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【Text/Observer.com Xiong Chaoran】“China is narrowing the gap with the United States in artificial intelligence (AI) by making rapid progress in deploying applications and state-backed adoption of the technology despite chip restrictions, industry experts and analysts said.”

On August 1, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that as the United States imposed stricter restrictions on China around advanced chips considered critical for training artificial intelligence systems, Chinese technology companies are rapidly creating their own large language models (LLMs), the underlying technology behind generative artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT. Many companies even said they have "caught up with or surpassed their American counterparts."

“Amid U.S. export restrictions, China’s lack of (advanced) graphics processing units has become a new reality, prompting China’s AI efficiency to improve,” said Ma Wenyan, author of Digital Warfare: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain, and Cyberspace.

For example, a seemingly unknown startup in Beijing, Shengshu AI, launched a text-to-video tool this week, becoming the latest local company to offer unlimited Sora-style services to the public, following Kuaishou and Zhipu AI. The tool, called Vidu, can generate video clips based on text prompts in Chinese and English.

While text-to-video was pioneered by Sora, these three Chinese tech companies have been able to put their AI video tools in the hands of users around the world. In contrast, San Francisco-based startup OpenAI was the first to demonstrate this capability, but its tools are not yet widely used. In addition, Chinese companies have also contributed to global AI development by launching open source large language models so that anyone can build their own AI system.

On July 5, 2024, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC 2024) was held at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center. IC Photo

The South China Morning Post noted that analysts attribute China's rapid progress in artificial intelligence in part to its ability to bypass chip limitations and develop the intelligent computing capabilities needed to train large local language models.

As early as October 2022, the US government had implemented a series of AI chip export restrictions, which prevented the US technology company Nvidia from providing the two AI processors A100 and H100 to the Chinese market. On October 17, 2023, the US Department of Commerce issued a series of new chip export restrictions, expanding the definition of advanced AI chips and imposing additional licensing requirements for chip products shipped to more than 40 countries to avoid resale to China. The introduction of this new restriction means that Nvidia's A800 and H800 chips are also included in the banned list.

The report pointed out that since the introduction of these suppressive and restrictive measures by the United States against China, the Chinese government and some of China's leading technology companies have successfully built up a huge reserve of intelligent computing capabilities, which is partly due to locally developed solutions.

“Looking at the figures, domestic computing power has been increasing rapidly as many state-owned enterprises and local governments have been tasked with (developing) intelligent computing capabilities,” a Chinese technician working in the field told the South China Morning Post. He added that chips developed by local companies such as Huawei have become popular, and Huawei’s Ascend series of products are China’s best choice for developing local artificial intelligence infrastructure.

In June this year, at the World Semiconductor Conference held in Nanjing, Jiangsu, Wang Tao, COO of Huawei Ascend and Kunpeng Ecosystem, announced a series of test results showing that Huawei's latest Ascend 910B AI chip outperforms Nvidia's A100 chip in many aspects, with a performance lead of up to 20% in some tests.

Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst at technology consulting firm iiMedia, said China's construction of computing resource infrastructure also helps ease concerns about the lack of advanced chips. Compared with other countries, China's huge market size and public sector demand for artificial intelligence and its applications are conducive to the further development of artificial intelligence in China. "China has a comprehensive and complete manufacturing industrial production system, and many entities are in urgent need of improving efficiency, so this is where artificial intelligence can play a role."

Last November, McKinsey & Company, a world-renowned consulting firm, said it believed that investment experts were preparing to invest heavily in the next decade to promote the development of artificial intelligence in Chinese companies. The annual amount will not only reach trillions of dollars, but will also become a strategic driver of China's economic growth.

"Building on traditional AI and advanced analytical technologies, generative AI can further unlock economic benefits worth $2 trillion (per year) in China," said Violet Chung, senior partner of McKinsey Greater China, at the time.

On July 3, the latest report released by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) showed that China is far ahead of other countries in the world in generative artificial intelligence inventions such as chatbots, and the number of patents applied for is six times that of the United States. Not long ago, a new survey by SAS, an American artificial intelligence and analytical software company, and Coleman Parkes Research also showed that China is currently in the world's leading position in the application of generative artificial intelligence, which is the latest sign of China's progress in this technology.

China has repeatedly expressed its position on the malicious blockade and suppression of China's semiconductor industry by the United States. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian once said that in the field of artificial intelligence, the United States expressed its hope to engage in dialogue with China while at the same time planning to suppress the development of China's artificial intelligence technology, exposing the hypocritical face of the United States who says one thing and does another. The US measures cannot stop China's technological progress, but will only encourage Chinese companies to become self-reliant and strong.

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