China is Just 6-9 Months Behind US in AI Capabilities

In a recent interview, Kai-Fu Lee, Taiwanese computer scientist, entrepreneur, and author of ‘AI Superpower’ said that China will catch up with the US in AI capabilities. Speaking about his company, 01.ai, which Lee founded, he said that it is the first company in China to achieve GPT-4 performance.

“If there are breakthroughs, the US will continue to lead. If most technologies are known and it's about execution, then China with its tenacious, hardworking culture and tremendous market opportunity will be able to catch up,” said Lee. 

China’s Advantage

Lee went on to explain how 14 months ago, they had nothing, including no GPT. “At that time, we were six or seven years behind, and at this moment we are six to nine months behind. So the catch up has already been happening and going forward, we hope that it can continue,” said Lee.   

China's advantage lies in execution. Lee believes that building a robust model involves more than just invention; it requires others to replicate, like Mistral and similar companies have. The country's strategy involves extensive data collection, cleansing, and prioritisation for effective training. They utilise advanced infrastructure and distributed computing to maximise GPU performance. 

The country excels in application development, emphasising practical implementation above all else. “China's advantage is doing whatever it takes to catch up,” said Lee. 

In another recent development, the ChatGLM model from China exceeds GPT-4 across several benchmarks.

Interestingly, such conversations have been gaining traction. Recently, investor and entrepreneur Chamath Palihapititya, also posted about how China is zooming ahead in advancements across varied fields. “China is absolutely destroying us in discovering the future,” he said. 

Source: X

While Lee believes China is only months behind the US in AI capabilities, a few months ago, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes that the US still maintains a significant lead in AI. 

“In the case of AI, we are well ahead two or three years, probably, of China, which in my world is an eternity,” said Schmidt.