Still, he told the conference that China has published relevant governance guidance and ethical norms for AI regulation, which clearly show the government’s stance towards responsible tech development.
With that regulatory infrastructure, the minister urged local companies to work with research facilities and educational institutions to pursue advances in AI that can contribute to economic growth and societal progress.
Wang also called for international collaboration to tackle potential challenges in AI development concerning privacy, public security and employment.
In his speech at the Tianjin conference, Wang said China’s total expenditure on research and development reached about 3.09 trillion yuan (US$441 billion) last year, accounting for 2.55 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, to rank second globally.
As a result, Wang said China topped the world in certain AI categories last year. These include in terms of number of AI-related patent submissions, publications and citations. China also led the world in terms of computer vision, natural language processing and audio recognition, he said.
Wang, however, indicated a number of challenges to advance China’s AI capabilities, such as in sophisticated algorithms, the lack of quality Chinese-language training and the efficiency of local AI models.
This was not the first time 65-year-old Wang, who took office in March 2018, has drummed up China’s AI development push.
At a press conference on the first day of the annual National People’s Congress in March, Wang suggested that China has some work to do in catching up to the progress made by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
ChatGPT has advantages in delivering results in real time, which is “very difficult to achieve”, Wang said. For China to achieve the kind of results that OpenAI achieved, he indicated that the country will need to “wait and see”.
