The New York Times on May 27, 2017, reported that China is making massive investments to develop AI.  China has plans to use it to predict crimes, lend money, track people on the country’s ubiquitous closed-circuit cameras, alleviate traffic jams, create self-guided missiles and censor the internet. China is readying a new multibillion-dollar initiative to fund moonshot projects, start-ups and academic research, with the aim of growing China’s A.I. capabilities. Baidu, called the Google of China and a pioneer in artificial-intelligence-related fields, like speech recognition — this year opened a joint company-government laboratory partly run by academics who once worked on research into Chinese military robots.

Numerous provinces and cities are spending billions on developing robotics. For example, the city of Xiangtan, in China’s Hunan province, has pledged $2 billion toward developing robots and artificial intelligence. In Suzhou, leading artificial intelligence companies can get about $800,000 in subsidies for setting up shop locally, while Shenzhen, in southern China, is offering $1 million to support any A.I. project established there. Chinese tech giants like Baidu, Tencent and Didi Chuxing have also opened artificial intelligence labs in America, as have some Chinese start-ups. Over the past six years, Chinese investors helped finance 51 American artificial intelligence companies, contributing to the $700 million raised, according to the recent Pentagon report.  A paper funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China showed how facial recognition software can be simplified so that it can be more easily integrated with cameras across the country.