ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 examines the imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) ‘talent’, a term often used to describe students and technology developers skilled in the techniques required for data-driven innovation. The first part of the chapter focuses on plans for domestic AI skills generation, and the cultivation of ‘talent’ across the education spectrum in China, including high-profile ‘AI major’ undergraduate degrees, and a growing array of textbooks and other educational resources produced for school curricula by leading technology companies. This chapter will also extend the suggestions of ‘university AI power’, by examining the ways they are positioned as key elements in the vision of a ‘talent pipeline’ for the production of human capital that can drive the government plans for economic transformation. The second part of the chapter examines attempts by the Chinese government to attract substantial populations of emigrant scientists and academics back to China, in order to contribute to the national agenda. The chapter culminates in an analysis of the growing area of research attempting to measure ‘national AI capacity’ through statistical comparisons and international ranking. This will be suggested to bolster instrumental assumptions of ‘AI talent’, and the wider imaginaries of data-driven geopolitical rivalry.
