China's Race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology

[onebyone]

Tomohiro Ohsumi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Visitors sit on sofas below the Baidu logo in the reception area of the company's headquarters in Beijing, China.
The Chinese internet giant Baidu has signed two contracts in Germany aimed at developing autonomous driving options.

"AI (artificial intelligence) technology has huge potential to promote social development, and one of AI's biggest opportunities lies in intelligent vehicles," said Qi Lu, chief operating officer of Baidu said in a statement on Thursday.

The company has announced collaborations with Continental and Bosh, but has not disclosed any amounts involved.


"Through this agreement with Continental, we expect to upgrade the intelligent systems of the automobile industry and energize many existing and emerging industries," Qi Lu said.

The collaboration with Bosh specifically will firstly involve an in-depth technical cooperation and in the future, Bosh will be able to work in Baidu's Apollo Project, an open platform for automated driving.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attended the signing ceremony with Bosh. The leader is in Europe for a summit with the European Union, where he aims to boost business between Chinese and European firms. He is also set to support a common response to climate change marking a different position from U.S. President Donald Trump who is reportedly expected to pull the country out of the historic Paris agreement.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/01/chinese-tech-giant-baidu-chooses-europe-for-driverless-car-push.html

 

[qwerrty]

Baidu's AI-glasses

Tencent's QQ alert

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Chinese VCs Are Loving Autonomous Driving Tech
Pan Yue
June 7, 2017 — 09:33 HKT

• Baidu, the most active of the three, established its autonomous driving business in 2013. Alibaba established a US$161 million Internet of Cars Fund with SAIC Motor Co Ltd. two years later, and also set up its own autonomous driving unit that same year.

• June 2017: Shunwei Capital joined a RMB100 million (US$14 million) series A round in AI-Drive, a Chinese autonomous driving solutions provider focused on unmanned logistics and unmanned aerial lift vehicles.

• May 2017: GSR Ventures joined a US$25 million series A round in DeepMap Inc, a U.S.-based start-up co-founded by a Chinese engineer, developing high-definition maps for autonomous cars to navigate in complex and unpredictable conditions.

• May 2017: Pagoda Investment led a RMB110 million (US$16 million) series A round in Hesai, a Shanghai-based company developing smart sensing solutions for autonomous cars and natural gas leak detection systems.

• May 2017: Hangzhou-based chip maker Canaan raised RMB300 million (US$43 million) in a series A round from a number of investors including Chinese hotel operator Jin Jiang International Group Co., Ltd., Chinese investment firms Baopu Asset Management Co. Ltd. and Tunlan Investment.

• April 2017: Baidu acquired xPerception, a U.S. technology company, providing visual perception software and hardware solutions for a range of applications, including robotics, virtual reality (VR), and devices for people who are visually impaired, in order to push the development of augmented reality (AR), autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence-based products.

• March 2017: Alibaba invested US$18 million in WayRay, a Swiss holographic augmented reality company developing AR-enabled car navigation systems for Internet-connected vehicles.

• February 2017: Legend Capital led a RMB100 million (US$14 million) series B round in Chinese self-driving tech firm Zongmu Technology, which develops advanced driver assistance systems, including 2D and 3D panoramic vision system, self-parking solutions, and driving recording systems.

• August 2016: Baidu Inc. and Ford Motor Company invested a combined US$150 million in Velodyne LiDAR, Inc., a supplier of technology that lets self-driving cars see and avoid what’s around them.

• December 2016: An incubator under JD Finance backed Hangzhou-based bike and self-driving car start-up Notebike to jointly develop an autonomous vehicle specifically designed for goods delivery.

https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2017/06/07/chinese-vcs-are-loving-autonomous-driving-tech

 

[cirr]

Baidu to integrate AI technologies into financial services

2017-06-22 16:14

People's Daily Online Editor: Li Yan

China's internet leviathan Baidu has announced its plan to upgrade the company's financial services by using artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that the technology can help to avoid investment blunders.

According to Zhu Guang, Baidu's senior vice president, the company will cooperate with the Agricultural Bank of China to launch a financial brain project, as well as to develop applications related to evaluations of clients' credit and supervision of their financial risks.

"Based on Baidu's big data and algorithms, we can [deduce] our clients' ages and educational backgrounds with an accuracy rate of 90 and 85 percent respectively. By generating a financial portrait of our clients, we can attract more customers, which is crucial for our future plans," Zhu was quoted as saying by Thepaper.cn on June 20. Zhu also noted that AI technologies can be used for identity recognition and data collection, which are vital elements for the development of the financial industry.

"Compared to humans, AI is more accurate in determining the authenticity of cachet and bills. At the same time, by analyzing and studying clients' behavior and irregular trade events, AI can establish anti-phishing modes to avoid risk," said Zhu.

Introducing AI technologies into the financial sector is not Baidu's initiative alone. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, is building an artificial intelligence engine to automate management of the company. Rebellion Research, a New York-based investment adviser, also uses AI technologies to make investment decisions.

Following in the steps of its foreign counterparts, Baidu, China's largest search engine, will build two AI-based financial platforms, helping clients to manage their personal wealth and consumption.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/06-22/262554.shtml

 

[AndrewJin]

Baidu's AI-glasses

Tencent's QQ alert

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Chinese VCs Are Loving Autonomous Driving Tech
Pan Yue
June 7, 2017 — 09:33 HKT

• Baidu, the most active of the three, established its autonomous driving business in 2013. Alibaba established a US$161 million Internet of Cars Fund with SAIC Motor Co Ltd. two years later, and also set up its own autonomous driving unit that same year.

• June 2017: Shunwei Capital joined a RMB100 million (US$14 million) series A round in AI-Drive, a Chinese autonomous driving solutions provider focused on unmanned logistics and unmanned aerial lift vehicles.

• May 2017: GSR Ventures joined a US$25 million series A round in DeepMap Inc, a U.S.-based start-up co-founded by a Chinese engineer, developing high-definition maps for autonomous cars to navigate in complex and unpredictable conditions.

• May 2017: Pagoda Investment led a RMB110 million (US$16 million) series A round in Hesai, a Shanghai-based company developing smart sensing solutions for autonomous cars and natural gas leak detection systems.

• May 2017: Hangzhou-based chip maker Canaan raised RMB300 million (US$43 million) in a series A round from a number of investors including Chinese hotel operator Jin Jiang International Group Co., Ltd., Chinese investment firms Baopu Asset Management Co. Ltd. and Tunlan Investment.

• April 2017: Baidu acquired xPerception, a U.S. technology company, providing visual perception software and hardware solutions for a range of applications, including robotics, virtual reality (VR), and devices for people who are visually impaired, in order to push the development of augmented reality (AR), autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence-based products.

• March 2017: Alibaba invested US$18 million in WayRay, a Swiss holographic augmented reality company developing AR-enabled car navigation systems for Internet-connected vehicles.

• February 2017: Legend Capital led a RMB100 million (US$14 million) series B round in Chinese self-driving tech firm Zongmu Technology, which develops advanced driver assistance systems, including 2D and 3D panoramic vision system, self-parking solutions, and driving recording systems.

• August 2016: Baidu Inc. and Ford Motor Company invested a combined US$150 million in Velodyne LiDAR, Inc., a supplier of technology that lets self-driving cars see and avoid what’s around them.

• December 2016: An incubator under JD Finance backed Hangzhou-based bike and self-driving car start-up Notebike to jointly develop an autonomous vehicle specifically designed for goods delivery.

https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2017/06/07/chinese-vcs-are-loving-autonomous-driving-tech

 

[Shotgunner51]

These 20 Leading Technologists Are Driving China's AI Revolution
Jun 21, 2017 @ 01:57 PM
Adelyn Zhou , Contributor

China’s leading technology companies are on fire, heavily investing in artificial intelligence and building true global presences. McKinsey recently reported that academic and research institutions in the country publish more cited research papers than the US, UK or any other global leader in AI, producing nearly 10,000 papers in 2015 alone.

Backed by strong government mandates and billions of dollars in both private and public investments, China is challenging the US for position of global AI leader. Fearful of competition, the US government is considering placing restrictions on Chinese investments in AI and technology in the United States. In many sectors, such as healthcare, China may already be ahead of America in applying AI to critical public issues.

You might recognize names like Andrew Ng, Sebastian Thrun, Geoffrey Hinton, or Yann LeCun as important figures in AI, but few Westerners can name the key leaders driving AI innovation in China and at Chinese companies globally. These executives, entrepreneurs, professors, and researchers helm the most important Chinese tech companies and research labs and are respected widely for their technical expertise and accomplishments.

We’ve researched and curated 20 of the most important figures in the Chinese AI landscape that you should know:

Read rest of the article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/adelyn...ders-in-artificial-intelligence/#34394f81674d

 

[Shotgunner51]

You might recognize names like Andrew Ng, Sebastian Thrun, Geoffrey Hinton, or Yann LeCun as important figures in AI, but few Westerners can name the key leaders driving AI innovation in China and at Chinese companies globally.

Recent news about Andrew Ng, prominent American AI figure, former Baidu chief scientist.

Artificial intelligence genius Andrew Ng has another AI project in the works
By Lulu Chang — Posted on June 25, 2017 6:27 am

He’s been called one of the “foremost thinkers on the topic of artificial intelligence,” so it’s no surprise that Andrew Ng — the cofounder of Coursera, the lead developer of Stanford University’s main Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, and the founder of the Google Brain project — is starting another AI company of his own now that he’s left Baidu. The resume of this impressive entrepreneur reads like a laundry list of some of the most impressive achievements in AI technology, and it seems safe to assume that Ng’s newest venture, known only as deeplearning.ai, won’t disappoint.

Launching my new project! Hope will help many of you: deeplearning.ai More announcements soon. #deeplearniNgAI pic.twitter.com/EsZecJfbrf

— Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg) June 23, 2017​

While Ng has founded and led many of his own projects in the past, he was most recently attached to another behemoth of a company — Chinese web giant Baidu. There, Ng was chief scientist and headed the company’s (what else) Artificial Intelligence Group, turning the Beijing-based giant into one of only a handful of companies in the world with expertise in each of the major AI categories: speech, natural language processing, computer vision, machine learning, and knowledge graph. Ng’s team was also responsible for bringing two new business groups into the company — autonomous driving and the DuerOS Conversational Computing platform.

Three months ago, Ng announced his departure from the company, noting in a Medium post, “Baidu’s AI is incredibly strong, and the team is stacked up and down with talent; I am confident AI at Baidu will continue to flourish. After Baidu, I am excited to continue working toward the AI transformation of our society and the use of AI to make life better for everyone.”

At the time, he told Forbes that his future plans were still in flux: “I am looking into quite a few ideas in parallel, and exploring new AI businesses that I can build. One thing that excites me is finding ways to support the global AI community so that people everywhere can access the knowledge and tools that they need to make AI transformations.”​

And that may just be what deeplearning.ai is all about. In his Twitter announcement, Ng said only that he hoped the company would help “many of you,” and promised more announcements soon. Until then, we’ll wait with bated breath.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/andrew-ng-deeplearningai/
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Andrew Ng has started a new AI company: DeepLearning.ai
Intelligence and the Senses 26th June 2017 Matthew Griffin

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Andrew Ng is one of the world’s leading Deep Learning experts and now he’s resurfaced it’s likely that the boundaries of AI are going to get pushed faster and harder than ever before ​

Former Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng, who used to head up Baidu’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) division but left a couple of months ago in March, today announced that he’s launching a new business called Deeplearning.ai.

While the company launched with little information about what to expect beyond an exploration of the “frontiers of AI” Ng says that he’ll share more details on the new company’s plans in August. Given Ng’s world class status as one of the world’s foremost deep learning experts it’s likely that the company will quickly establish itself as a world leader in AI.

Launching my new project! Hope will help many of you: deeplearning.ai More announcements soon. #deeplearniNgAI pic.twitter.com/EsZecJfbrf
— Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg) June 23, 2017​

Considered one of the top minds in deep learning today he has an enviable career – he started at Baidu in 2014 after helping to co-create Google’s “Google Brain” AI lab, and also worked as director of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) while at the same time co-founding Coursera where his machine learning course remains on of the most popular courses on the platforms to this day.

http://www.globalfuturist.org/2017/06/andrew-ng-has-started-a-new-ai-company-deeplearning-ai/

 

[JSCh]

AI: soon in a store near you
By Zhu Shenshen | 00:01 UTC+8 June 27, 2017

FIVE stores with artificial intelligence machines instead of human cashiers and check-out lines will open in a beta test in Shanghai next month as part of the AI revolution transforming China’s retail industry.

The Take Go stores will be the Chinese version of the partially automated Amazon Go and will be opened in shopping centers and near tourist attractions.

DeepBlue Technology, the owner of the Take Go brand, will be the first to launch a system without cashiers in Shanghai, with wireless payment, fingerprint and facial recognition, and product recommendations.

The system, supported by Ailbaba’s services and Nvidia’s AI, is at the forefront of smart retailing, integrating online and offline networks and the latest technologies.

Beverage giant Wahaha also reportedly plans to soon open 100,000 shops with no human staff in China.

 

[JSCh]

China is betting big on AI - and here’s why it’s going to pay off
China’s economy may expand 26 per cent by 2030, as artificial intelligence accelerates worldwide increases in productivity, PwC said.

• PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 27 June, 2017, 12:33pm
• UPDATED : Tuesday, 27 June, 2017, 12:33pm
• Meng Jing

China will see the greatest economic gains from artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030 as the technology accelerates global GDP growth by increasing productivity and boosting consumption, says PwC in a new research report released Tuesday.

Dubbed the fourth industrial revolution, AI technologies are expected to boost global GDP by a further 14 per cent by 2030 – the equivalent of an additional US$15.7 trillion – and China, as the world’s second largest economy, will see an estimated 26 per cent boost to GDP by that time, the PwC report said.

Launched at the World Economic Forum’s annual June meeting in northeast China’s Dalian city, often known as the Summer Davos, the report said labour productivity improvements would account for over half of the US$15.7 trillion in economic gains from AI between 2016 and 2030 – more than the current output of China and India combined – while increased consumer demand resulting from AI-enabled product enhancements will account for the rest.

“The analysis demonstrates how big a game changer AI is likely to be – transforming our lives as individuals, enterprises and as a society,” said Anand Rao, global leader of artificial intelligence at PwC.

The technology behind an array of advanced applications, from facial recognition to self-driving vehicles, is the centre of attention for almost every tech company in China as they bet big on AI to gain a competitive edge before it begins to have a more profound impact on people’s lives.

Since the start of this year, Chinese internet heavyweights Baidu, Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group have been competing harder than ever to lure top AI talent from Silicon Valley in order to accelerate their own AI development. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

PwC predicts that North America will experience productivity gains earlier than China due to its first mover advantage in AI but China is expected to pull ahead of the United States in terms of AI productivity gains within 10 years after it catches up to the technology.

According to the PwC research, AI is projected to boost China’s GDP by 26 per cent by 2030, while for North America the number is 14.5 per cent. For developing countries in Latin America and Africa, the expected GDP gain will only be about 6 per cent due to the much lower rates of AI technology adoption.

“China has already made great leaps in the development of AI and our research shows that [AI] has the potential to be a powerful remedy for slowing growth,” said Chuan Neo Chong, chairwoman of Greater China operations for global consultancy Accenture.

In separate research done by Accenture, AI is expected to accelerate China’s annual growth rate from 6.3 per cent to 7.9 per cent by 2035. The Accenture research, published on Monday, shows that AI could boost China’s gross value added (GVA) by US$7.11 trillion by 2035 and has the potential to boost China’s labour productivity by 27 per cent by the same year.

Minimising the economic imbalances brought about by AI will be an important challenge, said Lee Kai-fu, the former Greater China president of Google and founder of venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures.

Those developing countries which will experience rapid population growth in coming decades are expected to be hardest hit by AI in terms job losses, he added.

“Most of the wealth created by AI will go into the US and China because of their big pool of talent and [high levels of data generation], as well as the size of their markets,” said Li, who is one of the most prominent advocates of AI in China.


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

 

[JSCh]

Alibaba hires top scientist to mastermind AI drive
By He Wei in Shanghai | China Daily | Updated: 2017-06-27 07:06

Two men chat beside a logo of Alibaba at its headquarters on the outskirts of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo/Agencies]

Internet powerhouse Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has appointed a seasoned scientist at Amazon.com Inc to spearhead its efforts in artificial intelligence, a move that will propel its so-called "NASA plan" to double up on technology research.

Alibaba in March announced a major project at its first technical meeting in Hangzhou, to galvanize the group's technological capabilities, code-named NASA.

Since June, Ren Xiaofeng, former senior principal scientist at Amazon and a Chinese citizen, has taken on the role as chief scientist and deputy dean at Alibaba's Institute of Data Science and Technologies, its global research and development center, the company confirmed on Monday.

Ren is recruiting a world-class computer vision team at a fast-expanding site in Bellevue, in the United States.

Ren Xiaofeng, former senior principal scientist at Amazon and a Chinese citizen, has taken on the role as chief scientist and deputy dean at Alibaba's Institute of Data Science and Technologies, its global research and development center.[Photo/cs.com.cn]

That's according to Ren's updated resume on the website of the University of Washington, where he also serves as an affiliate assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

In his four years at Amazon, Ren was the lead scientist at Amazon Go, using computer vision and machine learning, to transform retailing. The research led to the launch of an automatic check-out system that eliminates unnecessary and annoying customer waiting.

Prior to Amazon, Ren also had deep experience in vision-related projects at Intel Lab, working on computer vision and its applications in activity recognition and monitoring, robotics, and human-computer interaction. Ren holds a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Alibaba said that Ren's coming onboard indicated an accelerated pace to carry out the NASA project, proposed by founder Jack Ma in March, to boost the firm's technological capacity in 20 years.

Ma said at the time that to meet the group's strategic goal of serving 2 billion customers, creating 100 million jobs and enabling 10 million businesses to become profitable, Alibaba should invest in technological infrastructure featuring machine learning, chips, the internet of things and biometric identification, among others.

As a new entrant to the international cloud market, Alibaba is off to a good start, being included for the first time in a Gartner Inc report this month as being "well-positioned to take on bigger players such as Amazon and Microsoft Corp".

Since the start of the year China's tech majors have been plowing in billions of dollars into consolidating a technical arsenal and talent pool to outgun their rivals.

Search engine Baidu Inc hired former Microsoft executive Lu Qi as group president and rolled out its Apollo Project to help drive the development of autonomous cars.

Tencent Holdings Ltd is also betting on cloud technologies and AI, doubling its offshore data centers this year and identifying AI as being synonymous with its services.

Shanghai-based Gartner Research Director Sandy Shen said that Chinese tech firms were becoming a hot draw for talent globally, given the market fluidity, fast pace and the receptive attitude toward new technologies among Chinese consumers.

 

[Shotgunner51]

AI technology already used in China helps radiologists read CT scans, X-rays
May 08, 2017

San Jose, CA–May 8, 2017 - Infervision, a tech company using big data and artificial intelligence to assist and improve medical diagnoses, is introducing its innovative, deep learning solution to help radiologists identify suspicious lesions and nodules in lung cancer patients faster than ever before. The Infervision AI platform is the world’s first to reshape the workflow of radiologists and it is already showing dramatic results at several top hospitals in China. The company founder, Chen Kuan, will present a talk on the company and its use of AI for medical diagnoses at the NVIDIA GPU Tech Conference in San Jose. (Monday, May 8, 9-9:50AM PT)

Infervision’s AI-aided CT diagnosis, with its high-performance parallel computing power, effectively learns the core characteristics of lung cancer and efficiently detects suspected cancer features in different CT image sequences, helping with early diagnosis and consequently early treatment. The technology is also used to assist in X-ray diagnosis and has achieved extremely high accuracy so that it is close to that of a deputy chief physician in the diagnosis of cardiothoracic diseases at one of the top Chinese hospitals where the software is now in use.

For the past six months, the technology has been in use at several top hospitals in China, a country experiencing hundreds of thousands of new lung cancer patients annually, while it has too few radiologists. After rigorous testing and integrating the software with the standard PACS (picture archiving and communication system), Infervision’s technology is proving to be extremely effective and is enhancing the work of Chinese doctors by acting as a second pair of eyes. The Infervision solution improves the workflow of radiologists, delivering a faster reading of hundreds of images for each patient, and bringing to the doctor’s attention those scans that may have malignant lesions or nodules so radiologists will thoroughly review them.

“Our goal at Infervision is to build a stronger medical industry and help accelerate diagnoses which is so important for patients,” said Chen Kuan, founder and CEO of Infervision. “In China we have a severe shortage of radiologists, particularly in lower-level hospitals all over the country. There are 80,000 radiologists who must diagnose 1.4 billion radiology scans a year. By using artificial intelligence and deep learning, the Infervision platform augments the work of these doctors so they can get through scans quickly. A process that used to take 15 minutes can be dramatically reduced so detection and treatment of lung cancer is faster. This could be life changing for many.”​

Additionally, Infervision’s technology and a group of radiologists recently went head-to-head in a report reading experiment with different types and sizes of nodules. Infervision’s AI-CT predicted more accurately than radiologists in every category.

“In no way will this technology ever replace doctors. It is intended to eliminate much of the highly repetitive work. Infervision empowers doctors and helps them deliver more accurate reports and do it much faster,” continued Kuan.​

The Infervision artificial intelligence continues to learn as more data becomes available and also analyzes past results. Lung cancer is particularly rampant in China due to both air pollution and smoking with between 600,000 and 700,000 new lung cancer cases are diagnosed annually. While this is an unfortunate statistic, it provides a huge trove of medical data that can make the Infervision technology stronger and even more effective.

About Infervision

Infervision specializes in assisted medical image diagnosis, using artificial intelligence and deep learning to help improve the workflow and efficiency of radiologists for diagnosing various types of cancer and other diseases. The company has raised a Series A round of 50M RMB ($7.2M USD) led by Sequoia Capital and established cooperative business partnerships with close to 20 Tertiary Grade A hospitals including Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Shanghai Changzheng Hospital. It also has relationships with online and offline medical image platforms including Ali Cloud Computing and has entered into strategic partnerships with GE Healthcare, Cisco and NVIDIA. Founders and scientists with Infervision studied at top universities and research institutions around the world. For more information visit www.infervision.com.


https://www.dotmed.com/news/story/37147

 

[Shotgunner51]

Artificial Intelligence Poised to Accelerate China’s Annual Growth Rate from 6.3 percent to 7.9 percent by 2035, Finds New Research from Accenture
June 26, 2017 02:59 AM Eastern Daylight Time

AI is poised to boost China's GVA by USD $7,111 billion by 2035 (Graphic: Business Wire)

DALIAN, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--New research from Accenture (NYSE:ACN) reveals that artificial intelligence (AI) could accelerate China’s economic growth rate from 6.3 percent to 7.9 percent by 2035, by transforming the nature of work and opening new sources of value and growth.

The report, titled “How Artificial Intelligence Can Drive China’s Growth,” explores new insights into AI and its impact on China’s economy. Based on analysis and modeling by Accenture Research, in collaboration with Frontier Economics, there is dramatic impact on China’s growth when AI is added as a completely new factor of production to the economic growth model.

“China has already made great leaps in the development of AI and our research shows that it has the potential to be a powerful remedy for slowing growth,” said Chuan Neo Chong, Accenture Greater China Chairwoman.

“However, as with any catalyst, it is important to remember the challenges and the risk of unintended consequences. Stakeholders must prepare themselves intellectually, technologically, politically, ethically and socially for the promise of AI.” ​

The research compared the size of China’s economy in 2035 in a baseline scenario, which shows expected economic growth under current assumptions, and an AI scenario, which shows expected growth once the impact of AI has been absorbed into the economy. As a new factor of production, Accenture finds that AI is poised to boost China’s gross value added (GVA) by USD $7,111 billion by 2035.

The report also finds that AI has the potential to boost China’s labor productivity by 27 percent by 2035 - driven by innovative AI technologies that enable people to make more efficient use of their time.

These effects occur because, as a capital-labor hybrid, AI can drive growth in three different ways via intelligent automation, which creates growth through a set of features unlike those of traditional automation solutions; labor and capital augmentation, which results from enhancing the skills and abilities of existing workforces and physical capital; and innovation diffusion, which trickles down throughout the economy in the form of increased total factor productivity (TFP).

Accenture’s findings also reveal that Manufacturing, Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing, and Wholesale and Retail are the three industry sectors that will benefit most from the application of AI in China, with boosts in their annual GVA growth rates by 2 percentage points, 1.8 percentage points and 1.7 percentage points respectively by 2035.

“AI could be a game changer for China’s industries,” said Frank Chen, Head of Accenture Greater China Technology Practice.

“To harness its potential, industry leaders will need to synthesize AI into their strategies and create a new playbook for AI. This means adapting traditional company structures to AI, and more innovative thinking when it comes to both operations and business models. Industries will need to shift from doing things differently, to doing different things.” ​

To fulfill the promise of AI as a new factor of production that can reignite growth, Accenture recommends the following steps be taken by policymakers and business leaders:

• Prepare the next generation – integrate human intelligence with machine intelligence so they can successfully co-exist in a two-way learning relationship and reevaluate the type of knowledge and skills required for the future.
• Advocate a code of ethics for AI – enterprises should design responsible AI systems with built-in accountability. This should be supplemented by tangible standards and best practices in the development and use of intelligent machines.
• Address the redistribution effects – policymakers should highlight how AI can result in tangible benefits and preemptively address any perceived downsides of AI, helping groups disproportionately affected by changes of employment and income.
• Step beyond automation, and towards new innovations - business leaders should actively embrace AI-driven disruptions and synthesize AI into their own business strategies. With recent strides in AI, companies need to take a step beyond automation to harness the intelligence of dynamic, self-learning and self-governing machines.
• Invent new business capabilities for an AI-powered organization - To achieve the full potential of AI, human and machine intelligence must be tightly interwoven. For Chinese businesses, creating a culture of inclusion and diversity should also be high on the agenda.

The research report, ‘How Artificial Intelligence Can Drive China’s Growth,’ can be accessed at https://www.accenture.com/cn-en/insight-artificial-intelligence-china.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions – underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With more than 411,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

For more information about Accenture, please visit its corporate homepage www.accenture.com and its Greater China homepage www.accenture.cn.

Contacts
Accenture
Irene Han, + 86 13564020046
Irene.ying.han@accenture.com

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170625005010/en/Artificial-Intelligence-Poised-Accelerate-China’s-Annual-Growth

 

[JSCh]

Who Is Winning the AI Race? - MIT Technology Review

 

[cirr]

AI will boost economy and create demand

2017-06-28 14:27

China Daily Editor: Feng Shuang

A man playing with a robot during the World Economic Forum, June 27. (Photo by Zhu Xingxin/China Daily)

China will be among the biggest beneficiaries of "artificial intelligence" technology, a new report revealed on Tuesday.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the multinational consultancy company, forecasts that AI development will contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030.

The PwC report predicted that global GDP will be 14 percent higher in 2030 as AI is widely used to boost labor productivity and increase consumer demand for technology-inspired products.

"The greatest economic gains from AI will be in China, with 26 percent boost to its GDP in 2030, and North America, with 14.5 percent boost," the report said.

According to PwC, AI-enabled growth from the two economies will be the equivalent of $10.7 trillion in 2030 and accounts for almost 70 percent of the global total.

Anand Rao, an AI consultant at PwC, stressed that initially North America would experience productivity gains faster than China.

But that would eventually change. Rao pointed out that China will begin to pull ahead of the US in AI in 10 years "after it catches up on both relevant technologies and expertise".

"AI will empower a slate of applications such as the internet of things, augmented reality and robots, which will significantly enhance productivity," Rao said.

China's high-tech giants have been pouring billions of dollars into setting up AI laboratories and poaching talent from foreign rivals.

Earlier this month, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd appointed Ren Xiaofeng, a former senior principal scientist at Amazon.com Inc, to spearhead its research and development in computer vision.

The move came shortly after Tencent Holdings Ltd set up its first US-based AI research lab in Seattle. The project is led by former Microsoft Corp scientist Yu Dong and focuses on voice recognition technology.

Baidu Inc has also increased its AI spending and brought in former Microsoft executive Lu Qi as group president. He will play a key role in rolling out Baidu's Apollo Project to help drive the development of autonomous cars.

Their efforts are roughly in accordance with the business areas PwC identified as having the greatest AI potential.

The report, for instance, pinpointed autonomous fleets for ride-sharing and smart cars as the key areas for growth in the automotive sector .

Overall, the biggest sector gains will be in retail, financial services and healthcare, as AI increases productivity, product value, and consumption, PwC reported.

"But more robust governance and new operating models will be needed to realize AI's full potential and underpin all the opportunities it brings," said Jim Woods, an consultant for global risk assurance at PwC.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2017/06-28/263289.shtml

 

[qwerrty]

iCarbonX Joins Series B Round In US Doctor-Patient Data Firm HealthLoop
Jillian Yue
June 26, 2017 — 16:31 HKT

iCarbonX, an artificial intelligence-enabled health data mining start-up in China, has participated in a US$8.4 million series B financing round in U.S. healthcare company HealthLoop, with an eye to integrate the American firm's patient-generated data to its own data mining efforts.

Other investors including NextEquity, Lafayette General Hospital, Canvas Ventures and Summation Health Ventures also participated in the round, which will be used to support HealthLoop's expansion of its market share.

"The investment in HealthLoop is in line with our strategic planning. The big data era of life sciences has just been launched, whereas a lot of previously dismissed healthcare data has just begun to show its significance," said Jun Wang, founder of iCarbonX and previously CEO of Chinese genetic testing company BGI. "The HealthLoop platform has done an excellent job in connecting patients and doctors, tracking patients’ recovery process and mining patients’ data. All of these are essential components of iCarbonX’s digital life ecosystem."

iCarbonX plans to integrate HealthLoop’s patients-generated data to its own data mining technology, in order to build an ecosystem of digital life. In January, the Shenzhen-based company said that it had invested a total of US$400 million in seven companies to form a Digital Life Alliance, acquiring stakes in fives U.S. companies: SomaLogic, HealthTell, PatientsLikeMe, AOBiome, GALT; one Israeli company Imagu Vision and Chinese firm Tianjin Robustnique Corporation Ltd.

HealthLoop was established by Dr. John Shlain in 2009 and helps to digitally connect patients with their doctors and care-givers. It enables automated patient care coordination by providing its users with clinical information and post-hospitalization follow-up care plans.

HealthLoop’s platform is designed to keep track of patients’ illness. It uses analytics engine to provide real-time analysis of all sets of patients-generated data, so as to allow the medical and nursing team to commit their time to those patients and medical issues most in need. In this way, the platform pushes the doctor-patient relation to go beyond the clinic, and facilitates boundary crossing between different groups.

"When patients return from hospitals to the real world, they will be confronted with a whole series of problems that influence their post-hospital recovery in ways that are difficult to predict," explained John Shlain, founder of HealthLoop. "But if we build a relationship with them, we can be there throughout the process to support them. And the further we can take that, the better it will be for patients’ lives and the better the outcome will be."

Established in October 2015, iCarbonX achieved a US$1 billion valuation in a short six-months, after Tencent Holdings led a RMB1 billion (US$155 million) series A funding round in April 2016 in the company, making it the fastest technology unicorn in the world.

https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2...und-in-us-doctor-patient-data-firm-healthloop

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Terark, A Chinese Startup, May Have Just Revolutionized How Data Is Stored, Accessed & Analyzed
Gwyn D'Mello June 26, 2017

A Chinese startup may have found the solution to big data's biggest problem. Reducing all that 'big data' into smaller file formats. Sounds eerily similar to Pied Piper from Silicon Valley, right? Only this is real life, and it's actually happening.

Before that, a quick perspective as to why this discovery is so important. According to Intel, by 2020, the average internet user will generate approximately 1.5GB of data per day. Smart cars, meanwhile, will generate 4,000 GB each daily, not to mention connected hospitals, flights, factories and more. In short, tech companies are going to have huge amounts of data to sift through for ads, logistics and resource management services, and artificial intelligence. So how do these companies deal with Big Data?

Technology experts believe we’re approaching a culmination of data influx, coupled with a lack of purging of old data. They foresee cloud storage shortages in the future that could hamper how our smartphones, apps, and computers operate, as well as longer processing times for IoT devices and services. Data compression is not yet effective enough to counter this problem, and even then this technique hinders how AI can access these stores to learn.

Now, a Beijing-based startup called Terark believes it has the solution. Far from Silicon Valley, founder and CTO Lei Peng says they’ve created an algorithm that could tackle the coming data crisis, beating out other competitors in the process.

"Our technology allows us to make big data smaller," Terark VP Remy Tricard told Tech in Asia. Basically, while working on a pet project, Peng managed to develop a highly efficient data compression algorithm. TerarkDB – the company’s database storage engine that uses the algorithm – claims to be able to read data over 230 times faster than the likes of Facebook’s own system RocksDB.

Not only is Terark’s compression ratio better (large amounts of data compressed into smaller archives), it also exhibits lower latency. Most importantly though, is that Terark’s system keeps the data searchable without needing to unpack it, meaning machine learning systems and others can easily access its stores without overloading their own servers.

The best part? Terark is composed of a team of just 10 people, and the startup itself is only about two years old. In that short time, it’s even managed to attract high profile investors like Alibaba, which has signed a $1 million contract with the startup to use its compression system for the Alibaba Cloud. Peng also says Terark is currently negotiating deals with other big names in tech from both China and the US, though he declined to name any.

https://www.techinasia.com/real-pied-piper-silicon-valley
http://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/terark-a-chinese-startup-may-have-just-revolutionized-how-data-is-stored-accessed-analyzed-324651.html

 

[Shotgunner51]

China Sets Up National Laboratory To Develop Brain-Like Artificial Intelligence
Pan Yue May 15, 2017 — 11:32 HKT

China has set up its first national laboratory dedicated to advancing brain-like artificial intelligence technology with the aim of developing world-leading computing paradigms and applications that mimic the human brain's ability to sort and quantify information.

The AI lab, located at the China University of Science and Technology (USTC) in Hefei city in Eastern Anhui province, will carry out research to develop brain-like AI chips, operating systems and neutral network-based brain-like robots, as well as accelerate the industrialization of AI technologies including video surveillance, interactive voice response and autonomous driving, China's official media organization Xinhua News Agency said.

“Brain-like technology is an important part of the development of AI technology. The development of brain-like AI can reveal how the human brain processes information, and boost the deep-learning industry in China,” said Wan Lijun, president of USTC, who will serve as chairman of the lab.​

A number of the country's top universities and research institutions will join with USTC to develop the technology, including Fudan University, Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Baidu Inc.

This February, Baidu announced that it had gained approval to establish a national deep learning lab to conduct research in seven areas, including deep learning, computer vision, machine hearing, biometric identification, human-computer interaction, standardized services and intellectual property in deep learning.

Some of the country's top AI scientists, including Lin Yunqing, director of Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning, Institute of Deep Learning scientist Xu Wei, Tsinghua University professor Zhang Bo and Bei Hang University's professor Li Wei have joined Baidu's new lab.


https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2...to-develop-brain-like-artificial-intelligence