How China Is Advancing in AI Despite U.S. Chip Restrictions [Video]

In 2017, Beijing unveiled an ambitious roadmap to dominate artificial intelligence development, aiming to secure global leadership by 2030. By 2020, the plan called for “iconic advances” in AI to demonstrate its progress. Then in late 2022, OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT took the world by surprise—and caught China flat-footed.

At the time, leading Chinese technology companies were still reeling from an 18-month government crackdown that shaved around $1 trillion off China’s tech sector. It was almost a year before a handful of Chinese AI chatbots received government approval for public release. Some questioned whether China’s stance on censorship might hobble the country’s AI ambitions. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s export controls, unveiled just a month before ChatGPT’s debut, aimed to cut China off from the advanced semiconductors essential for training large-scale AI models. Without cutting-edge chips, Beijing’s goal of AI supremacy by 2030 appeared increasingly out of reach.

But fast forward to today, and …