China Widens Lead Over US in AI Patents After Beijing Tech Drive (bloomberg.com) 33
China is increasing its lead over the US in AI patent filings, underscoring the Asian nation's determination to shape and influence a technology that could have broad implications for the world's richest economies. From a report: Chinese institutions applied for 29,853 AI-related patents in 2022, climbing from 29,000 the year prior, according to data that the World Intellectual Property Organization provided to Bloomberg News. That's almost 80% more than US filings, which shrank 5.5%. Overall, China accounted for more than 40% of global AI applications over the past year, the data from the United Nations-affiliated agency showed. Japan and South Korea rounded out the 2022 leaders, with a combined 16,700 applications. The numbers illustrate how Beijing has pushed Chinese companies and agencies to gain an edge in areas such as chipmaking, space exploration and military sciences. More recently, President Xi Jinping has ordered the nation to accelerate fundamental research in response to US efforts to curtail its access to advanced technologies. That's triggered a flood of investment by Chinese companies in AI and quantum computing.
number of patents? how many as BS patents? (Score:3)
number of patents? how many as BS patents?
Re:number of patents? how many as BS patents? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most patents are BS, that's redundant. The patent system should be tossed, at least for sotware. The ratio of BS & wasteful busywork to true innovation is Yuuuge. It's main de-facto purpose is for big co's to win court wars by overwhelming little guys, who don't have a dedicated patent legal team who know how to surf the fucked up system.
Riddem!
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> The patent system should be tossed, at least for sotware.
Chrome's spell-checker occasionally lags for some reason. (I know, don't use Chrome, but sometimes I don't have a choice for reasons I won't go into.)
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But sufficiently qualified examiners would make the filing process much more expensive, favoring big co's even more.
> in a court system that also does not have any technical knowledge.
Sufficient technical experts and specialists are just not going to come cheap. Some kind of tech jury system perhaps should be set up, but either they are forced into service via conscription, or you pay them lots, bringing us back to the expensive filing problem.
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You're just saying the same stuff everyone's been saying for 200 years now.
Yes, the patent system has basically been broken since the beginning. Back in the 19th centur
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Does it matter? Most patents only exist to provide a patent portfolio to trade, or to extract revenue from other companies.
How to beat China (Score:2)
China has turned capitalism on its head. Instead of an economic system the uses legal code to enable investors to join together and invest in new endeavors. China has one party that controls all the money and all the laws and operates a centrally planned economic system. Any focus they choose is nearly unbeatable by the rest of the world, if China can hold their attention long enough on it. Breaking their focus is possible if there is some doubt as to their dominate position. The most straight forward way t
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Re:How to beat China (Score:4, Insightful)
Any focus they choose is nearly unbeatable by the rest of the world, if China can hold their attention long enough on it.
That's nonsense. Barring changes, they're going to lose for the same reasons the Soviet Union lost:
1) Closed societies cannot innovate as well as open ones. Innovation requires free thinking. Free thinking is anathema to autocracies.
2) Central planning sounds great on paper, until reality changes and your neatly laid plans are now moot. The Soviet Union had plans in the 1960s to overtake the United States on industrial production. They achieved that goal, great, except, the US transitioned into an Information Economy and still kicked their asses on per capita income, science, technology, and every other metric that mattered. They mined more coal and produced more steel than we did though. Ask modern day Russia (third world country outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow) what that meant in the long term.
The PRC isn't the USSR but the fundamental problems are the same, including an unwillingness to confront hard truths when they disagree with party dogma. Now that's shade you can also throw at the current US political system, both of our mainstream parties are guilty of it, except our political system can exist as background noise while day to day life and business continue unimpeded. If you engage with social media and/or cable news, it feels all consuming, but fun fact, most people don't give a shit and tune out until election season is upon them. You don't have the luxury of ignoring the political system in the PRC. You follow the party line or you find yourself "corrected" through various forms of coercion until you do.
In a way, the PRC is on a course to be worse than the USSR, because the USSR never tried one man rule again after Stalin died. The PRC is backsliding on that one, empowering Winnie-the-Pooh in a way that no Chinese leader since Mao has been empowered. If Winnie-the-Pooh turns out to be Augustus, great, but the smart money is that he's a middling intelligence at best, I see zero signs he's Augustus, and there's a non-zero chance he turns out to be Caligula. That's the danger with one man rule. The Chinese Communist Party will regret going down this path again. You think they'd have learned.
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The Soviet Union lost because they focused their efforts on industrialization and failed to anticipate the role of global communication technology. It was a very good example of a centrally planned economy focused on the past and present and not preparing itself for an every changing future.
China has many forward looking initiatives. And these initiatives are the very topic of this article. China is not comparable to the Soviet Union in this instance.
Re:How to beat China (Score:4, Insightful)
The point, which you sort of allude to with "ever changing future", is Governments -- even liberal free ones -- are shit at anticipating the next great thing. You see China as forward looking. You could just as easily say AI is snake oil. American companies are chasing it too, but when an American company bets poorly they lay people off, sometimes they go out of business, that's part of the creative destruction of capitalism. It's quite different than the Government going "all in" on something that turns out to be a flop. The Government actually is Too Big to Fail.
You're ignoring China's very real demographic and economic challenges, which would be tough for any Government to come to terms with, never mind one that's trending towards one man rule and a Cult of Personality. You glossed right past the point of open vs. closed society vis-à-vis innovation too.
Want to talk about politics? Many blame the US for the deterioration in Sino-Western relations, except, that kind of overlooks what they did in Hong Kong. It overlooks the never ending bluster towards Taiwan. It overlooks what happened in Xinjiang. What's happening in the South China Sea. Human rights oppression will turn the West against you. The actions in the South China Sea are costing them autocratic partners. Notice how Vietnam is cozying up to the United States, the country that bombed them back into the stone age, instead of allying themselves with the fellow Communist power?
There's also what's happening in Ukraine and the effect it has had on Western unity. That's not directly Winnie-the-Pooh's fault but it is an example of a very real danger with real life Risk [wikipedia.org]. You might find yourself tied to junior partners that are strategic idiots. Ask Hitler how much fun it was having Mussolini on his team.
Finally, millions of people want to live in the West so badly they literally risk life and limb to get there. How many people do you know that would cross the Mediterranean or Darién Gap just for the chance to sneak into the PRC? What does China have to offer that remotely compares to that? Nothing. Just an autocratic model that appeals to established autocrats. At the least the ones they're not threatening to steal territory from.
good time to mention Muslim XinJiang! (Score:2)
Already, China's 911 response is looking restrained and level head
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The 'genocide' classification extends to cultural genocide, but I suspect you're okay with that, since without a trace of irony you just touted 'reeducation work camps' as a net positive.
The one child policy will work out quite handsomely for the liberal world though. It created the ticking demographic time bomb that is going to collapse China's economy within our lifetimes. The only way to fix it would be via mass immigration. That would, obviously, require immigrants desiring to move to China. I doub
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When you can't win on the merits just change the subject. :-)
Solar panel win (Score:2)
China's subsidies on solar panels worked to yank the market from the Yankees. But part of that is merely having lower labor costs in China, so subsidizing panels just gets them to the inevitable faster.
Many believe China plays currency games to keep their labor artificially cheap, but so far they haven't been caught red handed (no pun intended).
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China isn't a closed society. Anyone can apply for a passport and go where they like, visa permitting. Similarly you can easily get a visa to visit China. In fact when I applied for some I made a mistake on the form, and they sent it back with a note about what to fix and didn't charge me. Compared to the UK's visitor visa system, which is designed to be absolute hell, it was extremely easy and open. And cheap.
China doesn't do Soviet/communist style central planning. It's more like the EU, where it enforces
China respect patents? (Score:3)
When did that happen?
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They respect them as tools against the countries that honor them, and against companies in those jurisdictions.
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For quite some time now, in fact. Copyright too - a Chinese court recently enforced the GPL, in one of the strongest acknowledgements of its validity anywhere in the world.
Chinese companies make a lot of money from patents. Huawei is a good example, it has many of the key 5G patents and benefits from a mixture of cross-licencing (so Huawei can use Western patents for free) and being paid fees to use its technology that is now part of international standards.
Abolish patents (Score:2)
a case of quantity over quality (Score:3)
The government actually pays organizations to file patents, that's why there are so many.
Re: a case of quantity over quality (Score:2)
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Why bother (Score:2)
Why bother honoring their patents? It's not like they honor others'.
imaginary property (Score:2)
How long before China and USA decide to reciprocally invalidate each other's patents?