Each student will research and write two essays of 8-10 pages in length double-spaced (not counting endnotes, references and graphics) on a topic relevant to Global Megatrends, Geopolitics, & Political Economy.

The essay should be at 6-8 pages in length double-spaced (not counting endnotes, references and graphics)• All papers must be in Times Roman 12, one-sided and pages numbered.• In terms of format, you must consult the APA Style Manual or the Chicago Manual ofStyle in preparing your group project paper.• A list of references and in-text citations and/or footnotes should be incorporated.• To assist you in doing an excellent job in your research, two FIU Library websites will prove invaluable to you are: A-Z List (this is the link for all of the business databases FIU has available) and Library Guide (this includes the tabs for different types of information needs, including company information).

 

********************Outline To Follow For Essay

I. Introduction to the Topic

II. Analysis

III. Findings

IV. Conclusion

V. References********************

Topics To Choose From:

1. Innovation in Global Agriculture: Which Countries Achieve a Competitive Advantage and why?

2. Export Controls: What Are They? How Do They Work and How Effective?

3. Global Venture Capital: How Are Emerging Markets Faring? (What are the Bright Spots?)

4. How Do Unfriendly Nations Cooperate Nonetheless to Combat Drugs and TransnationalCrime?

5. China’s Theft of Intellectual Property: What Can Be Done to combat it?

6. Chile vs. Argentina: Which Wine Cluster is Most Innovative?

7. Generation Z: Which Consumer Goods and Services Most Appeal to Them and Which Companies are succeeding in Selling to Them?

8. How Do Low-Cost Airline Carriers Disrupt the Market and How to the Major CarriersFight Back?

9. Globalization and Central Europe: Where are the Success Stories (countries or firms) and What are the Keys to Their Winning Performance)?

10. Human Capital in Large Firms: Do Women Make Better Leaders than Men?

11. Innovations in Logistics and Supply Chain Management: What’s New and How does it Increase Performance?

12. Free Trade and Job Displacement: What Can Be Done to Assist Companies and employees Negatively Impacted?

13. Which Countries are Most Effective in Attacking Corruption and what is Their Formula?

14. The Competition in the Global Cosmetics Industry: Winning Strategies of Firms

15. Can Alternative Energy Compete Effectively Against Fossil Fuels?

16. Should Facebook, Google, and Amazon be Broken Up?

17. How are Developing Countries Battling Climate Change Effects: Best Case Example(s)

18. How will the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) Impact the Region andWhich Country is Best Positioned to Benefit and Why?

19. How Does the Migration of Talent Help (and Hurt) a Country’s Competitiveness?

20. What is the Impact(s) of Transnational Crime on Multinational Corporations?

21. Franchises from Emerging Markets: What are the Keys to Their Success?

22. The Global Competition for Artificial Intelligence: Who’s Ahead, Who’s Behind?

23. International Efforts to Protect Consumer and Corporate Privacy: Where Are We?

24. Are Nations Winning the War Against Money Laundering? 25. Competition in Global Financial Services: What is winning the Market for Lower IncomeCustomers?

25. Competition in Global Financial Services: What is winning the Market for Lower IncomeCustomers?

Introduction

            Artificial intelligence (AI) is a very interesting topic and it has over the years been adopted by businesses in various industries. From manufacturing, supply chain, technology companies, all the way to start ups that are literally developing the actual machines that are performing various tasks using AI. Therefore, it has been identified that one of the major reasons for Artificial Intelligence is to basically create intelligent machines that are well capable of doing the various tasks that are currently being done by human beings. To be more precise, these tasks that AI is meant to take over include; thinking, reasoning, learning, as well as problem solving. At the core of artificial intelligence, it studies the human thought processes for AI scientists to be able to create similar processes or duplicate these human processes in machines.

            Therefore, the development of machines and robots that use artificial intelligence has rapidly grown in the last decade and we have seen several organizations upgrade their business processes to incorporate AI. This is happening because, artificial intelligence is technology that:

• Learn to do new things and become better over time.
• Is capable if understanding human language
• Can answer different questions

If successfully implemented, AI can be very beneficial to businesses and the nation at large. Globally, there is a trend which has been adopted by organizations from different countries, to develop smart intelligent computers that are using more elements of artificial intelligence than ever before. For example, systems and applications that can answer questions asked in natural language, another example is applications that help or can make decisions themselves on behalf of humans. This technology innovation is somehow very disruptive as it changes the way organizations work as well as the processes involved in their work flows. Since artificial intelligence involves machine learning, it is disruptive in the sense that it properly reacts to change in an environment and influences decision making, business processes as well as operations. Furthermore, it introduces creativity in business processes and also, in decision making. Additionally, Artificial Intelligence also brings about competitive advantage in so many ways, it’s benefits can be limitless because it can be developed in so many ways and in various industries, each with its own unique application of AI.

Some of these benefits are that: AI is able to complete tasks much faster than humans, it improves by speeding up learning, it greatly improves industrial operations, machines developed on AI do not rest, stop or sleep (giving organizations more hours of production), AI also improves security facilitation, for example, fraud detection, and many more benefits of AI can be outlined. Therefore, organizations are working extremely hard to ensure they have the best AI software in the market, which in the end, would give them competitive advantage and a better return on investment made on the products.

Analysis
            With the aforementioned numerous benefits of AI, a lot of companies in both the public and private sectors from different parts of the World are in the race to build the most stable, accurate and best AI systems. This has resulted in The Global competition for Artificial Intelligence. Government institutions have also slowly started adopting small components of AI. As explained by (Horowitz, 2018), narrow advances in AI have the potential to create opportunities as well as challenges for the overall governments and some of their sections such as the military (p.37). The military can use AI technology such as facial and speech recognition. Financial institutions can also use AI to mitigate fraud. Therefore, in the development of AI, who is ahead and who is lagging behind? In this section, we analyse the following important factors that will help us understand who is currently ahead in the AI race: talent, research, development, adoption, data, and hardware. Each of these factors were specifically selected for analysis because, having enough talent in a country or organization will allow it to create new AI algorithms which will result in enhanced innovation and potentially an increased share of the market in the Global business environment. Doing more research will allow more people to have the opportunity to learn about AI and its benefits, challenges and opportunities for future growth. Therefore, it will influence and motivate the younger generations and start-up companies to be more innovative and develop better products for their nations and for sale on the international market. Combining talent and research will allow for a smooth adoption of AI, more data to be collected and better hardware to be set up for further advancements. Therefore, these factors are still connected and the leading nation will have to perform well in majority of these. The lagging nations put their growth and security as risk because the future is AI oriented and there is need to prepare for it.

            Research done by (Srivastava, 2019) shows that he following countries are the top 3 in terms of AI development: China, USA and the United Kingdom. However, other countries such as Russia, Canada, Germany, India, Sweden and France are making substantial growth in their development of artificial intelligence. Based on this information, this study will do an analysis of the top 3 countries.

China: For a long time now, China has been very ambitious on becoming a World leading superpower in so many ways which include; the economy, military and now, artificial intelligence. China is currently excelling at Ai, considering how rapid the adoption and implementation has been. China is one of the countries that has successfully adopted the use of facial recognition software in public places. The development of AI continues in China as it intensifies and deepens research. According to (Srivastava, 2019), the country has published more research papers regarding deep learning more than the other leading countries. This has been made possible and supported by China’s huge population that uses the internet, the report approximates 750 million people. Therefore, it has a huge digital supply of data for researchers to process. Research by states that, China has been working extensively to develop AI talent. The report further states that, in 2017, China invested in AI education and released a plan which called for the creation of an AI academic discipline.

            With this intensified focus on AI training, China has significantly increased the number of AI research centres, the number of instructors as well as the number of students who are enrolled in World-class artificial intelligence courses at top Universities in China. With this improved education system in place, Chinese researchers are able to quickly replicate publications done by researchers from other countries. For example, algorithms developed by researchers from other nations which are China’s competitors includes detailed architecture of their AI model as well as how it was implemented and the training that was done on it. These papers are openly available on various publication websites. However, AI is a different kind of technology. AI research does not really provide a durable advantage. The findings of these research papers are made available to the public, in most cases, for free. Therefore, the major benefits countries can get from the findings is by refining their products to incorporate findings from the data.

            Over the years, it has been noted that Chinese firms are relatively quick in developing and bringing artificial intelligence products and services to their market. This is mainly due to how vibrant and receptive the Chinese market is to the new AI-based innovations. Additionally, (Li, 2021) reports that, China’s market does not only give it an advantage in big data, it also gives Chinese firms strong economic incentives which allow them to tackle the various technological challenges. We can therefore say that, the Chinese market gives room to Chinese firms to rapidly grow and focus on innovation, allowing them to bring new and also, improved products. In 2019, a report by (O'Meara, 2019) stated that, China’s plan to be a leading country in AI and have globally leading AI companies by 2020 was within reach. This was due to the growing expertise of its three core tech companies, which are; Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba. However, it has to be noted that these companies do not yet have the same influence as the American tech giants such as Google and Microsoft. However, research by (Roberts, 2021) states that, among all its competitors in the development of AI, China has the most to gain. It was started that, there is an anticipated boost to China’s GDP of up to 26% by 2030. AI to increase employment in China by 12% in the next two decades.

European Union (EU): The United Kingdom has been for a long time now among the leaders in research. With its top universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and many more, it has been a leader in research of science and technology, but is it doing enough to explore more on the subject of artificial intelligence and be a world leader in the field? The (research.ox,, nd) reports that, the University of Oxford is a top tier Institution and one of the World’s leading centres focused on research as well as the development on artificial intelligence. This means, the institution is well funded in order to carry out its research projects as there has been a rapid increase in the development of AI-based products. Most of them focusing on machine learning. However, a report by (Castro, 2019) asserts that, European Union firms receive very low funding deals to support innovation in the artificial intelligence field. The report further shows that, the United States received a lot more funding in each year between 2016 to 2018 than the European Union did in three years (p. 32). This is worrying for start-ups in the EU and it means they received very little funding for research and innovation in the AI field than China and USA. Making it lag behind and is currently at risk of further lagging behind if there will be no improvement.

The development of hardware technology to go with the AI technology that runs on algorithms is very important. While the European industry still has a substantial market share in the hardware areas like sensors, it is still falling behind. For example, (Castro, 2019) reports that, European Union abandoned its production of advanced digital semiconductors and no EU semiconductor company is ranked in the top 10 of R&D spend. Therefore, they are most likely to continue to lag behind (p. 49). On the other hand, (Breton, 2021) reports that “Europe cannot and will not lag behind”. While there is an explosion in the global demand of Chips, the EU’s share all across the entire value chain has shrunken because typically, they depend on state-of-the-art chips manufactured in Asia. These are signs showing at the EU is slowly falling off.

On the topic of talent, the EU actually has enough talent in the field of artificial intelligence. The (London Tech Week,, 2019) reports that, with a large pool of AI talent in the United Kingdom, it has the second-largest population of professional developers in the entire Europe (accounts for 15%) and more than 350,000 in London alone (p. 5). However, it fails to keep this talent resulting in a shortage of lack on in-house AI expertise. (Castro, 2019) asserts that, to improve this talent challenge, the EU should consider creating public-private partnerships to facilitate computer science education as well as for the development of digital skills. In as much as the EU’s artificial intelligence research is strong in both its quality and output, it still fell off on the number of publications it made from 2017. Even though, as reported by the (London Tech Week,, 2019), a lot of prominent examples of AI firms were founded in the UK. Examples include: DeepMind (in 2010) purchase by Google in 2014. Another one is Swiftkey which was also purchase, but by Microsoft in 2016.

The United States: The US has been a global leader in technological advancements for a long time now. From the time internet usage increased, US companies have been in the fore front in developing technological tools and platforms to offer services and allow users have an enjoyable online experience. For example, a lot of tech giants are US companies and examples include; Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and many other technological companies leading innovation. However, is the US still leading the technological advancements in artificial intelligence? A report by the (Bipartisan Policy Center,, 2020) states that, the US has been a leader in AI research and development for a long time now, but this is slowly changing as other countries are starting to heavily invest in research and development for emerging AI technologies (P. 13). (Waikar, 2021) explains that, the US still leads China in terms of the number of published conference papers which are typically cited more. As the world moves towards everything AI-based, more investments will be made in AI to address deep learning limitations and many other concerns.

Talent in the United States is widely available, one contributing factor to this is that, it has been a leader for so many years. Therefore, many people skilled in programming for AI are attracted to the industry in the US and its potential to educate and retain both foreign as well as domestic talent has given it an added advantage over China and the EU. On the other hand, (Castro, 2019) asserts that, when comparing the United States with its competitors regarding AI research. The strength for the US is not in its volume of output, but it is in the quality. However, the US lags behind in terms of the data it is able to collect due to its smaller population when compared with China and the European Union. Therefore, it only maximizes on the data it is able to generate.

In terms of hardware, the United States has a significant advantage and lead in semiconductors. Furthermore, the supercomputers used in the United States offer a faster aggregate performance than its competitors even though China has surpassed the United States in terms of the number of supercomputers ranked in the World’s top 500. Additionally, the United States has been offering great support to technological advancements taking place in the field of artificial intelligence. According to (Waikar, 2021), on the funding front, the U.S. has maintained and remains the largest destination and supporter for private AI-focused funding with a reported amount of over $23 billion in 2020 which was more than double that associated with China ($9.9 billion).

Findings

            The paper was focused on the top 3 countries (regions) that are leading in the technological advancements of Artificial Intelligence, namely; China, The European Union and the United States. The European Union has been a great contributor to the field if science, technology and artificial intelligence, however, in recent years, it has fallen behind due to failed attempts at retaining talent, low funding for AI and the great competition coming from China.

On the other hand, findings show that, in the last five to ten years, China has made great AI technology improvements through increased research, creation of training centres as well as the intensified talent building programs. The country has become an AI superpower and aims to use AI to increase its GDP by 12% (direct AI contributions) by the year 2030. These improvements have allowed China to leapfrog the European union in terms of the development of Ai products (software) as well as training and research. Another interesting discovery from this study is that, China’s huge population is giving it an advantage over its competitors in terms of data collection, AI adoption and also the market share.

The United States remains a power house when in it comes to Ai technology advancements, the study finds that, the US has been funding AI projects more than the European Union and China. Furthermore, The United States offers state of the art AI training at its top tier Universities and has successfully managed to retain and attract both local and foreign talent. This allows it to have more creative projects and start-ups which end-up making new and better products than any other country.

Conclusion

            This study focused on the topic of Artificial intelligence in the global competition, the purpose was to analyse which countries are in the fore front of developing the Ai systems and which ones are lagging behind. Therefore, artificial intelligence was extensively discussed in the introduction of this study. Factors that drive AI were identified and also, the major benefits were discussed. As AI offers numerous benefits to the various industries that use it. The top 3 regions that are leading in the development of AI were identified as, (1) The United States of America, (2) China and (3) was identified as the European Union. The United States still leads this field due to its research and development, huge investments and talent available in the region.