China has requested far more patents than any other country when it comes to generative AI, the U.N. intellectual property agency said Wednesday, with the United States a distant second.
The technology, which offers the potential to boost efficiency and speed up scientific discoveries but also raises concerns about jobs and workers, was linked to about 54,000 inventions in the decade through 2023, the World Intellectual Property Organization reported.
More than a quarter of those inventions emerged last year — a testament to the explosive growth and interest in the technology since generative AI vaulted into broad public consciousness in late 2022, WIPO said.
The new report on patents, the first of its kind, aims to track patent applications as a possible indication of trends in artificial intelligence. It focuses only on generative AI and excludes artificial intelligence more broadly, which includes technologies like facial recognition or computer vision.
“WIPO hopes to give everyone a better understanding of where this fast-evolving technology is being developed, and where it is headed,” WIPO Director-General Daren Tang told reporters.
Over the decade starting in 2014, over 38,200 GenAI inventions came from China. That's six times more than from the United States, which had nearly 6,300. They were trailed by South Korea with 4,155, Japan with more than 3,400 and India with 1,350.
GenAI helps users create text, images, music, computer code and other content through the use of tools including ChatGPT from OpenAI, Google Gemini and Ernie from China's Baidu. The technology has been employed by many industries including the life sciences, manufacturing, transportation, security and telecommunications.
Some critics fear that GenAI could replace workers in some types of jobs or improperly take human-generated content without fair or adequate compensation to the people behind it.
As with other types of patent applications, WIPO officials acknowledge that the quantity of GenAI patents doesn't indicate quality. It's hard to tell so early in the technology which patents will have market value or be transformative for society.
“Let’s see how the the data and how the developments unfold over time," Tang said.
The U.S. and China are often seen as rivals in the development of artificial intelligence, but by some measures U.S. tech companies are taking the lead in making the world’s most cutting-edge AI systems.
Sixty-one notable machine-learning models emerged from U.S.-based institutions in 2023, outpacing the European Union’s 21 and China’s 15, according to the annual AI Index from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence. Of EU countries, France had the most, with eight.
By another measure, the U.S. also has the most so-called AI foundation models — such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, Anthropic’s Claude 3, Gemini and Meta’s Llama, which are huge, versatile and trained on massive datasets.
The U.S. also has led China in private AI investments and the number of newly formed AI startups, while China has led in industrial robotics.
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9 Comments
quercetum
Those inventions may have come from China, but every single one of them were stolen says the bright green unripe grape eating fox.
quercetum
China graduates way more engineers than the U.S. More STEM graduates. The disparity is like 1 to 7. And a lot of the 1 are Asians.
Americans prefer to be humanities majors who read novels and use big words to talk about the world: "it's the social contract and internationalism in the declaration of independence that makes us who we are and so Putin will not stand a chance against...." Meanwhile the Japanese in the group who has no idea, nods and pretends he knows what is being said and takes another sip of beer.
elephant200
China is winning the future of AI, just like the Huawei corporation, she never dies, she just grow stronger than ever, the American sanctions were useless !
rocketpig
If you just look at the domination of the Chinese in the field of mathematics, AI domination will come as no surprise. The foundation of AI is mathematics
isabelle
On what metric are you basing this Chinese "domination" exactly? If you're talking about academics, the best universities appear to be in the US and Europe.
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/mathematics
https://edurank.org/math/
China will not dominate AI as all its models must adhere to Xi Jinping Thought. This simple fact detaches them from the real world and immediately destroys their value.
A laughable generalization.
lostrune2
All they do is submit patents because their pay or tenure depends on it
But they don't do anything with it. They just submit, submit, submit. It's just ink on paper
(And it's not like China respects patents anyways. Chinese people are not known for their knockoffs for nothing.)
These are the ones that are actually working out in the real world
As they say in sports, the game is played on the pitch, not on paper
TokyoOldMan
China steals and does not innovate - just like Japan did in Past decades.
Did "Chat GPT" come from China ? ... NO !
Did the Motor Car come from Japan ? ..... NO !
Its with little wonder, that Western Countries have started to reject Education related visas for Chinese Nationals.
The future may tell a different Story, however worryingly, China unlike Japan, has a Totalitarianism regime, which poses a threat to the use of this Technology to the Rest of the World. That threat, if it becomes recognized as verifiably realistic may result in Conflict.
TokyoLiving
And it is one of almost all technological fields in which China already surpasses the US and Europe..
The world is changing and we have to get used to the idea that this is the beginning of a new world order with multilateralism and equality for all countries..
This is China's century..
China is winning the future..
The future belongs to China and those who want to be its friends..
bass4funk
By stealing intellectual properties.
https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/the-new-reality-of-dealing-with-a-china-in-decline/
To a point.
Not really
At China’s demands? Hardly.