Chinese tech company Baidu says artificial intelligence is entering a ‘golden age’ on the mainland
- Company tells its annual developers’ conference, Baidu Create, that a growing pool of talent is contributing to China’s AI capability
- It says AI innovations on the mainland could advance developments in sectors including transportation, health care and even space exploration
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Artificial intelligence (AI) has already played an indispensable role in daily life, but its golden age is yet to come as China, the world’s emerging AI leader, prepares for the fourth wave of the industrial revolution.
The world’s second-largest economy has proved to be fertile ground for AI. From 2015 to 2020, the market valuation of the AI sector grew at an annual rate of 44.5 per cent in China, compared to 22.6 per cent globally, according to a Deloitte report. And according to a report by Accenture, by 2019, China had become the world’s second-largest AI market, accounting for 12 per cent of the global AI economy.
Since 2017, AI in China has been deeply integrated with manufacturing, finance, commerce and other fields to help accelerate digital transformation. In the outline of the 14th five-year plan, Chinese policymakers addressed AI-related technology as “a fundamental core area”.
Leading Chinese tech strategists like Baido’s chief executive officer Robin Li, are envisioning a smart future in which AI becomes essential to every industry. Smart transportation, for example, is the next-level AI application where a cloud based-platform could help optimise traffic flow. In Li’s vision, residents in first-tier cities will no longer need to enter a lottery for licence plates, because the smart transportation system will tackle much of the traffic congestion. The system will become one of the most influential innovations in the next 10 to 40 years, Li believes.
In Baidu’s smart transportation system, AI is integrated with other cutting-edge technologies such as 5G and cloud computing. In this year’s third quarter alone, Baidu’s autonomous driving service platform “Apollo Go” provided 115,000 rides to commuters and became the world’s largest provider of autonomous driving services. The company plans to expand the platform to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030.
Baidu has also helped China’s AI industry grow by providing developers with solid technological infrastructure. It built the PaddlePaddle framework, the first open-source deep-learning platform in China, where AI developers at all levels can find the tools, services and resources they need. The framework has been implemented in industries such as forestry, energy, manufacturing and waste management.
Since it was established in 2016, more than 4 million developers have created 476,000 models using the PaddlePaddle framework, serving 157,000 enterprises and dozens of industries. Even beginners in computer programming can design and implement AI models with the help of the deep-learning platform.
Included in Baidu’s AI toolkit is Plato-XL, a dialogue-generating model with 11 billion parameters – the cogs in machine-learning algorithms that generate data. Making full use of large-scale data will lead to informative and engaging conversations with humans, allowing AI-enabled platforms to act as emotional and intellectual companions in people’s daily lives, according to Baidu.
The tech giant has also partnered with Tsinghua University to develop the latest smart transportation solution, Apollo Air. It is empowered by the world’s first vehicle-to-everything technology, which has passed the L4 autonomous driving test, meaning it can respond to system failures and road congestion. This could result in reducing road traffic accidents by 90 per cent across China, Baidu says.
Apollo Air is just one example of how AI can be combined with 5G, cloud computing and other frontier technologies in the fourth wave. In an era where vaccines have played a crucial role in the fight against Covid-19, AI has helped with the development of mRNA vaccines. Baidu introduced the first algorithm for mRNA in the industry, which could generate optimised mRNA sequences within 10 minutes, according to the company.
In the foreseeable future, AI will also be adopted by aerospace engineers to explore the universe and search for signs of life, according to Ouyang Ziyuan, a renowned Chinese cosmochemist and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Speaking at Baidu Create, he said the technology can even assist deep-space exploration by analysing images of planets and helping to build moon-landing vehicles.
While technological leaders such as Baidu are important advocates of AI development in China, the process is contingent upon the availability of an expanding pool of talent. Baidu continues to invest in the training of AI talent. The Baidu scholarship was established in 2013 to recognise Chinese students with great potential and excellence in AI research around the world. Li awarded scholarships to 10 outstanding young students at the conference, saying that he sees innovation in their bright minds, as well as a determination and unrelenting effort towards realising their dreams in scientific research.
