China is closing in on US technology lead despite constraints

China can narrow its technological gap with the ​US driven ⁠by growing risk-taking and innovation, though the lack of advanced chipmaking tools is hobbling the sector, the country's leading artificial intelligence researchers said.

China's so-called 'AI tiger' startups MiniMax and Zhipu AI had strong debuts on the Hong Kong ‌Stock Exchange last week, reflecting growing confidence in the sector ⁠as ‌Beijing fast-tracks AI and chip listings to bolster domestic alternatives ‍to advanced US technology.

Yao Shunyu, a former senior researcher ⁠at ChatGPT maker OpenAI who was named technology giant Tencent's chief AI scientist in December, said there was a high likelihood of a Chinese firm becoming the world's leading AI company in the next three to five years but ‍said the lack of advanced chipmaking machines was the main technical hurdle.

"Currently, we have a significant advantage in electricity and infrastructure. The main bottlenecks ‌are production capacity, including lithography machines, and the software ecosystem," Yao said at an AI conference in Beijing.

China has completed a working prototype of an extreme-ultraviolet lithography machine potentially capable of producing cutting-edge semiconductor chips that rival the West's, Reuters reported last month.

However, the machine has not yet produced working chips and may not do so until 2030, people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Mind the investment gap

Yao and other Chinese industry leaders at the Beijing conference on Saturday also acknowledged that the US maintains an advantage in computing power due to its hefty investments in infrastructure.

"The US computer infrastructure is likely one to two orders of magnitude larger than ours. But I see that whether it's OpenAI ‌or other platforms, they're investing heavily in next-generation research," said Lin Junyang, technical lead for Alibaba's flagship ‌Qwen large language model.

"We, on the other hand, are relatively strapped for cash; delivery alone likely consumes the majority of our computer infrastructure," Lin said during a panel discussion at the AGI-Next Frontier Summit held ‌by the Beijing Key Laboratory of Foundational Models at Tsinghua University.

Lin said China's limited resources have spurred its researchers to be innovative, particularly through algorithm-hardware co-design, which enables AI firms to run large models on smaller, inexpensive hardware.

Tang Jie, founder ​of Zhipu AI which raised HK$4.35 billion ($840 million) in its IPO, also highlighted the willingness of younger Chinese AI entrepreneurs to embrace high-risk ventures - a trait traditionally associated with Silicon Valley - as a positive development.

"I think ⁠if we can ​improve this environment, allowing more time for these risk-taking, intelligent individuals to engage in innovative endeavours ... this is something our government and the country can ‌help improve," said Tang.