Microsoft, China, and the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Rethinking tech collaboration in an age of great-power competition.

By
9
Outside Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, 2019. (Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images)

Earlier this month Microsoft President Brad Smith published a blog post about the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Smith argued that “we must ensure that AI advances international competitiveness and national security.” He warned about China’s rising importance in the field and said it is imperative that the U.S. advance AI leadership “among other nations committed to democratic values.”

Microsoft’s extensive role in helping develop China’s AI industry went unmentioned in the post. Yet, as relations between China and the U.S. continue to deteriorate, Microsoft’s history of collaboration with Beijing has come under increasing scrutiny—especially given the national-security implications. 

American firms have been collaborating with their Chinese counterparts for decades, even as China developed a reputation for pressuring foreign operated companies to share data and intellectual property (or outright stealing information from companies). Microsoft was no stranger to the trend.

Microsoft opened its first office in China more than 30 years ago. It expanded and opened Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in Beijing and Shanghai in 1998 and is now the company’s largest research and development center outside the U.S. Today the institute’s more than 300 scientists and engineers conduct “research in areas central to Microsoft’s long-term strategy and future computing vision: natural user interface, artificial intelligence, cloud and edge computing, big data and knowledge mining, computer science fundamentals, intelligent multimedia and computational science.”

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
9
By
Comments (9)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Hartzlk

    Machine learning, which is what has been making most of the AI headlines for maybe the the past five(?) years, has so many applications to so many industries. You can't stifle it in China or anywhere else anymore than you can stop developers from using third party software.
    The power differential comes from who has the biggest data set and can train the best models. If I'm remembering correctly, this is why Klon is so anti Tik Tok: Stop feeding data to China, people.

    Collapse
    1. MathewA

      "you can't stifle it in China "

      You can sure slow it down. By keeping American companies from sharing our tech with the Chinese. We need to divest from China until it stops stealing tech, closes the concentration camps, stop threatening neighbors, and basically joins the liberal world order.

      Collapse
      1. Hartzlk

        Totally agree that American companies should stop handing over their in-house developed competitive advantages to China when asked. If it's not globally shared, don't make an exception for China. It's really a bewildering thing to do.

        Clarifying some earlier thoughts: China doesn't need to steal (or request) tech from the US in order to do machine learning. Open source software is how a lot of new advancements in technology are made. Using open source tools help tech companies make advancements quickly. The machine learning models that companies train are going to be another such tool. If they are made available to everyone equally, I'm still betting American companies beat their Chinese counterparts to market. But this idea that America creates and China begs/borrows/steals is overly simplistic when talking about open source tools in the modern tech industry. We should be careful that we don't shoot our own companies in the foot when we talk about restricting access to technology.

        Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I wonder if the Chinese AI will fake citations on analysis too (See also, Dewey, Cheatham, Howe and Janney, 2023).

    What determines if AI will be good is the quality of info they are building from. China is less open than the US; that's bound to limit the deep learning of their AI.

    Collapse
    1. Hartzlk

      "China is less open than the US; that's bound to limit the deep learning of their AI."
      Or that could mean that the US has US data, and China has China data plus US data. :-D

      Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      Marianna.Martindale

      As it says in the article, "China probably has a much more robust set of training data than we do because it’s three times as large and it has access to our information—TikTok—whereas we don’t have access to theirs." The average citizen in China experiences a "less open" information environment, but to the Chinese government everything's an open book. And if the "quality of info" is a key limiting factor, our free speech environment means that there's a heckuvalot of absolute garbage in our data. China doesn't need to pay sweat shops in the developing world to do psychologically damaging content moderation on their data because they've spent two decades on censorship algorithms. Obviously I'd rather have freedom and democracy than clean AI training data, but surely you get the point: data is by no stretch of the imagination a limiting factor for China.

      Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Dave T

    It's a tough situation, and tougher because of the economics involved. Plenty of Kruschevs over there, looking to buy rope.

    Collapse
  4. Pishposh

    Interesting. Maybe I'm not being totally realistic here but I do wonder if there is an upside to all this cross pollination between the US and China. From a military perspective, if we know roughly what they can do, and they know roughly what we can do, it seems less likely that either side will ever really want to test the waters with a conflict. That assumes that neither side is crazy. Lets hope they aren't as dumb as the Russians have turned out to be on that front.

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    John D. Wright

    Good article

    Collapse