Since the development of artificial intelligence was incorporated into the national policy, China’s development in the field of artificial intelligence has become a national-wide movement. Not only has the artificial-intelligence business started to boom, but large companies have also increased investment and development in the field of artificial intelligence.
This year the two national conferences, "artificial intelligence" was once again written in the government work report. The report proposes: to develop new momentum. We will enlarge and strengthen emerging industrial clusters, implement big data development actions, and strengthen the development and application of new generation artificial intelligence to promote “Internet Plus” in many areas such as medical care, pensions, education, culture, and sports.
In an interview with the media, Tencent Chairman Ma Huateng recently said that since AlphaGo defeated Li Shishi, everyone realized that artificial intelligence is so powerful. At present, Tencent's back-end technologies, such as the precise matching of advertisements and the recommendation of personalized content, have adopted artificial intelligence technology. The two were written into the government work report, which also made the artificial intelligence industry usher in a new historical opportunity. There are opinions in the industry that in the first three industrial revolutions, China often played followers, but in the era of artificial intelligence, China has the opportunity to become a leader in certain fields. In fact, in the field of artificial intelligence, especially computer vision, China and the United States are almost "zero time difference." Even occupies a certain advantage, China's deficiency lies in the lack of major original research results of basic research and lack of top talent and team.
Rapid development momentum, data utilization far beyond Europe and the United States
These efforts have not been in vain. China is gradually becoming the backbone of the field of artificial intelligence, or even a force that cannot be ignored.
The first manifested in the patent. According to last year's "Wuzhen Index: Global Artificial Intelligence Development Report," it shows that in the number of artificial intelligence patents worldwide, China ranked second with 15,745 followed by 26,891 in the United States, and Japan ranked third with 14,604. It is worth mentioning that the three countries accounted for 73.85% of the total patents.
Second, performance is in submission and inclusion. Last year, at the AAAI conference, related submission papers were published. It is reported that a total of 2,571 submissions were submitted, of which, China and the United States accounted for 31% and 30%, respectively. Although China is still lower than the United States in the number of papers it receives, the number has risen significantly. After all, the base is large and everything is possible. Moreover, among the papers included, artificial intelligence teams from Chinese companies such as Baidu, Tencent, Huawei, 360, Today’s headlines, and Ctrip have also emerged.
Again, China's use of data is more abundant. As the domestic Internet giant, Baidu’s chairman, Li Yanhong, has frequently called for the development of artificial intelligence in the past two years. Baidu, the founder of Baidu, also announced that it must be in all in AI. This is because Li Yanhong saw the critical point of artificial intelligence technology: computing power is getting stronger, Internet data is more and more abundant, and artificial intelligence has evolved to become a practical technology.
Li Yanhong and his Baidu have All In AI
Liu Qingfeng, chairman of HKUST, also stated that the reason why artificial intelligence can form a phased breakthrough is that there are three factors: data, computing power, and algorithms. In fact, data and computing power are important factors that determine the level of development of artificial intelligence. Su Zhong, research director of IBM China Research, believes that this round of artificial intelligence development actually comes from data. Like deep learning, many different results are produced through massive data. In terms of data volume, China is the most populous and diverse population in the world. At the same time, the Internet and mobile Internet have been integrated into people's lives. Therefore, data will become China's leading position in the AI industry.
"China has the largest number of user groups. At the same time, the government's determination to promote the application of artificial intelligence technology and the resources that can be mobilized are rare throughout the world. I believe that the future of artificial intelligence in the global competition is mainly between China and the United States due to artificial intelligence applications. The characteristics of the study, China will take the lead to win." Liu Qingfeng said. ITW switch According to a report released by the China Internet Information Center recently, as of June 2017, the total number of global artificial intelligence companies reached 2,542, of which 592 were Chinese enterprises, accounting for 23.3%, second only to the United States.
Insufficient originality and scarcity of original talent
Although China's development in the field of artificial intelligence is encouraging, there are still some problems that need to be solved. This can also be reflected in the lack of originality results. In China, the word “pseudo-original” is popular, which refers to the synthesis of many aspects of information “in closed doors” on the premise of other people’s writing, and is totally incomprehensible. "To extend a 10-story depth model to 100 or even 1,000, I think this is indeed an improvement. The Chinese are currently at this level, but these are not an original in my opinion." Professor AAA Qiang, the current executive member of AAAI Yang Qiang once stated that deep learning is constantly evolving, and that leaders in the field of research should open up new areas instead of excavating on the basis of the original.
Li Yanhong pointed out that in terms of comparisons between China and the United States, the U.S.’s talent advantage has given it an advantage in basic theoretical research. Therefore, the vast majority of algorithmic innovations come from the United States. Not only that, American companies, especially Internet companies, have generally placed more emphasis on artificial intelligence than Chinese Internet companies. In this regard, Tsinghua University professor Lu Bai holds the same view. In its view, China's theoretical and original research on artificial intelligence is still relatively backward. Everyone is concentrating on applications. In the future, in artificial intelligence, major theoretical breakthroughs may still come from the West, and the development of technology applications will come from China.
“The disadvantages of our country are mainly manifested in the fact that the artificial intelligence talent cultivation system has not yet been established. The issue of the first level subject of “Intelligent Science and Technology” advocated by the artificial intelligence community in China for many years remains to be solved.” Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Society of Artificial Intelligence Yu Youcheng It is believed that the number of core technical talents cannot be formed, and overseas talents have been snatched away by European and American agencies. Liu Qingfeng believes that it is necessary to intensify the training of talents that are scarce in the world, such as "source innovation". China also has a lot of good people. It is up to them to enter this field and then design a learning growth path for artificial intelligence. This has very important significance for the overall development of the industry.
