On March 9, at the 2017 China Household Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo, consumers felt the new trend of artificial intelligence. Photo by our reporter Tu Zhili
Driverless car. Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Yushe
Internet hospital telemedicine. Photo by Long Wei (People’s Vision)
A year ago, the man-machine battle between artificial intelligence AlphaGo and the world’s top chess player shocked the world, which was just a microcosm of the application of artificial intelligence (AI); At the just-concluded National People’s Congress, "accelerating the research and development and transformation of artificial intelligence and other technologies" first appeared in the government work report and became one of the key tasks in 2017.
Pan Fusheng, president of Chongqing Academy of Science and Technology, believes that this shows that China attaches great importance to the field of new technologies.
As one of the important representatives of the new round of scientific and technological revolution, artificial intelligence is moving from scientific and technological research and development to industrial application, becoming a new driving force for global economic development. In the eyes of the industry, artificial intelligence is not a single technology industry, but a tool to integrate other industries, such as the "housekeeping robot" produced by combining robots with nannies, and the "car networking" produced by combining navigation with cars. With the gradual maturity of artificial intelligence technology, whoever takes the lead in achieving a breakthrough in application may have an advantage in the competition in the intelligent age, and "artificial intelligence" is expected to become one of the new touchable growth points.
Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly in China.
Do you still think artificial intelligence is far away?
I don’t feel well. I want to open my mobile phone and ask a doctor, but how can I find the best match among thousands of doctors waiting for consultation online?
The author understands that Ali Health has developed and launched healthy honey on mobile phone Taobao — — The medical health intelligent question answering engine, which is similar to the intelligent question answering robot, can answer the general medical health questions of ordinary users, and then make choices according to the needs of users, and automatically match users to corresponding doctors or pharmacists.
In fact, at present, from the monitoring and diagnosis of medical health, intelligent medical equipment, to intelligent evaluation, personalized counseling and child companionship in the field of education, from warehousing and logistics, intelligent shopping guide and customer service in the field of e-commerce, to self-driving technology applied to smart cars, artificial intelligence can be seen.
Mr. Gao, from Tangshan, Hebei Province, recently bought a car. When trying all kinds of smart devices in the car, he said to the author with emotion: "I think many car technologies are quite smart now, such as automatic parking and navigation path planning, which are convenient for driving." However, in his view, "it will be more advanced if autonomous driving can be popularized in the future."
Mr. Gao’s idea is not far away. The industry believes that technologies such as artificial intelligence are key technologies to promote the development of autonomous driving. For example, artificial intelligence plays a decision-making role in helping cars interpret sensor data. By reading drivers’ driving behaviors and expressions, drivers can be reminded to switch to automatic driving mode when they are tired.
The term "artificial intelligence" is generally considered to have been born at Dartmouth Conference in 1956. In the past 61 years, the research and practice of artificial intelligence has been in a growing trend. Nowadays, the breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology has brought the storm of technological revolution sweeping the world, and created an incomparably broad market. Many companies in China have seized the opportunity and performed brilliantly in this tide. Some observers believe that China’s artificial intelligence has become a shining business card that attracts worldwide attention.
In the past year, Changhong, TCL, Skyworth and other China home appliance enterprises have released artificial intelligence home appliances, hoping to break the sales problem of home appliance industry with artificial intelligence.
Not long ago, sogou Company released its annual financial report for 2016, and Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan said that sogou has achieved great performance growth with the help of artificial intelligence technology. In the future, artificial intelligence will be applied to more products, making it easier for users to express and obtain information, and making artificial intelligence truly benefit mankind.
The pace of global artificial intelligence research and development is accelerating, and China is not to be outdone. In recent years, Baidu has successively established Big Data Lab, Deep Learning Lab and Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Lab, and made full efforts in artificial intelligence through structural adjustment. At the 2016 Baidu World Congress, "Baidu Brain" was launched. This project will focus on research and development in the fields of voice, image, natural language processing, user portrait and driverless driving.
Last year, the Hangzhou government joined forces with 13 enterprises to install an artificial intelligence hub — — Hangzhou city data brain. In the preliminary test of some sections in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, the urban brain intelligently adjusted the traffic lights, and the maximum speed of vehicles increased by 11%.
Traffic congestion is just the first problem that the urban brain faces. The goal of the urban brain is to let the data help the city to think and make decisions, and make Hangzhou a city that can adjust itself and interact with human beings.
The relevant person in charge of Alibaba Group told this newspaper that Alibaba Cloud ET artificial intelligence technology is adopted in the core of the city brain, which can conduct global real-time analysis of the whole city and automatically allocate public resources. In addition, Alibaba Cloud ET, which has leading artificial intelligence technology, has become a powerful assistant to human beings in the fields of urban governance, traffic scheduling, industrial manufacturing, health care, and justice.
In Tencent, artificial intelligence research projects include WHAT LAB (WeChat-Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Artificial Intelligence Joint Lab), Youtu Lab, WeChat Pattern Recognition Center, Intelligent Computing and Search Lab and many other departments.
In the view of Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu, artificial intelligence is like a new scientific and technological revolution, injecting new vitality into the long-term depressed world economy. Last year, many key technologies advanced by leaps and bounds, which is undoubtedly a colorful year in the history of artificial intelligence development. Since its birth more than half a century ago, it has finally reached the critical point from scientific research and development to industrial application, and is ready to go.
Updating "Engine" for Development
The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Science and Technology revealed that over the years, the Ministry of Science and Technology has actively promoted the development of artificial intelligence technology through a series of science and technology plans such as "863", "973" and science and technology support plans. In tackling key technical problems, we mainly supported intelligent computer systems, intelligent robots and automatic information processing, and also supported a number of projects in intelligent transportation, smart grid and smart city. In the next step, we are gathering experts from scientific and business circles and innovative enterprises, including some young entrepreneurs, to jointly formulate plans to promote the innovative development of artificial intelligence in China and promote the application of artificial intelligence in economic construction, people’s livelihood, environmental protection and national security.
Why is artificial intelligence so valued?
Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Technology, believes that a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology will surely bring a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, which will have a far-reaching impact on all aspects of human life. "Vigorously developing artificial intelligence technology is an important driving force for China’s economic transformation and upgrading."
"Numerous studies have shown that the comprehensive subversion of artificial intelligence on the business model, industrial chain and value chain of traditional industries will bring about qualitative changes in all aspects of global economy and social life." Li Yanhong said.
In an article, "Artificial Intelligence, Singularity Moment" Approaching? Jiang Qiping, secretary general of the Information Research Center of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the greatest significance of developing artificial intelligence lies in replacing the "engine" for modernization. Accenture, a consulting firm, has studied 12 developed countries, including the United States, Finland and Britain, and predicted that by 2035, artificial intelligence will help these countries increase their productivity by about 40%.
For China, the benefits of artificial intelligence will be manifold. Economically speaking, automation with the help of new artificial intelligence technology will greatly improve productivity and save labor costs; Optimize the existing products and services of the industry to improve their quality and labor productivity; By creating new markets, new jobs, etc., it will promote the market to be more prosperous and open up a broader market space.
In terms of industrial upgrading, the problem that China’s traditional manufacturing industry is large but not strong needs to be overcome urgently. Artificial intelligence has just provided convenience and motivation for the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry. First, these enterprises have massive data and a large amount of funds in the industry; Second, under the situation that the productivity level is in urgent need of improvement and the traditional demographic dividend is gradually disappearing, traditional enterprises have an urgent desire to transform and upgrade their own factories and businesses, improve their profits and reduce their costs. Therefore, the manufacturing industry is not only an area where artificial intelligence can make great achievements, but also an advantageous area for China to develop artificial intelligence.
According to the Global Artificial Intelligence Development Report 2016, the number of artificial intelligence patent applications in China has reached 15,745, ranking second in the world; Investment in artificial intelligence reached 146, ranking third in the world.
According to iResearch, the global artificial intelligence market will reach 119 billion yuan in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of about 19.7%. In the same period, the artificial intelligence market in China will reach 9.1 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of over 50%. The development prospect of artificial intelligence is extremely broad.
Deng Zhonghan, Chairman of Zhongxing Microelectronics Co., Ltd. pointed out that as far as manufacturing industry is concerned, the realization of "Made in China 2025" plan needs a lot of artificial intelligence. For example, problems that were technically difficult to overcome in the past (such as modeling) can quickly make some new breakthroughs in engineering through deep learning. The development and application of artificial intelligence technology is very important for effectively achieving the goal of "Made in China 2025".
Future-oriented long-term layout
The insiders believe that in the wave of artificial intelligence, China and other countries have stood on the same starting line. In view of the future industrial competition, the China Municipal Government has laid out the artificial intelligence industry in many aspects. The development of "Artificial Intelligence+"needs to face the future and make a long-term layout.
"In the next 5 to 10 years, artificial intelligence will be as ubiquitous as water and electricity, and can enter almost all industries such as education, medical care, finance, transportation, smart cities, etc., a brand-new ‘ Artificial intelligence +’ The times are coming. " Liu Qingfeng, chairman of Iflytek, said that the application of artificial intelligence is the last word. "2016 is the first year of artificial intelligence, and 2017 is the year of artificial intelligence application."
At present, in the field of driving, by relying on the cooperation of artificial intelligence, visual computing, radar, monitoring devices and global positioning system, computers can operate automatically without active operation; In the field of personal assistant, human-computer interaction can be realized through intelligent speech recognition, natural language processing, big data search and deep learning neural network; In the financial field, artificial intelligence can provide customers with investment and wealth management, equity investment and other services by analyzing, predicting and distinguishing transaction data, price trends and other information; In the field of e-commerce, big data analysis technology is mainly used to intelligently manage warehousing, logistics and shopping guide, so as to save warehousing and logistics costs, improve shopping efficiency and simplify shopping procedures. In addition, artificial intelligence is widely used in security, education, medical health and many other fields.
However, despite full expectations for the intelligent life in the future, Deng Zhonghan reminded that there are still many potentials to be tapped and many problems to be solved in artificial intelligence.
Jiang Qiping pointed out that artificial intelligence can help human beings improve their work efficiency and quality of life. However, while being happy with the development of artificial intelligence, we should also rationally face the challenges posed by artificial intelligence to human beings. How to supervise the negative problems brought about by the development of artificial intelligence is a topic of general concern to the international community.
Similarly, there are people who worry that artificial intelligence is leading to the disappearance of some occupations. In this regard, Liu Qingfeng believes that in the future, more and more jobs may be replaced by machines. Before new jobs are completely created, it is necessary to consider formulating the social wealth distribution system, social work security and assistance system in the intelligent age. Moreover, the norms and requirements for the application of artificial intelligence in the industry also need to speed up the establishment of corresponding laws and regulations.
At the same time, experts pointed out that while developing rapidly, we should also be wary of bubbles in the artificial intelligence industry, such as some products with "pseudo-intelligence" and concepts. In fact, real artificial intelligence often works quietly, such as speech recognition, deep learning, visual recognition, new search technology and so on. In addition, at present, the market cognition of artificial intelligence mostly stays at the conceptual and experimental level, and there is still insufficient understanding of the application and industrialization progress of artificial intelligence in various industries, so we should be wary of follow-up investment.
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