Asia is home to 61% of the world’s population and stands to gain the most from deploying AI. Leading tech companies in Japan and South Korea have some of the highest number of AI patent filings. China now leads the world in annual R&D spending with nearly $275 billion (just above 2% of GDP) Other Asian nations are also above the 2% mark, including Japan (roughly $176 billion), South Korea ($70 billion) and Singapore ($13 billion).
Singapore stands out for its ambitious vision for AI and success in execution. It has identified five national projects across logistics, housing, healthcare, education and security for which it is training 25,000 professionals in AI basics. Singapore’s holistic approach to innovation has helped it rank as the third most innovative country in the world (Korea is second; the U.S. is ninth.) The country is also taking a global lead in AI governance, presenting guidelines for responsibly implementing AI.
India ranks second only to China in the number of computer science graduates it produces each year. By further training software engineers to become data scientists and machine learning specialists, India almost doubled its AI workforce. Pakistan is another young and fast-growing Asian market with an increasing emphasis on nurturing deep tech. This survey of Asia’s burgeoning AI landscape suggests there is a great deal of fusion across the region, with Chinese, Japanese and other players contributing enormously to the development of new technologies and ethical governance frameworks.
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