China's Race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology

[onebyone]

AI to boost China’s growth, with manufacturing and agriculture to benefit, says report

AI could give China much-needed productivity boost, as the number of working-age population continues to decline, says a report by Accenture


PUBLISHED : Monday, 07 August, 2017, 9:03pm
UPDATED : Monday, 07 August, 2017, 10:10pm

Artificial intelligence (AI) could add as much as 1.6 percentage points to China’s economic growth rate by 2035, with industries like manufacturing, agriculture and retail seeing the most value from the technology, according to a recent report.

As China’s economic growth slows, a report by consultancy firm Accenture suggests that the advent of AI could give the country a much-needed boost in productivity and growth, especially as the number of working-age population in the country continues to decline.

“AI capabilities have only just matured, such that they are able to interpret data at a speed and a cost that is reasonable and affordable for companies to take advantage of,” said Adam Burden, Accenture’s global lead for advanced technology & architecture.

Why Japan will profit the most from artificial intelligence

“The largest area of opportunity for AI in China’s growth is absolutely manufacturing...the instrumentation of manufacturing has really only just begun. The Internet of Things, taking data and telemetry off machines and manufacturing lines for greater productivity is really just beginning.”

The Internet of Things, taking data and telemetry off machines and manufacturing lines for greater productivity is really just beginning
ADAM BURDEN, ACCENTURE
Should AI become a new factor of production in China, with robots and intelligent machines performing manufacturing tasks, almost US$6.3 trillion can be added to China’s gross value added (GVA) in 2035 – a metric which measures contribution to the country’s economy. That would represent almost 19 per cent of China’s total GVA.

According to Accenture, AI will have the largest impact on industries such as manufacturing, retail and agriculture in China, as well as allowing labour-intensive sectors such as health care to become more productive over time by allowing workers to focus on more critical tasks, while AI handles the more mundane ones.

World dominance in three steps: China sets out road map to lead in artificial intelligence by 2030

In the manufacturing sector, the use of AI is expected to account for an additional US$2.7 trillion in GVA in the industry by 2035, a 31-per cent increase compared to if AI was not utilised.

“Too many people try to associate AI with human intelligence. But the problem is...there are things that humans can do that machines cannot, and there are things that machines can do that humans absolutely cannot,” Burden said.

Inside the AI revolution that’s reshaping Chinese society

“For example, a human being would have no hope of looking through tens of millions of pages of data [in seconds].

“AI can take the mundane and the ordinary out of our lives and improve the human condition in the long run.”

China is betting big on AI - and here’s why it’s going to pay off

While AI technology will cause disruptions in China’s workforce, such as displacing manufacturing workers from factories as businesses favour robots and machines, Burden emphasised that the point of artificial intelligence is not to replace humans.

“AI is here to serve us – it makes humans super,” Burden said. “People will be retrained for new employment, new roles...we will need people who are trained to manage or operate the [AI] systems.”
http://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation...th-manufacturing-and-agriculture-benefit-says

 

[cirr]

Artificial intelligence embracement

2017-08-08 09:56

Global Times Editor: Li Yan

Fund managers utilize AI to meet customer demands, but experts predict it will not become the ultimate decision-maker

An increasing number of fund management companies have started to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technology and big data to offer customized services in China. Experts agree that the technology could soon become a trend as it can help fund managers grasp the latest market information and large amounts of user data. But AI may only be used as a supplementary tool in the domestic market and may not hold up as the ultimate decision-maker.

The artificial intelligence (AI) industry is flourishing.

Initially, people became increasingly familiar with the application of such technology, particularly in the auto, retail and medical treatment sectors.

Now, it is gradually being applied within the sales of fund management products by more and more domestic fund management companies.

To meet potential market demands, Ant Fortune, an investing app of Alibaba Group Holding's financial affiliate Ant Financial, unveiled Caifuhao, or "Fortune Account," in June to allow third-party financial institutions to set up online stores within the app.

Currently, a total of 18 fund management companies have entered the platform, including Beijing-based China Asset Management, Shanghai-based Huaan Funds and Guangzhou-based E Fund Management Co.

So far, those fund management companies have seen their average daily trading volume increase 243 percent since June, according to an interview reply Ant Financial sent to the Global Times Thursday. The company, however, didn't provide the total trading volume.

Rising trend

Alibaba is not the only firm in China that is trying to introduce AI to the financial sector. Some domestic traditional financial institutions have also jumped on the bandwagon.

In December 2016, China Merchants Bank rolled out its robot advisor feature, Mojie app, which pre-selects a certain range of assets and automatically trades them.

So far, the app has accumulated more than 5 billion yuan ($743.7 million) worth of assets, becoming the largest robot advisor in China, according to media reports.

The application of AI technology in the financial sector is becoming a trend as the technology can help provide services focused more on customers' needs rather than on clients' assets, an Ant Financial spokesperson told the Global Times.

For example, Ant Financial can label customers with different features based on the types or the amount of funds they have bought. And these data can be accessed by fund managers to help them send promotion banners to targeted consumers. But the company stressed that they will protect customers' personal information.

One of the first fund managers to enter the Caifuhao platform, Beijing-based Tianhong Asset Management Co, of which Ant Financial holds 51 percent controlling stakes, said in a note posted on its website in July that the company regards AI technology as a strategic priority in providing consumers with tailored services.

Overseas fund managers have also weighed in. In February, New York-based Goldman Sachs Asset Management introduced an investment trust to Japan. The product uses AI to sort through large amounts of data and selects promising investment targets, according to media reports.

BlackRock, another New York-based fund company, announced in March that it would cut more than 40 jobs, replacing some of its human portfolio managers to instead rely on algorithms and models to pick stocks, according to a Fortune report in March.

A promising future

AI-based fund management sales could prove to be a promising market. Experts believe that the AI-driven systems have advantages in information filtering and data collection.

Through AI, fund management companies could "grasp the latest market information, huge amounts of user data as well as saving operational costs," Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Goldman Sachs predicted in a report issued in December 2016 that machine learning and AI can create $34 billion to $43 billion worth of value annually by the end of 2025 via saving costs and bringing new profit-making opportunities.

Dong also noted that AI technology might be helpful in risk control and the evaluation of investment returns as well.

Consumers "only care whether the fund product can generate returns at a reasonable level," said a 36-year-old fund product buyer in Shanghai surnamed Liu.

"Sometimes, wealth management products recommended by salespeople from financial institutions are not really what I want," Liu told the Global Times on Sunday. "If AI technology could help us choose profitable wealth management products, why not take it?"

Mature financial market needed

"Given the mature investment environment in the West, large international fund management companies with rich investing experience could provide more tailored AI products than their Chinese counterparts could," said Dong.

He noted that the domestic financial market needs more improvement in terms of information disclosure and system optimization, otherwise domestic financial institutions cannot fully depend on AI to make decisions.

Qiu Yanying, an investment director at Beijing-based Pinjin Asset Management Co, also took a cautious attitude toward AI technology.

Personally, "I will not totally depend on the technology of AI to make decisions. I prefer to use it as a [supplementary] tool instead," Qiu told the Global Times on Thursday.

AI is capable of dealing with and calculating large amounts of data, which could provide historical data objectively and help investors make decisions, said Qiu.

In the short term, fund managers will not be replaced by AI technology in China because they still play important roles in making judgment on a company's operation and brand value, Qiu noted.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/08-08/268483.shtml

 

[cirr]

China to host World robotics conference

2017-08-09 08:30

Xinhua Editor: Gu Liping

Nearly 300 artificial intelligent (AI) specialists and representatives of over 150 robot enterprises will gather in Beijing from Aug. 23 to 27 for the World Robot Conference 2017, according to a press conference Tuesday.

Delegates from universities, research institutions and enterprises will discuss opportunities for the robotic industry, said Luo Junjie, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The event will feature a three-day forum, an exhibition and a set of contests.

The conference will be jointly hosted by Beijing municipal government, the MIIT and China Association for Science and Technology.

China has been the world's biggest producer of industrial robots for three years, accounting for 25 percent of global production.

"China's robotics are on fast track, but many enterprises are small and weak in R&D," Luo said. "It is a problem we need to tackle."

Since it was established in 2015, the World Robot Conference has become the biggest and the most international event in the industry.

http://www.ecns.cn/2017/08-09/268630.shtml

 

[qwerrty]

Chinese AI lab tops Stanford reading comprehension tasks


The joint laboratory of Harbin Institute of Technology and iFLYTEK Research now sits on top of Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD) leaderboard, followed by Microsoft Research Asia in second place and IBM Research in tenth place. Other Chinese institutes are also on the board, including Eigen Technology and Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University.

microsoft research asia is based in beijing. you can say second place is also chinese

 

[JSCh]

Beijing-based tech start-up has a big edge on facial recognition
By Chen Qingqing Source:Global Times Published: 2017/8/10 21:34:33

Inside a cashier-less store in Beijing Photo:Chen Qingqing/GT

The first cashier-less store in Beijing Photo:Chen Qingqing/GT

Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma Yun demonstrates facial recognition technology. Photo: Courtesy of Face++​

When staff members of Megvii Technology Inc punch in, they only have to pass through an automated gate and their name will appear on the screen above it.

"We can also use this self-developed facial recognition technology to welcome visitors. If the camera behind this gate doesn't recognize someone's facial information then no name will appear on the screen and the system will automatically notify us that a visitor has come to our office," Wei Wenyuan, an employee of the Beijing-based tech start-up that specializes in facial recognition technology, told the Global Times on August 3.

The start-up, also known as Face++, was founded in 2011 by three graduates of Tsinghua University . Six years on, it has become one of the world's smartest companies, according to MIT Technology Review.

In total, seven tech companies in the Chinese mainland were listed on the MIT ranking in 2017 including - Chinese tech giants Baidu Inc, Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holding.

At the Face++ headquarters in Zhongguancun, a hub for entrepreneurs in western Beijing's Haidian district, a slogan that reads "Artificial Intelligence (AI), for a better future," hangs on the wall.

"Most of our employees are geeks, some kids are such geniuses that they can even skip university," Wei noted.

From detecting five facial key points years ago to 106 key points today, Face++ provides facial recognition solutions for different software developers, such as the Chinese beauty and photo editing app Meitu, which maps users' facial features. By November 2016, it had applied for a total of 302 patents, five of which are in the US.

Both China and the US consider AI as part of their national strategies, and both countries have come up with government-backed guidelines to push forward the development of the industry. However, China still lags far behind the US in terms of basic research in algorithms and theories, Tencent said in a report on August 2.

As of June 2017, there were a total of 2,542 AI companies worldwide, with American firms accounting for 42 percent and Chinese firms making up 23 percent, the report showed.

Total venture capital investment in the AI sector worldwide has amounted to 191.4 billion yuan ($28.55 billion) since 1999, according to the report, with investment in China accounting for 33.18 percent of that figure, or 63.5 billion yuan.

In China, AI is no longer just a remote concept. For example, image analysis has been widely applied in security cameras, and user-profiling technology has been adopted by Internet companies to customize online advertisements, according to a report on AI released by financial services provider China International Capital Corp in June.

Application-driven

One business enjoying the benefits of this technology is a convenience store established at the end of July in a shopping mall in western Beijing.

"With the help of Face++, we installed a facial recognition system for this cashier-less store here, so customers can scan the QR code at the entrance and their information will be directly uploaded into our system," said Tang Yan, a manager at the store.

After entering the store, customers pick up various items such as snacks and drinks, then put them on a checkout table where a sensor identifies them. "To prevent shoplifting, a camera at the exit can recognize the facial information of the customers and detect if they have paid for the items they have selected," he said.

The 30-square-meter shop has recorded a sales volume of around 2,000 yuan ($298) per day since it was unveiled, and is also the first cashier-less store where Face++ has implemented its facial recognition technology in Beijing.

However, with US tech giants such as Amazon already having launched cashier-free convenience stores in December 2016, Chinese companies have been playing catch-up with their foreign counterparts in recent years.

Some of the advanced technologies that were applied in labs in Western countries have been brought back by young entrepreneurs such as Yin Qi, one of the three founders of Face++, who accumulated his image processing experiences in Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) years ago, Xie Yinan, vice president of Face++, told the Global Times.

"The internship at MSRA helped him turn from focusing on basic theory study to exploring application scenarios," he said.

In order to evaluate whether the facial recognition technologies are solid, they have to be applied in real life, Xie noted. Skynet, facial recognition software developed by Face++ and used as an advanced security tool, can identify targeted figures instantly. It has helped police in 25 Chinese provinces seize over 500 escaped criminals, he said.

The company's other customers include Alipay, the financial unit of Alibaba Group Holding. With the authentication technology of Face++, users on Alipay can reset passwords by using facial recognition.

Getting the edge

Face++ today offers computer vision technology in application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs), and over 5,000 customers and developers use its platform to build different apps. Its five core technologies in facial recognition - face detection, face landmarks, face attributes, face comparing and face searching - were used in 213,000 apps in 2016. So far, there are 300,000 registered users on the platform of Face++, and 40 percent are from overseas.

In addition to this, body recognition is becoming more commonly used to detect criminals in crowded or complicated environments.

"Chinese tech companies have some advantages in the application of AI, and they have to process a large amount of data, which enables them to build different models for testing," Zhang Zhuo, an industry analyst at IDC, told the Global Times on Monday.

Chinese local governments are also urging further development of cloud services used in smart city and smart governance, which will give companies access to a very large database.

"One reason Google is in a leading position in image processing is that the US tech giant first collected millions pictures for their archives," he said, noting that the winner of the future is the one who owns data.

Face++, which has finalized a C-round of financing of $100 million so far, aims to apply its visual processing technologies in more domains while further exploring deep-learning technology.

"Establishing our video censors and visual technologies in some automated machines, which could enable them to make easy judgments to better serve people, is part of the Internet of Things initiative," Xie said.

 

[axisofevil]

They said the same thing to the Japanese.
When forced out of the low cost market, Americans have no choice but to compete in the higher end and make use of their better known brand names.
Get a life, instead of hiding forever in excuses.
.

Comparing Japanese products to Chinese products.....yeah plz get a life....your statement rivals a lot of your shortcomings haha

 

[sinait]

Comparing Japanese products to Chinese products.....yeah plz get a life....your statement rivals a lot of your shortcomings haha

Fools will laugh at anything and themselves.
Not wanting the put down the Japanese but Japan don't have anything like the DJI drones.
What happened to the Japanese domination of TVs ?
What became of Sony smartphone ?
Anyway Japanese are East Asians as are the Chinese and the Koreans.
They are all good in their respective manufacturing niches.
I am only laughing at the Supa Powa Indians.

India have many IITs and produce huge numbers of software engineers.
There is this Software Programming Competition by IBM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Programming_Contest
3 Chinese are among the top 10.
India is not even in the top 40.

This dismal showing by the Indians are repeated at all other programming competitions.
What happened to so called IT Software Supa Powa with 1.3 billion population.
.

 

[Offshore]

Fools will laugh at anything and themselves.
Not wanting the put down the Japanese but Japan don't have anything like the DJI drones.
What happened to the Japanese domination of TVs ?
What became of Sony smartphone ?
Anyway Japanese are East Asians as are the Chinese and the Koreans.
They are all good in their respective manufacturing niches.
I am only laughing at the Supa Powa Indians.

India have many IITs and produce huge numbers of software engineers.
There is this Software Programming Competition by IBM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Programming_Contest
3 Chinese are among the top 10.
India is not even in the top 40.

This dismal showing by the Indians are repeated at all other programming competitions.
What happened to so called IT Software Supa Powa with 1.3 billion population.
.

indian IT supa powa is just a myth, its self proclaimed or self marketing from their media.
If they any good with coding, they already at least neck to neck with US and China in A.I field.. but reality is, they are nowhere to be seen.
Not even in the game

 

[axisofevil]

Fools will laugh at anything and themselves.
Not wanting the put down the Japanese but Japan don't have anything like the DJI drones.
What happened to the Japanese domination of TVs ?
What became of Sony smartphone ?
Anyway Japanese are East Asians as are the Chinese and the Koreans.
They are all good in their respective manufacturing niches.
I am only laughing at the Supa Powa Indians.

India have many IITs and produce huge numbers of software engineers.
There is this Software Programming Competition by IBM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Programming_Contest
3 Chinese are among the top 10.
India is not even in the top 40.

This dismal showing by the Indians are repeated at all other programming competitions.
What happened to so called IT Software Supa Powa with 1.3 billion population.
.

Competitions based on what you fool? In India, who sends programmers to compete? In China, just like your olympic sports, you look for the best to compete....whereas there is no such system in India........its free will and the individual's own interest if they wish to pursue such competitions like in the US....stop patting your back...




So if you are all East Asian...then why so mad still after Japan beat your *** in WW2? Grow a pair...

 

[Götterdämmerung]

So if you are all East Asian...then why so mad still after Japan beat your *** in WW2? Grow a pair...

Idiot, we are all Europeans and yet we fought incessant wars for centuries and that didn't prevent us to share a common cultural identity and common values.

 

[AndrewJin]

Idiot, we are all Europeans and yet we fought incessant wars for centuries and that didn't prevent us to share a common cultural identity and common values.

What can you expect from a country of average 82? They even chickened out from PISA2016 preventing from falling in the bottom top 2 again.

 

[oprih]

No indian in the top 10? Wow india is completely useless, good at nothing except worshipping cows.

 

[axisofevil]

Idiot, we are all Europeans and yet we fought incessant wars for centuries and that didn't prevent us to share a common cultural identity and common values.

Are you kidding me idiot......you finally reached peace this century! What the f-k happened to the 30 centuries? You couldn't find nothing in common...gtfoh

 

[Götterdämmerung]

Are you kidding me idiot......you finally reached peace this century! What the f-k happened to the 30 centuries? You couldn't find nothing in common...gtfoh

What a bloody idiot, where did I say that we didn't have war for centuries? Compared to our warring experiences, East Asia has been a big lumbaya singing peaceniks band. Even during the warring centuries, it didn't prevent us to exchange culturally. Just a look at our architecture, music, literature, art etc and common identity is found everywhere. But for a functional and uneducated illiterate such as many of your compatriots, what do you know about our history when you are clueless about the history of your immediate neighbour. Seldom have a met a more ignorant bunch of people than Indians.

 

[axisofevil]

What a bloody idiot, where did I say that we didn't have war for centuries? Compared to our warring experiences, East Asia has been a big lumbaya singing peaceniks band. Even during the warring centuries, it didn't prevent us to exchange culturally. Just a look at our architecture, music, literature, art etc and common identity is found everywhere. But for a functional and uneducated illiterate such as many of your compatriots, what do you know about our history when you are clueless about the history of your immediate neighbour. Seldom have a met a more ignorant bunch of people than Indians.

BS.......you trying to gloss over differences....to portray white unity...again GTFOH...add something to the thread or stfu and don't bother replying back..