China Trails the US in AI Development, Says Former Google China Chief

Chinese AI models lag behind their American counterparts by six to nine months, though their applications are expected to develop much more rapidly. This view was expressed by former Google China head Kai-Fu Lee, according to CNBC. 

The discussion centers on large language models (LLM), which are trained on vast amounts of data and capable of processing and generating text, images, and video. Less advanced Chinese neural networks may trail their American counterparts by approximately 15 months, Lee noted. 

“I would predict that by the beginning of next year, applications in China will spread much faster than in the US,” he added. 

According to the author of the book “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,” China is inevitably poised to create the “world’s best applications” with artificial intelligence. Whether these will be developed by large or small companies remains unknown. 

Lee believes it will take five to eight years before consumer applications based on generative AI reach a new level and transform into a unified “super app” capable of performing multiple tasks. 

The industry will require entirely new devices instead of existing smartphones, which are always on and ready to work. 

In August, Alibaba launched a group of LLMs focused on mathematics, Qwen2-Math, which “surpass GPT-4o and Claude 3.5” in this field.

Earlier, Chinese company Kuaishou opened its AI model for video generation, Kling, to the public.

In July, researchers named China a leader in the adoption of generative artificial intelligence.