With everyone like that mesmerized by silver tongue AI chatbotsit’s easy to forget that most of the flashy breakthroughs in science and technology depend on much less compelling advances in the fundamentals of computing—new algorithms, new architectures, and more. various computers and novel silicon chips.
The United States has dominated much of these areas of innovation since the earliest days of computing. But scholars studying advances in computer science say in a new report that by many measures, U.S. leadership in advanced computing has fallen dramatically within the last 5 years—especially when compared to China.
It is well established that America no longer produces much among the world’s most advanced computer chips—a process that involves carving extremely complex patterns into silicon using extremely difficult techniques. Instead, Apple and many other companies outsource operations to TSMC in Taiwan or Samsung in South Korea. This is why the US government created CHIPS Act—a $52 billion package aimed at revitalizing the domestic chip industry and related technologies.
Report — from MIT; The Council on Competitiveness, an expert advisory group; and Silicon Catalyst, an investment firm—shows that America’s share of the world’s most powerful supercomputers has also fallen dramatically over the past five years.
And while the United States has a tradition governs the development of new computer algorithms, several measures of algorithmic innovation—such as the Gordon Bell Prize, awarded to outstanding scientists in advanced computing—shows that the United States has lost its edge to China. The report summarizes the general trend in its clear title: “America’s leadership in advanced computing is almost gone.”
In a sense, these findings are hardly surprising. China has made great economic progress in recent decades, boosting its universities and technology industries and making it a mainstay of manufacturing innovation for many Chinese businesses. Ky.
But they also carry a message of the future that U.S. policymakers may want to keep in mind, especially as advances in computing will be critical to making progress in critical areas. such as energy, climate science and medicine due to their ability to model extremely complex phenomena. .
Neil Thompsonan MIT researcher involved in the report, explained that modern AI like ChatGPT and art creation algorithm is built on advances in a specific type of computer chip—the graphics processing unit (GPU). They were originally invented to perform the operations needed to render video game graphics, but have proven to be very well suited to calculations used in an AI technique called deep learning.
