China is narrowing the gap against the U.S. when it comes to AI research

The gap between AI researchers from China and the United States is narrowing, according to a new study. Hundreds of researchers attend the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) to hear presentations on the latest developments in AI. It’s become something of the de facto conference for the elite in AI to mingle and show off. The study, publiched by researchers from the University of Toronto, found that 23 percent of the papers presented at the 2017 AAAI Conference were Chinese. For comparison, just 10 percent were Chinese in 2012. Perhaps more interesting, the share of U.S. authors publishing AI research fell from 41 percent to 34 percent over the seven-year period.