China’s AI champions
By Erik Wernberg-Tougaard
How Chinese tech giants Lead the Future of Artificial Intelligence
While media stories tend to focus on surveillance of Chinese citizen, advanced technologies are widely used to solve real problems in Chinese society. From reducing death rates of farm animals and optimizing congested traffic to speeding up much needed doctor consultation times and leading in autonomous driving, Chinese companies do it all and more.
China’s need for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bigger than ever, primarily due to its aging population, which means a shrinkage in its workforce. By 2025, China is expected to have an estimated 300 million people aged at 60 years or above, and by automating workflows and simple tasks, AI can be a game-changer in increasing China’s productivity and further economic development.
While China's demographics are clearly a challenge, the country's large population is, however, also source to one of its biggest strengths, when we talk about AI: DATA. With 1.4 billion citizens, China has access to the worlds largest and most sophisticated data pool, which is a key ingredient in machine learning and algorithms. If data is the new gold, China is a gold mine!
China’s big players lead the race
By 2030, China plans to become the world leader in AI, with a one trillion RMB ($150 bn) industry. It is already far ahead when it comes to practical implementation of AI technologies, such as speech and facial recognition and is pushing the boundaries of what the AI landscape may look like in the next 5-10 years. As part of the blueprint, major tech players have been appointed as national champions, who will drive AI development in their respective fields. They have the means, the money, and the power of massive data to shape the future of AI.
The companies develop the solutions as part of a greater plan. To become the world’s “centre for AI innovation”, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology has established what they call a “national AI team” (人工智能国家队). In 2017 Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and the speech-recognition company, iFlytek, were appointed to lead separate areas of AI. All of these companies were found on MIT Technology Reviews list of the smartest companies in the world in 2017 and are emblematic of the fast-changing environments in China. Now a total of 15 companies are appointed to drive development in AI in anything from autonomous driving and medical imaging to cybersecurity and inclusive finance. It is certainly worth looking into and paying attention to all of these companies, but to narrow it down, we take a quick look at the three biggest players; Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT).
In addition to Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent another 11 companies have been appointed to the national AI team in respective fields
Baidu – China´s Google?
By their own account, they are more versatile than Google. In 2013 Baidu opened an AI research lab in Silicon Valley, and its AI venture begun. In many ways similar to Google, Baidu has a finger in all things AI – whether it is automated personal assistants or healthcare. But Baidu is leading in autonomous driving and its AI computer brain, Apollo, has already reached over seven million kilometres of road tests without any accidents, and transported more than 210,000 passengers in 27 cities around the world.
Beyond its practical solutions in automotive it has also established the AI research centre Baidu Research where it collaborates with leading universities such as Tsinghua on things like speech recognition and human-machine interaction. Until recently, the centre was headed by director of Stanford University’s AI lab, Andrew Ng, who was also the early founder of Google’s deep learning AI, Google Brain. In October 2018 Baidu was also the first Chinese company to join the Partnership on AI (PAI), which works with ethical dilemmas on AI.
Other examples of Baidu´s expansion is its partnership with home appliance maker Zaijia.com to roll out an AI-based home assistant robot called Xiaodu. Xiaodu provides security monitoring and entertainment services for homes and is already taking market shares from both Amazon and Google, though Amazon’s Alexa is still the largest player on the market. Baidu has also worked with the charity group baobeihuijia.com (“Baby come home”), to connect missing children with their families by using its cross-age facial recognition AI program and by analysing pictures of abducted children, have succeeded in reconnecting a man with his family after 27 years of abduction.
Alibaba – A leader in cloud tech and smart cities
Second is the multinational technology giant, Alibaba, which revenue stood at more than half a trillion RMB (72 billion USD) in 2020. Alibaba’s cloud arm, AliCloud, is leading in smart city concepts, where its AI system uses data from traffic cameras to manage traffic flows, reduce traffic congestions and coordinate road signals in more than 24 cities in China. After 2 years, Alibaba claimed that it had halved the times it took for fire trucks and ambulances to reach their destinations.
Alibaba has also been setting new standards within artificial intelligence by using its massive cloud-infrastructure to collect and analyse data of its more than 750 million customers. In November 2020, Alibaba Cloud, the tech backbone of Alibaba Group, was mentioned as a leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, in company with tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle.
Naturally, Alibaba does not stop there, and another area in which it is advancing on AI, is its use of AI in optimizing pork production in China. China has 310 million pigs, and therefore even small adjustments to the production and supply chains can have a huge impact on productivity and profit. By using facial-recognition cameras, Alibaba has sped up the detection time of pregnant pigs by seven times, and by using object recognition technology they have been able to create alerts when piglets are being crushed, thereby reducing death rates of up to 3 percent annually. This is a huge gamechanger for the quality and food security in China, and a technology that we may see coming to European food companies such as Danish Crown.
Alibaba’s products could gain market shares outside of China, though geopolitical tensions, such as those experienced by the telecommunications company Huawei, may make this more difficult.
Tencent – From gaming to medical imaging
Tencent is China’s biggest social network company, most famously known for its all-in-one app, WeChat, which has over 1.2 billion users. Tencent follows an “AI in all” strategy, which aims to integrate AI-related technologies within its various industries. In 2016 Tencent opened an AI lab in Shenzhen dedicated to “Making AI everywhere”. According to CB insight, Tencent was also the company that had the most AI equity deals in 2018. But Tencent is really the leader in medical imaging, and with its AI medical innovation system (AIMIS) patients can manage their X-ray, CT, and MRI images and securely share their medical data with trusted medical professionals.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, solutions in AI and advanced tech has been further increased, covering everything from AI-driven doctors to robocalls and increased speed of image recognition to diagnosing. One of Tencent’s first attempts was its Miying platform, which is an AI that helps doctors with screening medical images for cancer, malignant tumours and other severe medical conditions. This is of huge value to both patients and doctors, because China has a high burden of cervical cancer (100,000 women, of which approximately 30,000 die). Tencent hopes that technologies such as Miying will be the first step towards eliminating cervical cancer.
Backed by The World’s Most Comprehensive National AI Strategy
The tech giants are right on track and part of the centralized plan. The Chinese government’s ambition is stronger than any other country and its national AI strategy (link in Chinese) is by far the most comprehensive of any country as of today. The plan can be divided into three phases:
By 2020, China should be “in-line” with its competitors on AI
By 2025, China should reach “world-leading” in some fields of AI
By 2030, China should be the primary centre for AI innovation in the world
The plan addresses everything from industrialization, education and skills and talent development to standard setting and regulations, ethical norms, and security. China wants to recruit the best talents and train a domestic workforce on AI, while also actively participating in and shaping the global governance of AI. It is therefore not strange that China has established the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, which council is constituted by both academics and private company leaders, who have practical experience with AI development and adoption.
The backing by the Chinese government is a strong force behind the AI ventures, and the allocated capital is a very fierce driver of this. Data regulation is not (yet) as far-reaching as in the European Union, making it easier for China’s big tech companies and the Chinese government to use the data as they please, allowing them to more effectively train their AI models. With AI having an extremely large potential to change technology, productivity and the society at large, it is no wonder, that China is betting big time on AI.
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