot more money home than my parents did (to oppose any "but income taxes screw with my income" claims).
Anyway, since the government isn't doing it, I do think it's up to the big companies to offer it. That's what the US is all about, isn't it? Changing it to a capitalist government, where it's big companies that rule the people, not the government.
It is for this reason that I don't think private companies can significantly change that, even in the US. Even the most innovative/successful companies don't last that long in the US to make a significant change in the Education system.
And to an even larger extent it's up to the citizens of the U.S. Most don't care enough to support/reward such efforts at the ballot booth, so the politicians aren't motivated, and things don't get done.
They will continue to lobby I'm sure, as they will prefer to find the talent they need near their existing infrastructure instead of needing to build new - but they are at the point where plan B (building infrastructure elsewhere) is looking like competitive value for the investment in time and money.
Another argument (of several, large investments like this are very far from simple single-variable issues) may also be that their competitors don't have a foothold there: so by investing first they get access to that talent pool more exclusively than they do the pools elsewhere, at least initially.
https://www.saudismartcities.net/
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa...
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...
Because the US is very familiar with them?[1] US companies continue to make billions off of authoritarian regimes. Why should tech be a stranger?
From a practical perspective, they are being smart, and safe. They know that China is positioning itself as the de facto global leader in trade, aid, finance, development, consumerism, etc, and their AI research is way ahead of ours. They know the Saudis have a butt-ton of money and can help them open up other middle eastern business. And they're getting in on the ground floor before their competitors do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...
Since when is conservative synonymous with authoritarian?
In other words: IMHO, social conservatism is very much authoritarian, in that it seeks to proscribe certain modes of living as contrary to the moral fabric of society. Saudi Arabia is, in this view, a prime example of this as it approaches its logical extreme. Fiscal conservatism, OTOH, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authoritarianism. We've unfortunately managed to conflate the two in modern American politics, which is how you end up with counter-productive policies like "tough on crime", "war on drugs", "cut basic social services", etc. that end up costing more than necessary in the service of "proving" a moral point.