{"id":85877,"date":"2018-12-16T07:42:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T15:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/china-has-never-had-a-real-chip-industry-making-ai-chips-could-change-that"},"modified":"2018-12-16T07:42:32","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T15:42:32","slug":"china-has-never-had-a-real-chip-industry-making-ai-chips-could-change-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/china-has-never-had-a-real-chip-industry-making-ai-chips-could-change-that","title":{"rendered":"China has never had a real chip industry. Making AI chips could change that"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

This is happening in the city of Tianjin, about an hour\u2019s drive south of Beijing, within a gleaming office building that belongs to iFlytek, one of China\u2019s rapidly rising artificial-intelligence companies. Beyond guarded gates, inside a glitzy showroom, the US president is on a large TV screen heaping praise on the Chinese company. It\u2019s Trump\u2019s voice and face, but the recording is, of course, fake\u2014a cheeky demonstration of the cutting-edge AI technology iFlytek is developing.<\/p>\n

Jiang Tao chuckles and leads the way to some other examples of iFlytek\u2019s technology. Throughout the tour, Tao, one of the company\u2019s cofounders, uses another remarkable innovation: a hand-held device that converts his words from Mandarin into English almost instantly. At one point he speaks into the machine, and then grins as it translates: \u201cI find that my device solves the communication problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

IFlytek\u2019s translator shows off AI capabilities that rival those found anywhere in the world. But it also highlights a big hole in China\u2019s plan, unveiled in 2017, to be the world leader in AI by 2030. The algorithms inside were developed by iFlytek, but the hardware\u2014the microchips that bring those algorithms to life\u2014was designed and made elsewhere. While China manufactures most of the world\u2019s electronic gadgets, it has failed, time and again, to master the production of these tiny, impossibly intricate silicon structures. Its dependence on foreign integrated circuits could potentially cripple its AI ambitions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is happening in the city of Tianjin, about an hour\u2019s drive south of Beijing, within a gleaming office building that belongs to iFlytek, one of China\u2019s rapidly rising artificial-intelligence companies. Beyond guarded gates, inside a glitzy showroom, the US president is on a large TV screen heaping praise on the Chinese company. It\u2019s Trump\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}