The Evolving Landscape of Global AI Talent: An Analysis of the MacroPolo Report

Thursday - March 28 2024, 14:26 UTC - 1 year ago

In a recent update of their Global AI Talent Tracker, think tank MacroPolo revealed that Chinese researchers now make up 26% of elite AI scholars, almost dethroning the US's 28%. With the majority of Chinese graduate AI researchers staying in China, investing in graduate-level institutions and attracting overseas students may expand research capacity in the competitive world of AI development.

In 2019, MIT Technology Review covered a report that shined a light on how fast China's AI talent pool was growing. Its main finding was pretty interesting: the number of elite AI scholars with Chinese origins had multiplied by 10 in the previous decade, but relatively few of them stayed in China for their work. The majority moved to the US.

Now the think tank behind the report has published an updated analysis, showing how the makeup of global AI talent has changed since - during a critical period when the industry has shifted significantly and become the hottest technology sector.

The team at MacroPolo, a think tank that focuses on US-China relations, studied the national origin, educational background, and current work affiliation of top researchers who gave presentations and had papers accepted at NeurIPS, a top academic conference on AI. Their analysis of the 2019 conference resulted in the first iteration of the Global AI Talent Tracker. They've analyzed the December 2022 NeurIPS conference for an update three years later.

I recommend you read the original report, which has a very well-designed infographic that shows the talent flow across countries. But to save you some time, I also talked to the authors and highlighted what I think are the most surprising or important takeaways from the new report.

Here are the four main things you need to know about the global AI talent landscape today: .

1. Even in 2019, Chinese researchers were already a significant part of the global AI community, making up one-tenth of the most elite AI researchers. In 2022, they accounted for 26%, almost dethroning the US (American researchers accounted for 28%).

2. "Timing matters," says Ruihan Huang, senior research associate at MacroPolo and one of the lead authors. "The last three years have seen China dramatically expand AI programs across its university system - now there are some 2,000 AI majors - because it was also building an AI industry to absorb that talent." .

3. As a result of these university and industry efforts, many more students in computer science or other STEM majors have joined the AI industry, making Chinese researchers the backbone of cutting-edge AI research.

4. This is perhaps intuitive, but the numbers are still surprisingly high: 80% of AI researchers who went to a graduate school in the US stayed to work in the US, while 90% of their peers who went to a graduate school in China stayed in China.

In a world where major countries are competing with each other to take the lead in AI development, this finding suggests a trick they could use to expand their research capacity: invest in graduate-level institutions and attract overseas students to come. This is particularly important in the US-China context, where the souring of the relationship between the two countries has affected the academic field. According to news reports, quite a few Chinese graduate students have been interrogated at the US border or even denied entry in recent years, as a Trump-era policy persisted. Along with the border restrictions imposed during the pandemic years, this hostility could have prevented more Chinese AI experts from coming to the US.