Chinese Power and Artificial Intelligence
Perspectives and Challenges
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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive account of Chinese AI in its various facets, based on primary Chinese-language sources.
China’s rise as an AI power is an event of importance to the world and a potential challenge to liberal democracies. Filling a gap in the literature, this volume is fully documented, data-driven, and presented in a scholarly format suitable for citation and for supporting downstream research, while also remaining accessible to laypersons. It brings together 15 recognized international experts to present a full treatment of Chinese artificial intelligence. The volume contains chapters on state, commercial, and foreign sources of China’s AI power; China’s AI talent, scholarship, and global standing; the impact of AI on China’s development of cutting-edge disciplines; China’s use of AI in military, cyber, and surveillance applications; AI safety, threat mitigation, and the technology’s likely trajectory. The book ends with recommendations drawn from the authors’ interactions with policymakers and specialists worldwide, aimed at encouraging AI’s healthy development in China and preparing the rest of the world to engage with it.
This book will be of much interest to students of Chinese politics, science and technology studies, security studies and international relations.
Table of Contents
Part I: Foundations of Chinese AI power
1. State plans, research, and funding
Ngor Luong and Ryan Fedasiuk
2. China’s AI companies: hybrid players
Karen M. Sutter and Zachary Arnold
3. Foreign support, alliances, and technology transfer
Huey-Meei Chang and William C. Hannas
Part II: China and the world
4. China’s quest for AI talent
Emily Weinstein and Jeffrey Stoff
5. Academic literature: quantitative and qualitative analyses
Daniel H. Chou and Ashwin Acharya
6. The balance sheet: China’s AI advantages and challenges
Zachary Arnold and Anna Puglisi
Part III: Impact on cutting-edge disciplines
7. Chinese AI and neuroscience
William C. Hannas and Huey-Meei Chang
8. Chinese AI and biology
Anna Puglisi and Daniel H. Chou
9. China at the Nexus of AI and Quantum Computing
Jonathan Ray
Part IV: AI in the shadows
10. AI in the Chinese military
Ryan Fedasiuk and Emily Weinstein
11. Cyber and influence operations
John Chen
12. AI and the surveillance state
Dahlia Peterson
Part V: AI hazards and safety
13. Future paths and challenges
Huey-Meei Chang and William C. Hannas
14. AI safeguards: views inside and outside China
Helen Toner
15. Measuring risk and monitoring development
William C. Hannas and Huey-Meei Chang
Editor(s)
Biography
William C. Hannas is a Georgetown professor and CSET’s lead analyst. Prior to this, he was a member of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Senior Intelligence Service and a three-time recipient of its McCone Award. He is the lead author of Chinese Industrial Espionage (2013) and co-editor of China’s Quest for Foreign Technology (2020).
Huey-Meei Chang is a Research Analyst at Georgetown University and is CSET’s senior China S&T analyst. She began her career as a data analyst at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, Institute of Biomedical Sciences and taught document analysis for more than a decade to researchers at U.S. Government agencies.
Reviews
'A wide yet deep roadmap of China’s strategic maneuver to seize the commanding heights of artificial intelligence, dominating the fertile plains of world economy, medicine and socio-political life, the contest grounds of technology and the battlefields of possible future wars. A must read for leaders and thinkers in technologically advanced democracies.'--BG (Res.) Assaf Orion, former chief of strategy in the Israel Defense Forces, currently director of The Diane and Guilford Glazer Center for Israel-China Policy at Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies (INSS)
'As someone who works in the intersection of tech and policy, I highly applaud this book. It is a thorough investigation into China's ambition to become world's leading AI superpower and its concerns and implications to which the world must pay attention to. Whether you are in tech, politics, policy, security, academic or NGOs, you should read this book and think deeply about some of the issues raised.'-- Jason Hsu, Former Legislator Taiwan, and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, USA
'It would be hard to overestimate the significance of artificial intelligence today as developed by our most daunting global competitor, China. AI has the potential to transform many of the important technologies today such as biotech, cybersecurity, pattern recognition and data analysis; a technology race is on as China aims to lead in all of these areas. This book assembles the world’s experts to assess where we stand in this technology race.'—Michael Brown, Director, Defense Innovation Unit, US Dept. Of Defense
'China has made no secret of its ambition to become a global artificial intelligence superpower. Aspiring to global dominance the China Communist Party has aligned all the elements of national power toward this end. The national and international security implications are profound. These authors offer a unique and comprehensive mapping of China’s expansive and mission-driven artificial intelligence ecosystem, and the challenges it represents to its competitors world-wide. The work is foundational, and the concluding policy recommendations—while not shocking—provide a starting point for what will clearly be a long competition.'--Michael Miklaucic, Senior Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, USA
'This book dissects the myths and facts behind a key question: is China outracing the world in its quest for AI? The authors' focus on this general-purpose technology which, like electricity once, is profoundly re-shaping our world, casts a sobering light on the science and the politics of our future. In fluent prose which carries its welter of facts lightly, it enriches our study of this key technology and of the broader science and technology competition underway.'--Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Senior Fellow Asia Program, German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin
'The contributors provide unprecedented breadth and depth on China's national strategy to achieve dominance in artificial intelligence and the means by which Beijing intends to do so. They set a clear, evidence-based benchmark for which any future assessments should account.'--Peter Mattis, Former Deputy Staff Director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and coauthor of Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer