A team of 12 Chinese artificial intelligence company founders and researchers published a paper in Nature Machine Intelligence in June to showcase and discuss the development of the AI industry in China and the country's plans for this sector, marking the first time that Chinese experts have published an AI-themed article in a top global academic journal.

Published monthly since January 2019, Nature Machine Intelligence is a subject-specific arm of the highly-celebrated scientific journal Nature. It covers research on AI, machine learning and robotics.

Titled Towards a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence in China, the paper was written by 12 industry experts from prestigious universities such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University and leading companies such as Beijing-based technology giant ByteDance and Shanghai-based AI company Craiditx. According to the writers, China will become the top AI innovation center in the world by 2030.

The paper suggested that the development of AI technology will only be possible based on cooperation among universities, governments and industries. The 15 innovative platforms initiated over the past few years by the Ministry of Science and Technology, which has joined forces with the academia and industry giants like Alibaba and Tencent are good examples of such cooperation, the experts wrote.

The paper also discussed the application of AI technologies in areas like daily consumption, finance and healthcare industries, and pointed out that the lack of top technology talents, the immature AI ecosystem and issues regarding AI ethics will be major hurdles for the industry's development.