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It is not clear any longer that in the near future most new software technology will still originate in the US. It appears that the first author of about 50% o

It is not clear any longer that in the near future most new software technology will still originate in the US. It appears that the first author of about 50% or more of accepted long papers at ACL 2018, a top NLP conference, is a Chinese. (I didn't count comprehensively as there are > 200 papers, but I counted from a substantial sample.) http://acl2018.org/programme/papers/ http://acl2018.org/programme/papers/ Added: Yes, an NLP conference is far from a comprehensive sample of software technology. That is why my first sentence was quite tentative. Nevertheless, the data could be a harbinger for a more widespread phenomenon to come (US researchers used to dominate many, perhaps most, top AI conferences). The point is not mainland China will dominate software technology. It is that the US may no longer be dominant. Feel free to add other data to contribute to substantive discussion.

curuinor 8y ago
Chinese ethnicity doesn't mean Chinese (PRC) national. There's also Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc...
- curuinor 8y ago
  (or american born chinese, or british born chinese, etc etc. almost nobody can get a chinese citizenship, plenty of smart people get american citizenships)
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  And plenty of Americans are Chinese (especially in tech research), if you see the latter as an ethnicity rather than a nationality.
sidlls 8y ago
It isn't clear that your sample is representative of the population of "software technology."
nopinsight 8y ago
Some more/better data: I added up the number of university researchers who publish in top AI conferences (according to csrankings.org) between 2017 and 2018. Here are rough/approximate numbers of faculty members/university researchers who published as above in each country/continent: US 770 Canada 92 Asia (including China) 340 China 240 Europe 280 Australia + New Zealand 86 South America 12 The world excluding the US 810 So the US is still far ahead of other nations/regions, but it now has a bit below 50% of the world's university researchers who recently published in top conferences in AI. (AI is the field I'm interested in. Feel free to look into other fields.) An issue with the data is that some researchers in larger regions (Asia/Europe) may only choose to publish in their regional conferences instead. The number of researchers is not weighted by the number of papers published but this number is useful since it counts the number of people who are capable to advising graduate students to produce world-class research. Using the number of papers is complicated by the number of highly capable international graduate students who choose to study in each program (in addition to the researcher's capability). http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2018/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&ir&world http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2018/index?ai&v...

curuinor 8y ago

Chinese ethnicity doesn't mean Chinese (PRC) national. There's also Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc...

curuinor 8y ago
(or american born chinese, or british born chinese, etc etc. almost nobody can get a chinese citizenship, plenty of smart people get american citizenships)
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
And plenty of Americans are Chinese (especially in tech research), if you see the latter as an ethnicity rather than a nationality.

sidlls 8y ago

It isn't clear that your sample is representative of the population of "software technology."

nopinsight 8y ago

Some more/better data: I added up the number of university researchers who publish in top AI conferences (according to csrankings.org) between 2017 and 2018. Here are rough/approximate numbers of faculty members/university researchers who published as above in each country/continent: US 770 Canada 92 Asia (including China) 340 China 240 Europe 280 Australia + New Zealand 86 South America 12 The world excluding the US 810 So the US is still far ahead of other nations/regions, but it now has a bit below 50% of the world's university researchers who recently published in top conferences in AI. (AI is the field I'm interested in. Feel free to look into other fields.) An issue with the data is that some researchers in larger regions (Asia/Europe) may only choose to publish in their regional conferences instead. The number of researchers is not weighted by the number of papers published but this number is useful since it counts the number of people who are capable to advising graduate students to produce world-class research. Using the number of papers is complicated by the number of highly capable international graduate students who choose to study in each program (in addition to the researcher's capability). http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2018/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&ir&world http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2018/index?ai&v...