Identifying technological competition situations for artificial intelligence technology - a patent landscape analysis

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is a new focus for international competition, with countries around the world accelerating major outlay to enhance their innovation competitiveness. Identifying the global situation of AI technology is a strategic issue for enterprises and countries. Considering current deficiencies in research directed towards this, the content for analysing technological competition situations should be determined from the two most relevant levels of: 1) technology's dimension; 2) research and development (R&D) actors' dimension, with time (T), market (M), technology (T) and subject (S) as its four elements. This paper, therefore, proposes an analytical framework of technological competition situation, based on the four dimensions of TMTS. AI technology is taken as an example to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the analytical framework. This paper will contribute to our understanding of the global competitive situation of AI technology, and will be of interest to AI technology's R&D experts.