[philee]

Counter-example: Geoffrey Hinton (who developed backpropagation), has a self-proclaimed phobia of mathematics. There's plenty more to innovation than solving those IMO problems, Google Code Jams, etc, because they involve very specific practice (and over-fit the needed skillsets).

It's instead the encouraging atmosphere and resultant inflows of capital (intellectual and otherwise) that may put China ahead in the future.

[nopinsight]

Geoffrey Hinton may not be excellent at math at the professional level but if one watches his talks and lectures, it’s clear that he is more competent than 99% of most populations.

AI requires more than math, but one cannot work competently in AI without being competent at math. Based on teaching experience, I would estimate the lower threshold to be about 2SD above global average (or equivalent to 700 PISA score in math), which might mean less than 2% of US high school students are above that threshold.