Communications of the ACM
The Future of Artificial Intelligence in China
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China's research efforts in artificial intelligence (AI) began later than the U.S. and Europe. Early contributions in the 1970s included automated theorem proving, logic reasoning, search, and knowledge engineering. For example, Wen-tsün Wu is a pioneer in automated theorem proving. He received the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award in 2000, an honor bestowed on only 25 Chinese scientists across all fields to date. Bo Zhang and Ruqian Lu received the Life Achievement Award from the China Computer Federation (CCF) for their fundamental contributions respectively on problem solving and knowledge engineering.
With the establishment of basic research funding to include AI research and development (R&D) in 1986, two agencies—the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), which supports basic research, and the 863 Program (State High-Tech Development Plan) for applied research—began funding diverse AI-related research topics, such as hardware and software for intelligence, human-computer interaction (HCI), intelligent application systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics.
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