China's face of AI 'race' got millions from the US to fund his research programmes
File photo of US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris
The US government has been accused of providing over $30 million in federal grants for research led by a scientist who is now an integral part ofChina's pursuit of a superior Artificial Intelligence technology, Newsweek said in an exclusive report. Dr Song-Chun Zhu isa statistics and computing professor.
The development is deemed peculiar because, despite Dr Zhu's move to China's Artificial Intelligence (AI) forefront, the Pentagon continued funding the research led by him. Besides, Dr Zhu allegedly also established a parallel institute in China's Hubei province close to Wuhan.
What does it mean?
The development reflects how the growing scientific collaboration between the United States and a number of countries around the world, including China— which the US deems as its rival— may have potential national security consequences for Washington.
But the scrutiny of such research and collaboration has intensified amid the Biden administration's attempt to take the lead over China during the ongoing uproar in Washington's power corridors to lead the chip wars.
The National Science Foundation, one of the federal agencies that granted funds to Zhu, began utilising new analytics tools in 2022 to assess potential conflicts of interest.
Most federal grants came during Trump administration
Most of the federal grants received by Zhu were awarded in the decade prior to 2020, the year he returned to China from UCLA, where he was serving since 2002.
During the Biden administration's time, two grants were awarded in 2021, one for $699,938 to develop "high-level robot autonomy", and another valued at $520,811 to construct "cognitive robot platforms" for intelligence and surveillance systems using ground and aerial sensors.
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Zhu was designated as the principal investigator for both grants by the Office of Naval Research, the Newsweek report added.
In 2020, the US banned Chinese graduate students with military ties from researching in the US.
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The Biden administration, in recent months, has taken steps to counter China's acquisition of US technology, especially the semiconductors necessary for the advancements of Artificial Intelligence systems.