Artificial intelligence, pragmatic development is the right way

Recently, the China Artificial Intelligence Conference hosted by the China Artificial Intelligence Society was held in Shenzhen, using this high-end cutting-edge communication platform that closely combines production, learning and research in the field of artificial intelligence, focusing on current hot topics such as key core technology development, scholars and industry professionals. Fully explored.

The development of artificial intelligence enters a new stage and will become a new generation technology engine to promote future development.

"In my opinion, if the machine is originally a substitute for human strength, then in the era of artificial intelligence, machines can be used to replace human intelligence and help people make judgments and decisions." Academician Pu Muming, director of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In the past decade, the mobile Internet has flourished, changing all aspects of people's work and life. Artificial intelligence is considered to be a new generation technology engine that will promote economic and social development in the future.

At present, the development of artificial intelligence has entered a new stage. Experts said that after more than 60 years of evolution, especially in the mobile Internet, big data, supercomputing, sensor network, brain science and other new theoretical and new technologies and the strong demand for economic and social development, artificial intelligence accelerates development and presents New features such as deep learning, cross-border integration, human-machine collaboration, open-mindedness, and self-management are emerging, and chain-breaking is being triggered to accelerate the economic and social fields from digitalization and networking to intelligent acceleration.

From a technical perspective, artificial intelligence is the product of the combination of software and hardware. Wang Haifeng, senior vice president of Baidu, said that the real artificial intelligence system involves voice, image, semantics, knowledge, underlying big data processing, etc., but it is a comprehensive application of multiple technologies. The brain-like intelligence inspired by the results of brain science research is ready to go, and the trend of chip-based hardware platformization is more obvious. This is also an important feature of the development of artificial intelligence into a new stage.

"Artificial intelligence must be integrated into the development of the industry in order to truly realize the benefits." He Zhiqiang, president of Lenovo Venture Capital Group, believes that the combination and application of artificial intelligence with various fields will bring about an increase in the benefits of the whole industry.

Each mobile phone screen has a transparent protective glass on the screen, and workers detect that these glasses have a relatively large loss of vision. An artificial intelligence technology company uses large-scale laser instrument detection technology to generate a data set that relies on "machine learning" (a self-learning method of artificial intelligence) to make judgments. Machines are used to detect glass sheets, both in terms of efficiency and accuracy. Improvement, the overall efficiency has increased by 20 times.

Accelerated accumulation of technical capabilities combined with massive data resources, huge application needs, and open market environment have formed a unique advantage in the development of artificial intelligence in China. According to statistics, as of last year, China has made important progress in the field of artificial intelligence. The number of relevant international scientific papers and invention patents has been ranked second in the world, and key breakthroughs in key core technologies have been achieved. Speech recognition and visual recognition technology are leading in the industry. Chinese information processing, intelligent monitoring, biometrics, industrial robots, service robots, and driverless are gradually entering practical applications. Artificial intelligence innovation and entrepreneurship are increasingly active, and a number of leading backbone enterprises are accelerating their growth. It has gained wide attention and recognition internationally.

Regardless of technological development or industrialization, the development of artificial intelligence is still at the primary level.

However, from the perspective of technological development and industrialization, the development of artificial intelligence in China and the world is still at the primary level.

Some experts believe that artificial intelligence is somewhat deified. It may exceed human capabilities in specific applications and specific scenarios, but it is still unknown to fully meet or exceed human intelligence.

Currently, almost all artificial intelligence systems belong to dedicated artificial intelligence systems, not general artificial intelligence. Even with the special artificial intelligence system of speech recognition technology that has made great breakthroughs, there are still many problems that have not been solved. For example, a group of people a few meters away is chatting, and people will selectively hear only the voices of the people they care about, and will naturally "shield" other people's voices. But for the machine, it still can't solve the problem that seems so easy.

Talking about the development prospects of artificial intelligence in China, some academicians admit that foreign academic and business peers sincerely praise China's artificial intelligence application and business prospects in the forefront of the world, but the key technologies of artificial intelligence frontier, such as the next artificial intelligence basic algorithm. Whether the breakthrough will be in China, they are not optimistic.

In fact, there is still a clear understanding of this in China. Last year, the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by China pointed out that there is still a gap between the overall development level of artificial intelligence in China and developed countries, lacking major original results, in basic theory, The core algorithms and key equipment, high-end chips, major products and systems, basic materials, components, software and interfaces are quite different; scientific research institutions and enterprises have not yet formed an internationally influential ecosystem and industrial chain, lacking systematic advancement. The R&D layout; the sophisticated talents of artificial intelligence are far from meeting the needs; the infrastructure, policies, and standards that are suitable for the development of artificial intelligence need to be improved.

Some insiders said that there is a certain impetuous phenomenon in the field of artificial intelligence entrepreneurship. Some young people have dared to open a company after learning the artificial intelligence course for three months. This objectively has the shortage of artificial intelligence talents. However, the phenomenon of the blooming of such startup companies is likely to form a low-level development bubble, waste manpower and social resources, and will further lead young people to be reluctant to go deep into technology.

“The New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan proposes to become the world's leading artificial intelligence innovation center in 2030. To achieve this goal, the biggest shortcoming to be solved is the breakthrough of original innovation capability including theory and method.” Director of Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Xu Bo, dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Science and Technology, said that from a technical perspective, most of the domestic high-tech companies have not carried out basic research like foreign technology companies to build an ecological chain from basic research to chip to application.

Developing artificial intelligence, pragmatism is the best way

According to the plan, China's new generation of artificial intelligence will develop in three steps in 2030. The first step, that is, two years later, in 2020, the overall technology and application of artificial intelligence is synchronized with the world's advanced level, and the competitiveness of artificial intelligence industry has entered the international first phalanx, and the artificial intelligence industry has become a new important economic growth point. It is also necessary to cultivate a number of the world's leading artificial intelligence backbone enterprises. The artificial intelligence core industry has a scale of more than 150 billion yuan, driving the related industries to exceed 1 trillion yuan.

Experts believe that pragmatism is the best way in the current stage of artificial intelligence development. Artificial intelligence is a technology-intensive, capital-intensive, and talent-intensive industry. Different from the business model innovation and business model innovation of the Internet, it needs to implement software and hardware solutions to truly solve the problems people care about.

Wang Haifeng believes that the pragmatism of artificial intelligence is also reflected in the systematic innovation of the combined scene. For example, unmanned vehicles, smart homes and other application scenarios, each with its own characteristics, specific problems and special data, need to solve the problems in the scene in a down-to-earth manner, in order to finally make a good application.

Pragmatic is also reflected in the focus on key core technologies. Pu Muming said that in the frontier areas of artificial intelligence, China must occupy a place, and strive to make breakthroughs in basic research such as algorithms and architecture. “I care most about how to make a new breakthrough in the underlying core algorithms by effectively understanding the brain's network.”

Zhou Zhihua, director of the Department of Computer Science at Nanjing University and dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, said that today's artificial intelligence convolutional neural network is a hot topic, but in fact it has been studied 20 or 30 years ago. When he studied machine learning more than 20 years ago, there were not many people in China who knew about machine learning at the time. They often asked questions such as "This machine is ready to pick cotton or prepare to repair machine tools." "From academic research, even if things are done by others that are far from reality, as long as they think they are valuable, they should stick to it. This is pragmatic."

In response to the cultivation of artificial intelligence talents, Zhou Zhihua believes that for artificial intelligence technology and industry, talents are the most important, and how good is the artificial intelligence. The distance between artificial intelligence and industry is very short, and many innovations can be immediately applied from the laboratory to the application, which leads to a very large demand for talent in the academic world. Universities and research institutions should consciously cultivate talents and provide talent pools. But it can't be rushed to simply replace computers, automation, and other disciplines with artificial intelligence.

Academician Tan Tieniu, vice chairman of the China Artificial Intelligence Society, believes that in the process of artificial intelligence development, we must rationally analyze the development of the future, rationally think about development goals and development paths, and thus pragmatically promote and ensure the healthy and sustainable development of artificial intelligence.