Tong, from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder says educating the next generation will also be important to keeping China's economy at the forefront of changes in the way we live and work.
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00:00 Tony Tong is chair of the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Operations Division at Leeds School of
00:04 Business at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I asked him about the drivers behind
00:09 the booming AI and humanoid robot industries in China.
00:14 Chinese companies tend to be a good follower in many technology fields, but coming up with
00:23 truly innovative solutions is a little harder, but I think there are signs showing that China
00:31 is doing better in recent years. I think this is through education, through investment in
00:41 R&D, and promoting a culture of innovation, entrepreneurship, and also facilitating collaboration
00:52 between different sectors like academia, industry, and government. But at the end of the day,
00:59 I think it boils down to education. How do we encourage our younger generation to have
01:07 a solid understanding of STEM, science, technology, education, math, and engineering, and how
01:16 to promote that culture among the very young kids.
01:20 Things have obviously come quite a long way in quite a short time, but how do you think
01:24 China's AI landscape will evolve from here?
01:29 Yeah, so this is a very interesting question. I've been writing a paper about China's position
01:37 in the global AI landscape and how that would evolve. Here we believe that China will continue
01:45 to grow its AI capabilities, and the catch-up will continue and possibly even accelerate.
01:53 Now, this does not come naturally or easily. The country has to keep investing in R&D,
02:03 promoting a culture of collaboration, as I mentioned earlier, and promoting entrepreneurship,
02:08 which would really facilitate this convergence of ideas from different walks of life.
02:18 One thing I'll also say is that as China grows, I think we're going to see increasing collaboration
02:24 between Chinese scientists and scientists and engineers from other countries. So we're
02:32 going to see more collaboration across borders. Part of this is driven by the fact that AI
02:38 is considered to be open science, and a culture of collaboration is almost a must for engineers
02:48 in that profession. So if we can embrace a more open-minded mentality in facilitating
02:56 collaboration, I think China will keep growing very fast.