The Rise of Asia: A New Powerhouse in AI Innovation?

Will Asia emerge as the world leader in AI Innovation?

While the West has spearheaded AI development for years, Asia is rapidly gaining ground and could surpass the West in AI innovation and commercial adoption.
There are key trends indicating that Asia is positioned to become the new AI leader. Some of these trends might be up for discussion, but there are strong reasons behind each of them.

First is the massive Government Investment - China alone plans to invest over $150 billion in AI and related technologies by 2030, while other Asian countries are also investing heavily. This far outstrips AI funding in the West.
Then, there are the large Tech Companies - Asian tech giants like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) have massive data assets, money and AI talent in the region dedicated for AI optimization and breakthroughs.  
Data - The huge populations and rapid digitization of activities in Asia provide a massive amount of data for training AI systems, from user behaviour to financial transactions to images and video.  
Lower Regulatory Hurdles - Regulators in Asia have generally taken a more hands-off approach to AI, allowing for faster development and adoption compared to Europe's GDPR and other strict regulations. China is being somewhat reserved in allowing the mass deployment of these tools but broadly keeping abreast of developments and potential usages.
Low Labor Costs - Cheaper labor costs in Asia allow companies to build large AI teams at a lower expense to drive innovation. This is sparking an "AI arms race" in the region.

While skepticism and caution around some aspects of AI's development and impact are warranted, we should also recognize that Asia's emergence as an AI powerhouse may transform the global AI landscape in the coming decade. Asian companies and researchers will likely play an increasingly pivotal role in shaping how AI impacts our lives and work going forward. This all might seem controversial to begin with, but broadly this set of facts are definitely shaping to be the foundation for another east versus west front.