We know that the productivity of the very top researchers is not just some incremental percentage over others, it is often multiple times higher. Check out the

We know that the productivity of the very top researchers is not just some incremental percentage over others, it is often multiple times higher. Check out the list of names under departments with publications in top AI conferences in the last three years. A large percentage, maybe even most, were not born in the US. http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2019/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&ir&world http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2019/index?ai&v... (Although the number of publications in top conferences is not a perfect measure, it is a pretty good one and correlates with most other measures one would think of as important.) The world is also catching up. Among the “top 20” departments, according to this measure between 2017-2019, 10 are in the US, 9 in Asia (7 China, 2 Singapore), 1 in Israel. Also note how many top researchers in sciences and engineering, not only AI, who helped build the US into the technological powerhouse in many fields, over the last century, were born in another country. It is not a coincidence. World population is 7.8 billion or > 20 times US population. . Another major issue is math skills. Given that there are many technological specialties that require excellent math training and aptitude, it is possible that there are too few people growing up in the US who received that training and supportive environment during their formative years. A conversation among many Asian students is how easy American math curriculum is. It is estimated to be 2 or 3 years behind the same grade level of many countries in Asia. The PISA 2018 results also show some concerning evidence: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-results_ENGLISH.png https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-results_ENGLISH.png https://hechingerreport.org/what-2018-pisa-international-rankings-tell-us-about-u-s-schools/ https://hechingerreport.org/what-2018-pisa-international-ran... “In math, the U.S. ranks 36th out of the 79 countries and regions that participate in the test.” “Today’s [US] scores in reading and math aren’t statistically different from when PISA started testing the subjects in the early 2000’s.”