On November 19, 2016, various top robots in China were unveiled at Yiwu International Expo Center. Industrial robots, service robots, escort robots, etc. gathered together to "show off their skills", attracting many tourists to observe the experience at close range. Photo by Gong Xianming (People’s Vision)
On January 31st, Ningxia Science and Technology Museum launched the Spring Festival popular science activity of "Smelling chickens and dancing for the Spring Festival". A number of thematic exhibitions such as "popular science" and "artificial intelligence" attract the public to visit. The picture shows the audience watching the robot performance. Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Pengshe
Some people say that the future is the era of artificial intelligence, and every step of its development attracts the attention of the whole world. Artificial intelligence, known as the next wave of technology, is welcoming the opportunity of rapid development. Artificial intelligence, a concept that has been born for 61 years, is profoundly changing people’s daily lives under the impetus of the Internet and big data.
This year, artificial intelligence was written into the work report of China government for the first time. With the further optimization of intelligent manufacturing policy environment, the development of artificial intelligence in China will enter the fast lane.
status
Technology research is leading, innovation drives development.
Open Alipay, we can have a dialogue with Ali Robot; Turn on the phone, and speech recognition can answer our questions; Open the iFLYTEK input method, which can realize high-precision voice conversion into text input; Opening Baidu can recommend the most needed search scheme for us … …
Artificial intelligence has penetrated into the daily life of China people, bringing us many conveniences. China has achieved initial success in the field of artificial intelligence. According to the consulting data of Ai Media, the scale growth rate of artificial intelligence industry in China reached 43.3% in 2016, exceeding 10 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 15.21 billion yuan in 2017 and 34.43 billion yuan in 2019.
As a result, the industry defines 2016 as "the first year of artificial intelligence in China". This is not only because of the popularity of the artificial intelligence industry itself, but also because the concept of artificial intelligence is increasing in the whole market.
On the one hand, the research of artificial intelligence in China is in an explosive period. Liu Lihua, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that at present, China has taken the lead in the research of artificial intelligence technology in the world. The data shows that the number of artificial intelligence patent applications in China has reached 15,745, ranking second in the world, and China has become one of the leaders in the field of artificial intelligence research and development in the world.
In this context, artificial intelligence has also ushered in favorable policies. As a representative of emerging industries, it was written into the 2017 government work report for the first time. "In addition to policies at the national level, local governments have also begun to intensively introduce supporting fund policies for the artificial intelligence industry and strive to solve practical problems in enterprise development." Xiangyang, a senior analyst of CCID Consulting, pointed out that by the end of 2016, more than 30 cities had taken the robot industry as the local key development target, and more than 40 robot industrial parks were built and under construction by local governments.
On the other hand, the progress of basic research makes the commercialization of artificial intelligence well supported. "In the era of PC Internet, China is a follower; In the era of mobile Internet, China has many product innovations; In the era of artificial intelligence, China can have many innovations in products and technologies. " Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, said that artificial intelligence has become the backbone of the development of enterprises in China.
"We used to rely on resources, capital, labor and other factors to support the rapid growth and scale expansion of China’s economy, but this has become history," said Li Deyi, chairman of the China Artificial Intelligence Society and academician of China Academy of Engineering. "Artificial intelligence is a solution to accelerate the transformation from factor-driven development to innovation-driven development."
opportunity
Massive data resources, multi-party layout of enterprises
"In the field of transportation, we can see how the urban brain thinks." Hua Xiansheng, an academician of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a machine vision scientist of Alibaba Cloud, vividly described that the urban brain system developed by Ali in Hangzhou can perceive the trajectory of vehicles on complex roads with an accuracy rate of over 99%. This system is the only artificial intelligence system in the world that can analyze the whole city video in real time.
In the past two years, China technology giants represented by Baidu, Tencent and Ali have made efforts in the field of artificial intelligence. Baidu’s achievements in the field of face recognition have been recognized by the world, and it has won the first place in the two most authoritative international evaluations of face recognition technology. Tencent has launched an automated news writing robot. "China is keeping pace with the world, and it is even at the international leading level in the fields of computer vision and speech recognition." Liu Lihua said that a number of enterprises and research institutions with competitive strength have emerged in China, which have a good foundation for development.
In this regard, Ai Media Consulting analysts believe that China’s artificial intelligence industry started relatively late, but in terms of industrial layout, technical research and other infrastructure, it is in a period of progress. With the deepening of the layout of giant companies in science and technology, manufacturing and other industries, the industrial scale of artificial intelligence will be further expanded. Statistics show that by the end of 2015, there were nearly 100 start-up companies in the field of artificial intelligence in China, making efforts in the fields of video big data, intelligent analysis of big data, smart medical care, driverless, face recognition and so on.
In the most mature speech recognition in the field of artificial intelligence, it has been able to achieve an accuracy rate of 99.7%. "Robots can already talk, listen, speak, read, write and translate, and artificial intelligence is entering the homes of ordinary people." Li Deyi said.
The field of driverless driving is also gradually advancing. "From assisted driving to semi-automatic driving and driverless driving, the high intelligence of China cars will be very popular in the future." Wang Shuili, assistant general manager and director of marketing support department of BAIC New Energy Vehicle, said in an interview with this reporter that intelligence will be a major trend of automobile development in China, and many automobile companies have invested a lot of R&D funds in intelligence.
According to industry insiders, China has incomparable advantages in the application of artificial intelligence in other countries. With the help of massive data, China enterprises have taken the lead in speech recognition, language translation, unmanned vehicles and other fields.
"The core of artificial intelligence is massive data, which exists in China and can generate value. We expect that artificial intelligence will be the best opportunity for China to lead the world." Li Kaifu, Chairman and CEO of innovation works, said.
develop
Say goodbye to "going it alone" and promote industrial clusters
A report issued by McKinsey, a management consulting firm, believes that the increase in the scale and variety of data resources, the increasing concern of technology giants and venture capitalists, and the surge in the number and scale of artificial intelligence platforms will give China an opportunity to "get ahead of others". McKinsey predicts that the artificial intelligence application market in China will grow at a rate of 50% year by year, far exceeding the compound annual growth rate of 20% in the global market.
"It is not easy for artificial intelligence to have today’s situation. We want to maintain this situation and make the society pay attention to it for a long time, which needs to form a huge industry." Yu Haibin, director of Shenyang Institute of Automation, China Academy of Sciences, said at the 2017 Global Artificial Intelligence Technology Conference.
In fact, less than 25% of artificial intelligence practitioners in China have more than 10 years of industry experience, while in the United States, the proportion is 50%. It must be admitted that although China has taken a leading position in speech recognition and other sub-sectors, the construction of artificial intelligence industrial clusters in China is a little slow, and a perfect win-win mechanism for artificial intelligence between Industry-University-Research has not yet been formed.
"China’s artificial intelligence industry is still based on ‘ Fight alone ’ Mainly, the lack of synergy between technologies, the lack of effective coordination between products and the interaction between upstream and downstream, can not form a joint development force. " Wen Xiaojun, deputy director of CCID Think Tank Electronic Information Industry Research Institute, suggested that an industrial public service platform integrating technology research and development, demonstration application, product testing and certification, intellectual property rights and other functions should be established, and an artificial intelligence innovation incubation center should be built to promote the integration of industry and finance.
To build an industrial public service platform and enhance the cluster innovation ability of artificial intelligence undoubtedly requires the support of local governments and industrial park operators. Since last year, the government has frequently issued relevant planning plans, requiring the cultivation of the world’s leading artificial intelligence backbone enterprises, the cultivation of artificial intelligence industry ecology, the establishment of artificial intelligence industry system, innovative service system and standardization system, and the creation of artificial intelligence market application scale.
"If artificial intelligence used to be a straggler, then it will be included in the regular army." Ye Weigang, founder of Datai Capital, expressed the hope that the government can support the innovation and development of this industry through marketization.
Some experts in the industry pointed out that artificial intelligence must be applied to different industries in order to release its great potential. Artificial intelligence, a new technology, combines education, medical care, customer service, home, wearable devices, robots, e-commerce and other industries, which has a great impact on traditional industries and will promote the vigorous development of industries in various fields.
Our reporter Wang Meng
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