An AI robot displayed during the inaugural China International Import Expo (CIIE) attracted much attention from many female visitors. The robot can do a makeup for someone in 5 minutes. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

China's share of publications on global AI research has grown by 13 percent annually between 2013 and 2017, according to a report by Dutch publisher and analytics company Elsevier, Science and Technology Daily reported on Jan. 13.

The report found that China’s publications on AI ranked first in the world in 2017, after its number of AI publications overtook the United States in 2004. If this momentum continues, the country will pass Europe in AI research within four years.

In recent years, conference papers made up 44 percent of China’s overall AI publications, the reported indicated. The study on global AI trends also found that China is attracting more academic talents than it is losing.

With a focus on the three largest countries and regions contributing to the field of AI - China, the US, and Europe, the report showed that China’s AI research is more regional than global, and suffers from a low level of international cooperation and slow fluidity of researchers.

Chinese research institutes’ cooperation with global technology giants such as Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM, and Microsoft is currently insufficient, said Sun Zhenan, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation.

The report pointed out that China’s AI research, which focuses on computer vision, is yet to publish papers on natural language processing and knowledge representation.

Farsighted Chinese companies such as Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have started to invest in basic AI research, Sun said, noting that it will take further efforts for them to catch up with their international peers.