China's Race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology

[onebyone]

China is planning to build a 13.8 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) technology park dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI), state-backed news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday.

It will host 400 companies and generate an estimated annual output of 50 billion yuan (about 7.7 billion U.S. dollars).

The park will focus on developing areas such as super high-speed big data, cloud computing, biometric identification and deep learning. Its technological infrastructure includes a 5G mobile network, supercomputer and cloud services.

The developer of the park, a company of Zhongguancun Development Group, will seek partnership with Chinese and overseas universities, research institutes and large companies to establish various research centers in the park, including a national-level artificial intelligence lab.

The campus will be constructed within five years and situated in the suburban Mentougou district in western Beijing. It will cover 54.87 hectares.

China aims to be a world leader in AI by 2030, with the aim of making the industry worth 1 trillion yuan.

China wants to make a “major breakthrough” in AI technology by 2025.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/01/china-is-building-a-2-1-billion-ai-research-park.html

 

[cirr]

Hefei hospital uses China-developed robot to perform surgeries

2018-01-08 16:28

chinaplus.cri.cn Editor: Gu Liping

A Chinese-developed robot has been put into use at a hospital in the central Chinese city of Hefei to help perform orthopedic surgeries.

The machine, named Tianji, is said to be the only robot in the world that can perform surgeries on all different parts of the human spine.

Tianji debuted at the hospital in Hefei last week, conducting a 30-minute surgery for a 43-year-old patient who had been suffering from paralysis in his legs for more than a year.

Doctors scanned the patient and sent the results to Tianji's operating system, before the robot started performing its surgical tasks.

The whole procedure left only a small circular scar, around one centimeter in diameter, on the patient.

The patient barely bled during the surgery. Doctors with the hospital said the patient would have lost 2,000 milliliters of blood, if he had a non-robotic surgery.

"The use of the robot brings a lot of benefits," said Shen Cailiang, head of the hospital's orthopedics department.

Shen said patients who undergo Tianji's surgeries are expected to recover in a week, whereas those who have traditional surgeries will usually have to stay in hospital for up to three weeks for recovery.

"With Tianji, we no longer need to scan the patient repeatedly during a surgery. The robot helps reduce more than 70% of the radiation a patient is exposed to," said Shen.

It cost the hospital 15 million yuan, or some 2.3 million U.S. dollars, to purchase the robot last year.

Tianji was first unveiled in late 2016.

TINAVI, the Beijing-based producer of the robot, said Tianji has been used by two leading hospitals in Beijing for over 2,000 orthopedic surgeries so far.

A hospital in the southwestern city of Chengdu also started using the robot last year.

Since it was initiated in 2002, the development of Tianji has been led by Tian Wei, a leading orthopedist with Beijing's Jishuitan Hospital, which is best known for its orthopedic surgeries.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beihang University have also participated in the development of the surgical robot.

The three parties jointly set up TINAVI in 2005.

Tianji's two predecessors were respectively unveiled in 2009 and 2012.

GCiS, a Chinese market research firm, estimates China's surgical robot market is on course to hit 2.2 billion yuan by 2021, nearly three times larger than the level in 2016.

The market is currently dominated by the da Vinci Surgical System, which entered China about a decade ago after gaining recognition from the Chinese government. The da Vinci was developed by Intuitive Surgical, a Nasdaq-listed US firm.

One da Vinci robot is sold for around 3 million U.S. dollars in China.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/01-08/287463.shtml

 

[cirr]

AI enhances photo app's spotless reputation

2018-01-09 10:34 Xinhua Editor: Gu Liping

One of China's leading photo apps has broadened its spectrum with the addition of skin testing function.

MTskin is built into Meitu app Cosmetics. Since it was released in October, over 25 million users have had their faces tested using the app, according to Xu Qingquan, CTO of the Meitu research center.

Meitu is one of the most widely used free photo editing apps in the world, and MTskin is based on a database of medical photos of facial problems. AI technology matches users' selfies with the problems and link them to professional dermatologists who deal with problems ranging from acne or chloasma to melanocytic nevi.

Guo Hui, a 32-year-old office worker, is a selfie lover. She now frequently takes selfies to check the pimples on her face.

"I was astonished when the app told exactly how many blackheads I had," said Guo, "I am also glad that it tells my skin's "age" is only 26."

Guo said the test only takes a few seconds to deliver a report.

The report comes with advice and recommends a range of expensive cosmetics.

"The AI uses data, algorithms and a deep learning platform coupled with our long experience of photo editing and human face technology," said Xu.

He admitted that the data base of facial problems needed to be expanded to improve the accuracy of testing, because a human doctor needs a lot more information than a mere photo. "As MTskin collects data it continually optimizes its algorithm. It will be the equal of human experts one day," he said, but so far MTskin just provides skincare tips.

"I don't think the results are totally reliable, but it is fun to know," said Guo.

Headquartered in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, Meitu is an innovator in mobile video and photography. Its selfie app can remove blemishes and brighten teeth. Its virtual makeup app allows users huge scope to experiment with new styles of makeup.

Established in 2008, the company has grown into one of the biggest tech companies in China, with its apps downloaded more than one billion times.

The company began its global expansion in 2016 and has since registered more than 500 million overseas users.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/01-09/287559.shtml

 

[TaiShang]

Hefei hospital uses China-developed robot to perform surgeries

2018-01-08 16:28

chinaplus.cri.cn Editor: Gu Liping

A Chinese-developed robot has been put into use at a hospital in the central Chinese city of Hefei to help perform orthopedic surgeries.

The machine, named Tianji, is said to be the only robot in the world that can perform surgeries on all different parts of the human spine.

Tianji debuted at the hospital in Hefei last week, conducting a 30-minute surgery for a 43-year-old patient who had been suffering from paralysis in his legs for more than a year.

Doctors scanned the patient and sent the results to Tianji's operating system, before the robot started performing its surgical tasks.

The whole procedure left only a small circular scar, around one centimeter in diameter, on the patient.

The patient barely bled during the surgery. Doctors with the hospital said the patient would have lost 2,000 milliliters of blood, if he had a non-robotic surgery.

"The use of the robot brings a lot of benefits," said Shen Cailiang, head of the hospital's orthopedics department.

Shen said patients who undergo Tianji's surgeries are expected to recover in a week, whereas those who have traditional surgeries will usually have to stay in hospital for up to three weeks for recovery.

"With Tianji, we no longer need to scan the patient repeatedly during a surgery. The robot helps reduce more than 70% of the radiation a patient is exposed to," said Shen.

It cost the hospital 15 million yuan, or some 2.3 million U.S. dollars, to purchase the robot last year.

Tianji was first unveiled in late 2016.

TINAVI, the Beijing-based producer of the robot, said Tianji has been used by two leading hospitals in Beijing for over 2,000 orthopedic surgeries so far.

A hospital in the southwestern city of Chengdu also started using the robot last year.

Since it was initiated in 2002, the development of Tianji has been led by Tian Wei, a leading orthopedist with Beijing's Jishuitan Hospital, which is best known for its orthopedic surgeries.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beihang University have also participated in the development of the surgical robot.

The three parties jointly set up TINAVI in 2005.

Tianji's two predecessors were respectively unveiled in 2009 and 2012.

GCiS, a Chinese market research firm, estimates China's surgical robot market is on course to hit 2.2 billion yuan by 2021, nearly three times larger than the level in 2016.

The market is currently dominated by the da Vinci Surgical System, which entered China about a decade ago after gaining recognition from the Chinese government. The da Vinci was developed by Intuitive Surgical, a Nasdaq-listed US firm.

One da Vinci robot is sold for around 3 million U.S. dollars in China.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/01-08/287463.shtml

Great development to reduce import dependency on key/advanced technologies.

The US has to serve as a major natural resources (minerals and agriculture) import destination for China. I guess the trend is as such.

 

[qwerrty]

Rockchip Released Its First AI Processor RK3399Pro -- NPU Performance up to 2.4TOPs

Jan 07, 2018, 12:30 ET

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- At CES2018, Rockchip released its first AI processor RK3399Pro with super performance, providing one-stop turnkey solution for AI (artificial intelligence). Computing performance of its NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit) reaches 2.4TOPs. RK3399Pro has the advantages of high performance, low power consumption and easily development.


RK3399Pro AI processor with superior general computing performance adopts big.LITTLE CPU, Dual-core Cortex-A72 and Quad-core Cortex-A53, showing technical leadership in whole performance and power consumption. The Quad-core ARM high-end Mali-T860 GPU which integrates more bandwidth compression techniques shows excellent overall performance.

RK3399Pro AI processor has high expansion capability, such as: supporting dual Type-C interfaces; dual ISPs (each channel supporting a maximum 13 mega pixels); supporting 4096x2160 display output; supporting 8-channel digital microphone arrays input. With respect to software, RK3399Pro supports numerous APIs (Application Program Interface), including OpenGL ES 1.x/2.x/3.1/3.2, Vulkan 1.0, OpenCL 1.1/1.2, RenderScript etc.

RK3399Pro with super AI computing performance is Rockchip's first AI processor by adopting CPU+GPU+NPU hardware structure. Its integrated NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit) incorporates Rockchip's technology in fields of vision, voice processing and deep learning etc. Compared to traditional solution, the computing performance of typical deep neural network Inception V3, ResNet34 and VGG16 models on RK3399Pro is better and improved nearly hundred times.

Three important features of Rockchip RK3399Pro AI solution:

• High performance AI hardware
  RK3399Pro adopted exclusive AI hardware design. Its NPU computing performance reaches 2.4TOPs, and indexes of both high performance and low consumption keep ahead: the performance is 150% higher than other same type NPU processor; the power consumption is less than 1%, comparing with other solutions adopting GPU as AI computing unit.
  
• Superior platform compatibility
  RK3399Pro NPU supports 8bit and 16bit and is compatible with various AI software frameworks. Existing AI interfaces support OpenVX and TensorFlow Lite/AndroidNN API; AI software tools support the importing, mapping and optimizing of Caffe/TensorFlow model.
  
• Easily development of turnkey solution
  Rockchip provides one-stop AI solution based on RK3399Pro, including hardware reference design and SDK. The solution can increase the AI products R&D speed of global developers and greatly reduce product launch time. It can significantly improve the speed of AI product development for global developers and greatly shorten time to market.

"The age of AI has come. As a global SoC manufacturer in China, we have the market layout of AI for many years. RK3399Pro is Rockchip's first processor which integrates AI hardware. Its platform can be rapid MP for commercial." Chen Feng, the Global Vice President of Rockchip, said, "With super 2.4TOPs performance, low power consumption and abundant interfaces, this product is applicable to various AI application fields such as intelligent drive, image recognition, security monitoring, drones and voice recognition."

The release of Rockchip RK3399Pro has a great influence on global industry chain. It will greatly lower the threshold of innovation and mass production for commercial for AI industry, and accelerate the overall popularization of AI with higher performance and lower power consumption features.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rockchip-released-its-first-ai-processor-rk3399pro----npu-performance-up-to-24tops-300578633.html

 

[JSCh]

Discovering the creation era of ancient paintings at Mogao Grottoes, China
January 11, 2018, Science China Press

Buddhist and mural painting in Mogao Grottoes No. 206. Credit: Science China Press

Mogao Grottoes is located in the western end of the Hexi Corridor along the ancient Silk Road in Dunhuang, China. From 366 to 1368 AD, a large group of Buddha caves were constructed that consists of 735 caves, 45,000 m2 mural paintings, and 2,415 argillaceous painted sculptures. It was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. Until now, most mural paintings at Mogao Grottoes have been dated by directly referring to the mural texts or historical documents. However, the ages of some are undetermined due to the lack of reference materials or the disagreement of art experts in paintings.

The drawing style of mural paintings changed throughout history, and the drawing style can be determined and quantified through painting data. By formulating the problem of mural dating into a problem of drawing-style classification, a new dating method is developed by encoding the drawing styles with visual codes learned through deep learning. This new method successfully determined the creation era of six mural paintings at Mogao Grottoes.

This new research work is led by Qingquan Li from Shenzhen University, just accepted by Science China Information Sciences, under the title "Dating ancient paintings from Mogao Grottoes using deeply learnt visual codes."

With the help of experts from Dunhuang Research Academia, seven mural paintings from two grottos (No. 205 and No. 206) were chosen as the research objects for this research. For grotto No. 205, two main drawing styles were declared by Dunhuang artists, which were the Peak Tang and the Middle Tang. Experts guess that the grotto No. 205 was originally constructed in the Early Tang or Peak Tang, but the construction was handicapped by wars of the Anshi Rebellion for about 50 years, and then the construction was succeeded in the Middle Tang. However, until now, there was no scientific or quantitative study to support these declarations. For grotto No. 206, painting styles are controversial between the Sui's and Early Tang's (see Figure 1). Specifically, for the two Guanyin paintings on the west wall of grotto No. 205, Mr. Wen-Jie Duan, a highly respected former President of DunHuang Research Academia, dated them into Peak Tang, while Mr. Hui-Min Wang, a distinguished expert in Archaeology Institute of Dunhuang Research Academia, dated it into Early Tang.

To reveal the creation era of these paintings, Qin Zou, a researcher from Wuhan University, collected 3860 mural paintings from 194 different grottoes with determined creation-era labels, and used data augmenting to form a training set of over 50,000 images. To find the era-discriminative visual codes in these paintings, the authors constructed a deep convolution neural network and classified these painting images into the right eras. Based on the classification model, a dating method was built and applied to date the seven paintings.

Six of the new dating results were approved by experts from Dunhuang Research Academy. "These dating results are correct and the method is great," Mr. Hui-Min Wang said. However, the deep learning method dated the painting "Peacock King" in grotto No. 205 into Middle Tang Dynasty, while Hui-Min Wang dated it into Wudai Dynasty, which brings up a new research topic to the community.

"To the best of our knowledge," wrote the five researchers, "this work represents the first account of a scientific and quantitative manner to support the era prediction and reduce the uncertainties in dating ancient paintings by using deep learning."



https://phys.org/news/2018-01-creation-era-ancient-mogao-grottoes.html

Li Qingquan, Zou Qin, Ma De, 王 骞 Wang Song. Dating Ancient Paintings of Mogao Grottoes Using Deeply Learnt Visual Codes. SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s11432-017-9308-x

 

[JSCh]

Ship localization in Santa Barbara Channel using machine learning classifiers

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 142, EL455 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5010064

Haiqiang Niu, Emma Ozanich, and Peter Gerstoft

Abstract
Machine learning classifiers are shown to outperform conventional matched field processing for a deep water (600 m depth) ocean acoustic-based ship range estimation problem in the Santa Barbara Channel Experiment when limited environmental information is known. Recordings of three different ships of opportunity on a vertical array were used as training and test data for the feed-forward neural network and support vector machine classifiers, demonstrating the feasibility of machine learning methods to locate unseen sources. The classifiers perform well up to 10 km range whereas the conventional matched field processing fails at about 4 km range without accurate environmental information.​

 

[cirr]

Chinese newsrooms push forward into AI technology

Christine Schmidt, Nieman Lab | January 12, 2018

On the heels of billions of yuan of investment burrowed into China’s artificial intelligence scene, China’s state news agency has announced that it is rebuilding its newsroom to emphasize human-machine collaboration.

Xinhua News Agency president Cai Mingzhao said Xinhua will build a “new kind of newsroom based on information technology and featuring human-machine collaboration.” The agency has also introduced the “Media Brain” platform to integrate cloud computing, the Internet of Things, AI and more into news production, with potential applications “from finding leads, to news gathering, editing, distribution and finally feedback analysis.”

The agency’s announcement was sparse on details, but it’s the latest component of a deep push into AI by China. Last week the country announced plans for a $2.1 billion AI development park to be built in the next five years as part of its drive to become an AI world leader by 2030. Google has also committed to putting roots in China’s AI scene by opening a research center in Beijing, with Bloomberg quoting Google’s leader of the center Fei-Fei Li: “It will be a small team focused on advancing basic AI research in publications, academic conferences and knowledge exchange.” Microsoft also announced plans to create their own R&D lab for AI in Taiwan and hire 200 researchers over the next five years, investing about $34 million.

“We saw lots of interest in AI in China, and the sector is moving so fast in the country,” said Chris Nicholson, former Bloomberg news editor and co-founder of AI startup Skymind, told Digiday. “Beijing supports AI, while Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are all getting into AI. The U.S. still has the best AI talent, but there are many good engineers and AI researchers in China as well.”

Moving aside from the global AI armsrace, the reverberations from China investing in AI-media could echo in journalism worldwide. A report out today from the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Project on media trends for 2018 highlights some of the advances that Chinese AI journalism has made already.

Chinese companies aren’t necessarily expanding internationally for an international advertising base; as Axios’ Sara Fischer points out, they’re interested in targeting Chinese nationals who have moved elsewhere but still use the same technology to stay in touch back home.

There are also some concerns about what the Chinese government could do with AI journalism: Nina Xiang, the co-founder of the artificial intelligence-based China Money Network, wondered about the potential security and privacy issues from Xinhua’s innovations. “The Media Brain…will raise significant concerns over the protection of personal data privacy, or the lack thereof. The tie-up between Alibaba and China’s state news agency — the first of its kind — creates an all-seeing digital eye that can potentially access data collected from countless surveillance cameras across the nation, estimated to total half a billion in the next three years, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, dashboard-mounted car cameras, air pollution monitoring stations and personal wearable devices. Whether people will be able to give permission for their data being used, or even know its being used, is questionable,” she wrote.

“To use a simple analogy, this partnership is as if Amazon, Paypal, CBS, News Corp and Fox were all working with state and city governments in the United States to share both publicly and privately collected data for the purpose of monitoring for potential news events anywhere, anytime in real time across America.”

https://ijnet.org/en/blog/chinese-newsrooms-push-forward-ai-technology

 

[cirr]

AI star from China: AIcorrect Translator rocking at CES

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 12, 2018 -- The top-of-the-line trade show for the global consumer electronics industry - CES 2018 at Vegas has been open to the world since January 9th. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and products brought by Chinese companies are among the most impressive at the show, out of which, AIcorrect Translator, developed and introduced by Babel Technology in Beijing, a Tsinghua-based team, attracts attention of the buyers and exhibitors from around the world.

As a utility realization of AI technology in civilian field, AIcorrect Translator deals with problems in cross-linguistic communication. It supports real-time mutual translation in multiple situations between Chinese/English and 30 other languages, including Japanese, Korean, Thai, French, Russian and Spanish, major languages like English are further divided into accents. The translation quality reaches as high as 96%.

It also has a touch screen, where transcription and translation are shown at the same time. Even more surprisingly, up to four devices connected, AIcorrect Translator supports conversation in up to four different languages. Right on the show floor, many attendees are amazed at its utility and functionality, a British buyer even showed intention of pre-ordering 2,000 units on-site.

Over the recent years, China has overtaken the other players in the field of artificial intelligence, in that applications and development for civilian purposes like mobile pay have obtained remarkable achievements, drones and other innovational products also walked into the industrial forefront. Lei Guan, CEO of Babel Technology, seemed a little bit emotional when talking with us. "As a Chinese pathfinder in the field of AI, we designed the device in hoping that hundreds of millions of people can have access to it and carry out cross-linguistic communication all barrier-free." He added, "with AIcorrect Translator, our dream will no more fear the difference of languages."

https://www.theautochannel.com/news...m-china-aicorrect-translator-rocking-ces.html

 

[cirr]

AI, computer games could be used for military training: PLA Daily

2018-01-15 08:06 Global Times Editor: Li Yan

Artificial intelligence (AI) and computer games are expected to help train military commanders to improve the combat ability of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), a PLA-affiliated newspaper said on Friday.

Real-time strategy games could be used in the military to help train commanders, and materials gathered from the country's intelligence system could be put into the games to vividly simulate wartime conditions, a PLA Daily article said on Friday.

Games such as Command & Conquer: Red Alert or Passion Leads Army could help train military officers' capability to make pre-war plans, draft and modify strategies and to coordinate human and material resources in different situations, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Friday.

AI could be used as rivals of commanders in the game, just as Google's Go-playing AI AlphaGo played with real Go players, the newspaper article said.

This way, the AI is a "personal coach" of the military officer in the game as it could play the game differently according to the level of the officer, it added.

As the officer improves his or her skills and capabilities during the game, the AI could also modify its strategy accordingly to make the game challenging and interesting, the article added.

The assistance of AI will make the war-gaming process more accurate. Compared with traditional training methods, internet games cost less and could be applied to a wider scope of people, Song noted.

The games could also serve as a reference for the evaluation of soldier performance, or a cost-effective way to assess soldier's combat skills and reasoning ability, according to Song.

However, the game is only a tool for military training rather than for entertainment purposes, and PLA soldiers should avoid getting addicted to the games, Song said.

http://www.ecns.cn/military/2018/01-15/288315.shtml

China supports development of new energy intelligent cars

2018-01-15 08:48 Xinhua Editor: Gu Liping

China's top economic planner has cleared the way for development of domestic new energy cars and intelligent vehicles.

The country will promote the innovative development of the intelligent vehicles and develop the auto industry in the "strategic direction" of intelligent vehicles, according to the draft version of the Intelligent Automobile Innovation and Development Strategy, which was released by China's National Development and Reform Commission to solicit opinions.

China will develop the artificial intelligence and big data to make the new energy auto industry competitive in the global market.

Baidu is becoming a major new player in self-driving technology. The company announced a big upgrade to its open-source platform "Apollo 2.0" at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 in Las Vegas, the United States, to speed up the development and production of autonomous vehicles.

China has the world's largest new energy auto industry. The country sold more than 490,000 new energy cars in the first 11 months of 2017, and the sales are expected to exceed 577,000 units in the whole year, according to statistics by EV-Volumes, an electric vehicle sales database.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2018/01-15/288309.shtml

 

[cirr]

http://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech...l-intelligence-bot-beats-humans-reading-first

 

[TaiShang]

Xi's bookshelf illustrates goal of developing AI powerhouse

By An Baijie | China Daily | Updated: 2018-01-15

These two books about artificial intelligence appear on President Xi Jinping's bookshelf. [Photo/China Daily]

Two books on President Xi Jinping's shelf drew public attention from both home and abroad immediately after they were seen in the video of Xi's New Year speech.

The two books were about artificial intelligence－The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos and Brett King's Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane.

The Master Algorithm, published in 2015, describes how machine learning is remaking business, politics, science and war.

Augmented describes how society will be impacted by technologies that will change the world more in the next 20 years than it has been changed in the past 250 years.

The Business Insider said it is "interesting" that Xi has the two books on his bookshelf. It reflected China's ambition regarding AI, said the report.

A report published on the WeChat account of xuexixiaozu, which is operated by the overseas edition of People's Daily, labeled the two books as "newly published leading edge scientific books" among eight different categories of books on the president's bookshelf that appeared in the New Year address.

Innovation highlighted

The President has attached great importance to the development of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data in recent years. In his address to the 19th CPC National Congress, Xi called for more efforts to foster new areas of growth through further integration of the internet, big data and artificial intelligence with the real economy.

Speaking at a collective study session of the CPC Central Committee's Political Bureau in December, Xi said that the internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy all should be interconnected.

Xi also emphasized the necessity of using big data to improve governance.

While inspecting a company in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, in December, Xi called for more innovation in the equipment manufacturing sector to accelerate China's drive toward becoming a manufacturing powerhouse and to bolster the real economy.

At Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co Ltd, a leading domestic manufacturer, Xi was briefed about the company's intelligent assembly lines and big data platform.

"Innovation is the source of business core competitiveness," Xi said. He urged a shift from "Made in China" to "Created in China".

Innovation ranks first among the Five Concepts of Development raised by Xi as the drive of a new kind of economic growth, along with the other four concepts of coordination, environment, openness and sharing.

In a signed article in German media ahead of his state visit to Germany in July, Xi called on the two countries to deepen practical cooperation in such fields as innovation, the internet and smart manufacturing.

The G20 Hangzhou Summit, held in East China's Zhejiang province in 2016, adopted the Blueprint on Innovative Growth and formulated a specific action plan. Wu Fei, head of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at Zhejiang University, said that as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and president, Xi has set a visionary tone for China's AI development, which is to turn into a global AI leader in the coming 15 years.

"President Xi has said that AI will definitely change the world and society, so we should take the opportunities," Wu said.

Global exchanges on AI

In his state visit to China, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance of boosting cooperation between France and China in the field of artificial intelligence on Jan 9.

Speaking at the conclusion of a Sino-French forum on artificial intelligence in Beijing, Macron presided over the signing of various cooperation agreements on technology and trade.

Macron said China had a great advantage in the AI sector given its enormous domestic market.

While talking with Macron, Xi called for integrating the development strategies of China and France, strengthening innovative cooperation, and achieving common development in the areas of digital economy and artificial intelligence.

Fei-Fei Li, Chief Scientist of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Google Cloud, announced in December that Google would launch a new AI research center in Beijing, as part of its AI First strategy.

China is "a rising country of AI work and research", she told Xinhua News Agency. The Google AI China Center, the first of its kind in Asia, will primarily focus on basic AI research.

China's AI industry has been developing rapidly in recent years. The number of AI companies has increased from 57 in 2007 to 592 by June 2017, more than tenfold over the past 10 years, according to a report released by Tencent Research Institute.

In December, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology unveiled a three-year plan to boost the application of AI in the automobile, robotics, healthcare and other sectors to upgrade the country's real economy.

Zang Yarui contributed to this story.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/15/WS5a5bf75aa3102c394518f26b.html

 

[52051]

In the recent Stanford Squad world AI competition in English Natural Language Understanding (NLU), China's Alibaba group use its internal algorthim of natural language understanding, SLQA, beat every other teams including all big names in the US.

More importantly, Alibaba's algrothim is the first algorthim that beat human in NLU, thats quite an achievement, espeically considering the fact: unlike most of the others in the competition, Alibaba's SLQA is not a in-lab toy, Alibaba has already deployed their internal algorthims in all its e-business sectors.

NLU is considered AI-complete, which means it is among the hardest AI problems.

So despite whatever hype the US fake news media created, whenever the situation is come down to cut all the crap and put it in a you-against-me way, the American showboats always end up being losers.

I just hope the American much-hyped weaponaries have better luck than their much hyped AI research capabilities, when it come down to a you-against-me styple with China.

https://yq.aliyun.com/articles/361217

 

[52051]

I expect Quantum tech/AI/nano-tech/hypersonic are among the first batch of area when China will achieve total domination over the sad americans, the americans are good at show-off and write english fake news, whilst the Chinese are much better at get business done.

 

[MultaniGuy]

Good news. I wish best of luck to China.

A rising China is in the interest of the world.