Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, November 23rd: Fifteen ministries and commissions joined forces to establish the first batch of four national innovation platforms — — Focus on the development planning of China’s new generation of artificial intelligence
Xinhua News Agency "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters Chen Fang and Liu Hongyu
A few days ago, China announced that the new generation of artificial intelligence development plan has been fully implemented, and it will take 13 years to make China a major artificial intelligence innovation center in the world.
How is the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence laid out? Who will lead? How to break through? Xinhua Viewpoint reporter interviewed the authoritative department and presented the development plan exclusively.
15 ministries and commissions work together to build a national expert database.
In 2016, the global technology giant’s investment in artificial intelligence has reached 30 billion US dollars, and attaching importance to artificial intelligence has become a global consensus. Compared with the world’s leading countries, China’s artificial intelligence has achieved important breakthroughs in core technologies in some fields, but it still lacks major original achievements, and there is a big gap in basic theories, core algorithms, key equipment and high-end chips.
How is the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence laid out? Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, said: "The development of a new generation of artificial intelligence is a strategic collaboration at the national level."
— — 15 ministries and commissions formed a joint force. A new generation of artificial intelligence development planning promotion office, consisting of 15 departments, including Ministry of Science and Technology, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academy of Engineering, Science and Technology Committee of Military Commission, and China Association for Science and Technology, came into being, focusing on promoting the overall layout of projects, bases and talents.
At the same time, build a national expert database. A new generation of artificial intelligence strategic advisory committee headed by Academician Pan Yunhe, including 27 top experts including Academician Chen Chun, Academician Li Wei and Academician Gao Wen, was also announced.
"Gather collective wisdom from a forward-looking perspective, conduct substantive and potential research on some major issues of artificial intelligence, and provide further consultation and evaluation for major decisions of artificial intelligence at the national level." Pan Yunhe, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and head of the strategic advisory committee, said.
— — The two attributes are highly integrated. "Grasp the characteristics of high integration of artificial intelligence technology attributes and social attributes, and give full play to the important role of the government in planning guidance and policy support." Wan Gang told a story, "Many foreigners asked me curiously, how did you get the fourth generation of mobile communication? They feel very confused. I said it’s very simple. We have been doing pilot projects since the World Expo, and then we have experimental areas in Hangzhou and Guangzhou. When the experience matures, we will engage in dozens of cities. Finally, the experimental area covers almost all areas. Isn’t this solved? "
— — Open up six "runways" The development plan of a new generation of artificial intelligence has defined six tasks: building an open and collaborative artificial intelligence scientific and technological innovation system, building a safe and convenient intelligent society, building a safe and efficient intelligent infrastructure system, strengthening the integration of defense and civilian technologies in the field of artificial intelligence, cultivating a high-end and efficient intelligent economy, and prospectively laying out major scientific and technological projects of a new generation of artificial intelligence.
Pan Yunhe said that in the past, there was only one runway at the technical level, and the new generation of artificial intelligence development plan added five runways to the original runway, which expanded the development space of artificial intelligence.
Telly, director of the High-tech Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that the major scientific and technological projects of the new generation of artificial intelligence choose five main directions: big data intelligence, cross-media intelligence, swarm intelligence, hybrid enhanced intelligence and autonomous intelligence system, and carry out systematic and forward-looking task layout from four levels: basic theory, supporting system, key technology and innovative application.
Determine the first batch of four national new generation artificial intelligence open innovation platforms.
After full investigation and demonstration, the first batch of national new-generation artificial intelligence open innovation platforms were determined: relying on Baidu, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent and Iflytek respectively, four national new-generation artificial intelligence open innovation platforms were built, including autonomous driving, urban brain, medical imaging and intelligent voice.
"In these four areas, China has been at the forefront of the world." Wang Zhigang, Party Secretary and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that we should speed up the implementation of major scientific and technological projects of the new generation of artificial intelligence and make breakthroughs in basic frontier fields as soon as possible. The open innovation platform will play a greater role in gathering innovative resources and promoting the sharing of innovation.
Six years ago, Iflytek launched the world’s first voice cloud open platform. At present, the daily processing times of the platform reach 4 billion times. "China is already an international leader in speech synthesis." Hu Yu, vice president of Iflytek, said.
In recent years, Iflytek has also carried out innovative cooperation with the public security system. Tests conducted in Anhui in 2016 showed that the accuracy of artificial intelligence in judging fraudulent calls was extremely high; Artificial intelligence also acts as a court clerk. After testing, intelligent speech recognition participated in the trial and achieved practical results, and the trial duration was shortened by 30%.
"Let innovation have a real impact and create real value." Hua Xiansheng, vice president of Alibaba, said that the goal of the urban brain is to build a sharing platform that mainly opens the application layer of computing data based on the comprehensive technologies of artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, and build an open future ecosystem for intelligent applications in urban administration, public services and other industries.
Tommy, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, said that the implementation period of major scientific and technological projects of the new generation of artificial intelligence will be 2030, and this announcement is only the first batch, and it will continue to be expanded according to the needs of planning and project implementation in the future.
"The new focus of international competition is new competition in deep learning, cross-border integration, man-machine collaboration and group intelligence." Wan Gang said.
Sharing achievements and realizing innovation in collision
A breakthrough in the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence requires a new development concept. Experts believe that the opening of swarm intelligence will become a new feature of the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence.
In July this year, Baidu officially opened the "Apollo" autopilot platform, with more than 70 partners from all over the world. "Apollo Project" aims to provide an open, complete and safe open innovation platform for partners in the automotive industry and autonomous driving field, and gather the strength of many participants to jointly promote the development of autonomous driving technology.
"It is an open source system and the largest autonomous driving ecosystem in the world." Wu Xuebin, vice president of Baidu, said that Baidu will invest 10 billion yuan to support 100 start-ups in the future, making it an open innovation platform for national-level autopilot systems with world-class level.
The reporter learned that when Tencent Artificial Intelligence Laboratory was established last year, it combined comprehensive basic research with rapid technology application, and gathered more than 70 first-class scientists at home and abroad and more than 300 experienced engineers.
"Tencent’s AI medical products ‘ Tencent seeks the shadow ’ The accuracy of finding early esophageal cancer has been greatly improved. " Liu Yongsheng, general manager of Tencent’s artificial intelligence laboratory, said that enterprises sharing research and application results will rapidly promote technological iteration and enable traditional industries such as medical care to generate new kinetic energy.
"Strengthen open source and policy guidance, and build an open and collaborative artificial intelligence technology innovation body." Wan Gang said, "In the past, we often said that experiments were based on meditation and inspiration. Now it is different. It is necessary to turn meditation into brainstorming and stimulate innovative inspiration in the collision of academic exchanges."
