WAIC
KEY POINTS
- Only Qualcomm listed as ‘elite partner’ for WAIC 2023
- Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and IBM were WAIC partners in 2019
- U.S. companies cutting back engagement will hurt China’s tech growth opportunities: Mary B. Teagarden
- OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, won’t attend the conference
China is holding its biggest artificial intelligence conference Thursday in Shanghai, but this year there is a noticeable decline in the number of American companies sponsoring the event. American tech companies are staying out as part of a risk management strategy amid China-U.S. tensions and Beijing’s tightening oversight of the industry and it could spell bad news for China’s technological growth, an expert said.
The World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, which will run July 6-8 with the theme ‘Intelligence Connectivity Generating Future,’ will feature more than 400 exhibitors. Aside from AI companies, the event is also expected to draw government officials, industry experts, scholars, scientists, investors and AI startups.
But only San Diego-based chipmaker Qualcomm features as an ‘elite partner’ for the conference from the U.S. tech industry. There are no U.S. companies listed in the higher sponsor tiers, strategic and excellent partners. The rest of the event’s sponsors are all Chinese firms, including U.S.-sanctioned Chinese tech giant Huawei and AI software provider SenseTime.
Other Chinese tech giants sponsoring the event are Alipay parent company Ant Group, internet company Baidu, e-commerce giant Alibaba, video game behemoth Tencent, and state-owned telecommunications company China Telecom.
Before the pandemic year, the WAIC 2019 saw Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and IBM as “strategic partners” of the event. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also attended as one of the summit’s high-profile speakers and discussed AI with Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma.
This year, some of America’s big tech companies will attend the event as delegates, including representatives from Apple, Tesla, Microsoft and Amazon.
Shirley Marcus, dean of Amazon Cloud Technology Generative AI Product Research Institute, will attend the summit as a speaker, and so will Lisa Su, chairman and CEO of Santa Clara-based Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
U.S. companies disengaging from partnering China’s biggest AI summit is a “risk management strategy” to Beijing’s oversight of the tech industry in general, Mary B. Teagarden, deputy dean of knowledge enterprise at the Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, told the International Business Times.
Notably, ChatGPT maker OpenAI is skipping this year’s WAIC. The American AI leader’s absence follows China’s recent publication of a draft law that requires companies to undergo a “security assessment” before any of their generative AI products are deployed to the public.
The draft law, released by the Cyberspace Administration of China and dubbed as the “Administrative Measures for Generative Artificial Intelligence Services,” states that “content generated by generative artificial intelligence should reflect the core value of socialism, and must not contain subversion of state power,” as per a Google translation.
In May, Chinese media reported that authorities arrested a man accused of using AI to generate fake news. The accused allegedly used ChatGPT to generate a fake article about a train crash in northwestern Gansu.
Teagarden said a strong show of support by American tech companies for AI summits such as the WAIC would reduce the negative impact of the U.S.-China tech war. “The current weak attendance will put a drag on innovation for both sides,” she pointed out.
An open global trade is beneficial for both countries since it encourages technologically advanced companies to embrace intellectual property strategies. But China’s current tech policies aimed at the U.S. are leading to contraction in engagement from some of the West’s technology leaders, Teagarden, who specializes in technology and innovation management, explained.
“Worse, this reduced engagement of U.S. companies is at the detriment of China’s ongoing development and [impedes] opportunities for employment [for] their large number of unemployed high-tech university graduates,” she said.
The U.S.-China tech war has been escalating in recent months after Washington cut off China from some tools that could be used to make certain advanced semiconductor chips. Beijing hit back, restricting the sale of Boise-based chip company Micron saying they posed national security risks. Just this week, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced new export curbs on gallium and germanium exports – key metals for making chips.
