China will most probably win the AI race in the long run because of one major bottleneck the US has - energy. The electric energy and grid buildout in China has been massive since a long time and there is simply no way for the US to quickly catch up.
No matter how much cash you throw you can't just materialize a 100 nuclear reactors to power the data centers.
I'm curious about that, do you have relevasnt metrics? I imagine stats out of universities, engineer schools, etc and maybe number of patents could be used but fearing those could be gamed.
> China has recently awarded 1.3 to 1.4 million engineering bachelor's degrees a year, and about 292,000 postgraduate engineering degrees in 2022. [0]
> For the US, ASEE and NCES put engineering bachelor's degrees at a stable 130,000–145,000 a year, rising above 200,000 if computer science is included. Because China counts CS as engineering, the fair comparison is roughly 1.35M against 230–250k US engineering plus CS graduates. That is about 5–6x in absolute terms. Adjusted for population (1.41B vs 335M), China produces about 950 per million people and the US about 700 (1.3–1.4x more).
Even Claude highlights that the numbers aren't apples to apples and in China the definition of "engineer" is more loose. I do believe that in relative numbers, more engineers graduate in China
On lawyers:
> In the US there were 1,322,649 active lawyers as of January 2024. For China, there were around 650,000 lawyers in 2022. Which in relative terms is 8x in the US than China.
This is mostly irrelevant to AI development what you should be looking at are STEM phds, particularly in CS, electrical and computer engineering and Math
Lets see how these numbers stack up
Annual PHDS
CS: US = 2300 China = 5500
ECE: US = 2400 China = 7500
Math: US = 2200 China = 4500
Now of the US PHDS what percentage of the PHD's are awarded to students from China?
margorczynski · · focus · HN ↗
No matter how much cash you throw you can't just materialize a 100 nuclear reactors to power the data centers.
jesterson · · focus · HN ↗
Plus another bottleneck - China produces engineers, the US produces lawyers.
utopiah · · focus · HN ↗
andruby · · focus · HN ↗
> For the US, ASEE and NCES put engineering bachelor's degrees at a stable 130,000–145,000 a year, rising above 200,000 if computer science is included. Because China counts CS as engineering, the fair comparison is roughly 1.35M against 230–250k US engineering plus CS graduates. That is about 5–6x in absolute terms. Adjusted for population (1.41B vs 335M), China produces about 950 per million people and the US about 700 (1.3–1.4x more).
Even Claude highlights that the numbers aren't apples to apples and in China the definition of "engineer" is more loose. I do believe that in relative numbers, more engineers graduate in China
On lawyers:
> In the US there were 1,322,649 active lawyers as of January 2024. For China, there were around 650,000 lawyers in 2022. Which in relative terms is 8x in the US than China.
hbd-investor · · focus · HN ↗
Lets see how these numbers stack up
Annual PHDS
CS: US = 2300 China = 5500 ECE: US = 2400 China = 7500 Math: US = 2200 China = 4500
Now of the US PHDS what percentage of the PHD's are awarded to students from China?
CS: 32% ECE: 35% Math: 26%