China's Race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology

[TaiShang]

Home appliance maker embraces intelligent equipment

By Fan Feifei | China Daily | Updated: 2018-03-19

A robot made by Gree plays piano at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai on Nov 8. GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY

Gree, a major Chinese home appliance maker, is ramping up efforts in intelligent manufacturing by setting up unmanned factories and using industrial robots in a variety of production cycles, as part of its broader push to upgrade the country's manufacturing industry.

"We have eight manufacturing bases across the country, most of which are unmanned factories. China must master core technologies to grow into a manufacturing power," Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman and president of Gree, said on the sidelines of the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Dong, who is a deputy to the NPC, said Gree entered into the intelligent equipment industry in 2013. The industry covers numerical control machines, industrial robots, servo-manipulators, intelligent storage equipment and intelligent detecting systems.

"We must stick to independent research and development, building our own talent pool and R&D team, as well as mastering core technology," Dong said. "Only in this way can we lead the industry and the world.

"That's what we're doing for Made in China 2025," she said, referring to the national plan to upgrade Chinese manufacturing. "That's our responsibility right now."

The industrial robots covered by the company's intellectual property rights have been applied in welding, spraying and transportation, greatly enhancing productivity and reduces labor costs, she said.

In an earlier interview, she said her company would concentrate on robots and precision machine tools as part of efforts to upgrade and transform Chinese manufacturing, as well as providing entirely self-developed high-end equipment for Made in China 2025.

Gree has independently filed more than 20 patents across over 100 types of automation products, such as intelligent automatic guided vehicles, industrial robots and manipulators for plastic injection machines, which are used to convey plastic products.

These products have been applied in fields including home appliances, new energy, food and energy saving.

Intelligent equipment has become an important business growth point for Gree. The company reported that revenue from its intelligent equipment business reached 962 million yuan ($152 million) in the first half of last year, up 27 times compared with the same period in 2016.

China has been the world's largest industrial robot market for four consecutive years, according to Wang Xiangrui, president of the China Machinery Industry Federation. Sales of industrial robots reached 89,000 units in 2016, and the figure is expected to rise to 150,000 by 2020.

"The huge market demand, sound industrial basis and favorable policy support have brought a rare opportunity for the development of intelligent equipment and manufacturing," Wang said. "We should focus on intelligent manufacturing to promote high-quality development, which has also become the choice of China's manufacturing industry."

The transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing sector contributed to the development of the Chinese robot market, said Song Xiaogang, executive president and secretary-general of the China Robot Industry Alliance, adding that Gree has done good work focusing on the Chinese market.

 

[cirr]

How the world's largest bitcoin miner is taking on AI's most powerful players

• Mar 19, 2018
• Masha Borak

“In the future, AI will be everywhere,” said Bitmain product marketer Allen Tang while explaining how the biggest bitcoin mining equipment producer in the world plans to conquer artificial intelligence.

“It will be on cars, it will be on cameras, it will be on servers, in the back end,” he continued. “It’s just like the motor vehicle replacing the horse—it’s a big-time change that can dramatically alter the world. We think that’s a big trend and we need to do that.”

Founded by Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan, Bitmain dominates the cryptocurrency mining business. The Chinese company started mining and selling its Antminer mining rigs in 2013. In just four short years, it reached $3 billion to $4 billion in yearly operating profits, according to US financial analysis company Bernstein.

Bitmain’s product marketer Allen Tang (Image credit: TechNode)

The company has been involved in a fair share of controversies, including accusations of monopolizing the mining business and undermining bitcoin itself. Nowadays, it looks like Bitmain wants to change its image from the shovel seller that gets rich on miners during a gold rush into a forward-looking innovator.

“If Bitmain wants to transform from a simple mining company to a tech giant, they need to get into AI, big data, etc.,” said Zarc Gin, fintech and blockchain analyst and reporter at InsurView. “That’s how you can improve your influence. And they certainly have the budget.”

According to Tang, Bitmain’s foray into AI started in 2015, long before China’s regulators started viewing cryptocurrencies with suspicion. Their AI chip division Sophon—named after the alien technology in Liu Cixin’s sci-fi trilogy The Three Body Problem—aims to “solve all the puzzles in the universe,” or in layman’s terms, accelerate AI applications with the help of chips called ASICs ( application-specific integrated circuit).

Unlike CPU and GPU which are made for general purposes, ASIC silicone chips are designed for a specific task. One example is the complex mathematical tasks performed in cryptocurrency mining but they can also be used in machine learning. You can think of them as two types of workers: one can perform various roles pretty solid but lacks expertise. The other is excellent at one task but doesn’t know anything else. This is what Tang, a former Intel Product Marketing Manager for AI and HPS, sees as ASICs biggest plus.

“When companies like Intel and Nvidia build general purpose chips, they are building an ecosystem for everything, for running 100 or 200 applications. But when they run a specific application they may only utilize 1% of the chip’s capacity,” he said. “ASIC is dedicated to a special application which it can run very well and it can be ten or a hundred times more energy efficient than CPU.”

Bitmain’s ASIC challenge

In October last year, Bitmain released its customized AI ASIC for tensor computing acceleration. The Sophon BM1680 is designed for deep learning training and inference of neural networks. The chip is similar to Google’s own custom ASIC for deep learning TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) tailored for Google’s open-source machine learning framework, TensorFlow. Google released its TPU in beta on the Google Cloud Platform in February.

The question is: can Bitmain match the bigger players? It’s not just Google, either. Intel and NVIDIA are not only improving their GPUs but also experimenting with ASIC for AI. According to Moor Insights & Strategy senior analyst Karl Freund, ASIC chips are very difficult to design and build, even for a top-notch engineering team. Many companies have trouble recruiting the AI or neuroscience talent they need to get and stay ahead of companies like Nvidia or Intel, he said.

Sophon’s Tensor Computing Processor BM1680 (Image credit: Sophon)

“It is important to understand the ecosystem of software, libraries, researchers, and scientists needed to go from a fast chip to a fast growing and large business. Building a chip that can support Baidu or Alibaba is tough, but building a sustainable global business is much much harder.”

Freund is somewhat skeptical about the future of ASIC chips in AI. ASIC designers freeze the logic behind the chip early in the development process and are unable to react quickly when new ideas emerge in a fast-moving field like AI. ASICs in AI may find the same fate as workers who specialize in only one field and then find that technology has upended it.

“An ASIC may have higher performance, lower costs, and lower power for the application for which it was designed. However, it may cost $50 million to $100 million to develop, and cannot be repurposed for a different app or algorithm,” said Freund.

Mining is just the beginning

Bitmain isn’t the only Chinese cryptocurrency mining company going into artificial intelligence. China-based bitcoin mining chip makers Canaan Creative and Ebang have also set their eyes on AI. While Ebang’s plans seem more like an aspiration for now, Canaan Creative has been bolder. The company received a Series A of RMB 300 million ($43 million) in May 2017 and announced their plans to complete a new ASIC aimed at the AI market that year. TechNode reached out to the company to find out more but our questions went unanswered.

“There’s no denying the popularity of cryptocurrency and the blockchain. AI has a very similar amount of hype and excitement around it and I believe that Bitmain may be building on this excitement,” Anshel Sag, associate analyst for Moor Insights and Strategy, told TechNode.

Sag believes companies like Bitmain are going into AI for several reasons. For one thing, AI training is very computer intensive just like cryptocurrency mining. Bitmain may be preparing for home-grown demand and possible future requirements for using Chinese-made chips.

“Bitmain is a Chinese company so they may also get more preferential treatment within China as the Chinese government and Chinese companies start to use AI more and need more AI computing horsepower,” said Sag.

Bitmain is also a relatively big player in the semiconductor space. According to Sag, the company may be looking for ways to secure a good price for materials used for building chips such as wafers from TMSC, the world’s largest dedicated independent semiconductor fabrication plant.

Bitmain’s office in Haidian District, Beijing (Image credit: Bitmain)

According to Gin, Bitmain is likely to continue funding its operations from the lucrative mining business. The company holds 70 to 80 percent of market share in bitcoin miners and ASIC chips for mining, according to Bernstein. It also makes money from Antpool which is one of the world’s biggest mining pools (groups that share processing power to mine blocks in a blockchain). Aside from Sophon, Antminer, and Antpool, it has built a cryptocurrency exchange platform named BTC.COM and cloud mining platform Hashnest. The firm has also invested in tech companies in the US but has not revealed their names.

Bitmain says it now employs around 1000 people. During the last year, the company has been expanding its operations into countries such as US, Israel, and Singapore with their newest office opening in Switzerland’s Zug. The company has been recruiting staff, including machine learning experts, across China, Switzerland, Israel, the Netherlands, and Taiwan.

As Tang explained to TechNode, Sophon will focus on video analysis while the company has also bought a robotics firm to explore user scenarios. The bulk of their approximately 100—unnamed— customers are in public security industry or internet companies.

Tang also said that China has managed to catch up with global AI forces in two out of three areas that define the AI industry—data and algorithms. Computing or chips is one of the areas where the country still has room to evolve. He also believes that blockchain and AI are the “left leg and the right leg of the future.”

“They will both have trillions in the market in 10 years, we need to start investing now.”

https://technode.com/2018/03/19/bitmain-asic-ai/

 

[cirr]

China develops new voice identification technique

2018-03-20 08:41

Xinhua Editor: Wang Fan

China has developed a technique to identify internet users based on their voices, according to developers.

The technique, jointly developed by Tsinghua University and a Beijing tech company, is aimed at providing quality identification services for users.

The technique can be applied for various services, such as finance, medical care and education, developers said.

The project is based in Guian New Area of Guizhou Province in the country's southwest. The new area focuses on emerging industries.

 

[cirr]

AI technology integrates online and offline games

2018-03-21 10:08 China Daily Editor: Mo Hong'e

A group of people play party card game Werewolf with an AI-enabled robot invented by Rokid Co Ltd as the judge.(Photo provided to China Daily)

Developers combine gaming content with real-life interactions to gain more loyalty

The party card game Werewolf is a regular part of life for Tracy Xing, a 27-year-old office clerk in Beijing who meets with colleagues to play the game in her office's public area at noon every Friday.

Now, she has a new "colleague" with whom to play－an artificial intelligence robot.

Werewolf is a simple reasoning group game that requires a judge to preside over the activity. It can be played online, with different roles such as villagers and killers assigned to the players and the computer acting as the judge.

Like Xing, many people prefer to play the game with friends or colleagues face-to-face offline, and the players take turns being the judge. But now, an AI robot can serve as the judge so that the participants can enjoy the game even more.

During the game, the robot, invented by Rokid Co Ltd, a Hangzhou-based AI firm, can give instructions and play background music, creating an immersive experience for human players.

Rokid gained a patent award in Silicon Valley last year for its Werewolf judge function.

"Having robots take some of humans' routine work, and set people free to engage in face-to-face interaction, is the original intention of inventing Rokid," said Jiang Gonglue, chief designer of the AI robot.

"In this information technology era, people are used to chatting with friends via WeChat. We wish to bring our users back to the time when we accompany our friends and talk with each other face-to-face," Jiang said, adding that the company will continue to develop multiplayer social games based on AI robots, such as knowledge quiz and music contest.

Misa Zhu, founder and CEO of Rokid, said that "taking advantage of AI, we want to create a cozy and pleasant environment for friends to stay closer."

Apart from promoting social interactions, AI technology is also helping get game players involved in exercises offline in the real world.

Walkup, a mobile game developed by Beijing-based internet firm Breeze Co Ltd, integrates offline walking with mobile games, via a virtual world cruise.

Specifically, each step the user physically takes will be tracked by Walkup and transferred to the outline of a world map. The more steps one takes, the further one walks in the virtual world tour. To offer more fun, the game allows real-time interactions. Players may invite their friends to join the game and compare their progress on their routes. Because players worldwide can participate, participants can even see their world rankings.

The game had accumulated more than six million users by September 2017, three years after it was launched, with those aged 19 to 30 accounting for more than 70 percent of the users, according to Chen Yang, founder of Walkup.

Its daily active users reached beyond 400,000, with a monthly retention rate of more than 30 percent and 2.4 million visits every day.

"The gamification of a product is the future trend. In the game, we establish a motivating mechanism, encouraging users to exercise offline. In their daily routine, users enjoy the game, interact with their friends and achieve their goals of exercising every day. This is how we gain user loyalty," Chen said.

"This mobile game motivates me to exercise. It tracked my steps and transferred those steps onto my world map," said Lu Bei, 25, a Beijing-based Walkup fan.

"Starting from Beijing, China ... I've already 'walked' to Tokyo, Japan. Nowadays, I take my phone everywhere. I would love to see my icon move on the map, and to check my ranking among my friends," Lu said.

Dong Zhen, a senior entertainment analyst at internet consultancy Analysys in Beijing, said the gaming industry, "like other internet industries, will present its scenarios offline after all.

"For users, offline scenarios of a game are more vivid, and are easier for gamers to interact with each other, while for game developers, combining online gaming with offline interactions is a wise choice to gain the loyalty of users and expand their market share," Dong said.

"AI will take the place of many scenario-based functions, just like what the AI robot is doing in getting everybody involved in the Werewolf game, boosting the advancement of the gaming industry, as well as serving game players better," he added.

According to a report jointly released by the Game Publishers Association Publications Committee, Gamma Data Corp and International Data Corporation, China's gaming market reached 203.6 billion yuan ($32.3 billion) last year, up 23 percent year-on-year, and the number of game players in the country reached 583 million.

AI products such as the judge in the Werewolf game, which link game players online and offline, have a market potential of roughly 70 billion yuan, according to Gao Yang, a big data specialist at YY Inc, a Nasdaq-listed social platform.

The AI industry will become a key new growth point for the nation's economy by 2020, with the core industry value totaling more than 150 billion yuan, according to a guideline released by the State Council last July.

The volume of related industries, including entertainment, intelligent manufacturing, intelligent agriculture, smart healthcare, smart city, as well as national defense, will reach more than 1 trillion yuan.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/03-21/296531.shtml

 

[cirr]

China trials unmanned tanks in latest push for modernization

REUTERS

March 21, 2018 at 12:50 JST

BEIJING--China is testing unmanned tanks which could be equipped with artificial intelligence, a state-run newspaper said on Wednesday, as the country continues with its military modernization program.

State television showed images this week of the unmanned tanks undergoing testing, the Global Times newspaper reported.

Footage showed a Type 59 tank being driven by remote control, in what the paper said was the first time a Chinese-made unmanned tank has been shown in a public forum.

The Type 59 tank is based on an old Soviet model first used in China in the 1950s and has been produced in large numbers and has a long service life, it said.

"A large number of due-to-retire Type 59 tanks can be converted into unmanned vehicles if equipped with artificial intelligence," Liu Qingshan, the chief editor of Tank and Armored Vehicle, told the newspaper.

Unmanned tanks will be able to work on other unmanned equipment, integrate information from satellites, aircraft or submarines, the report added.

China is in the middle of an impressive modernization program for its armed forces, including building stealth fighters and new aircraft carriers, as President Xi Jinping looks to assert the country's growing power.

 

[JSCh]

AI could alleviate China’s doctor shortage
Chinese doctors and tech companies are developing tools to automate routine medical tasks.

• by Yiting Sun
• March 21, 2018

On a recent day at a hospital in western Beijing, a cancer radiologist named Chongchong Wu loaded a suspicious-looking lung scan into a computer program resembling Photoshop. A neural network trained on thousands of example scans highlighted nodules in red squares, which she examined carefully. She corrected two false positives where the network mistakenly identified blood vessels as potential malignancies. But she also found a nodule that she’d previously overlooked, perhaps indicating an early sign of disease.

China is embarking on a big initiative to add AI to health care with tools like this one. In some ways the trend mirrors what is happening in the US and Europe. In China, however, restrictions on the use of data and new technologies are looser, and the need for automation is more pronounced. There are 1.5 doctors for every 1,000 people in China, compared with 2.5 in the US.

China is moving quickly. Some 131 companies are currently working on applying AI in the country’s health-care sector, according to Yiou Intelligence, a Beijing-based consultancy. Starting next month, a hospital in Beijing will run all its lung scans past an AI algorithm in order to expedite the screening process.

The Chinese government has called for such technology to help with computerized medical diagnosis as part of the first stage of its grand plan to embrace AI by 2020 (see “China’s AI Awakening”). In a report published in February, IDC predicted that China’s market for AI health-care services will reach 5.9 billion yuan ($930 million) in 2022. This market is also being targeted by China’s big tech companies. Both Alibaba and Tencent have research units dedicated to developing AI diagnostic tools.

The way people perceive AI in China may make it easier for the technology to flourish in medicine. In the West, advances in AI have prompted debates about job losses, but most Chinese doctors seem keen to automate away their most repetitive work.

Using AI in medicine comes with challenges, though. The diagnostic tools may reach their conclusions using complicated mathematical processes that defy explanation. So far there is little debate in China about who will be responsible for mistakes when medical diagnoses are outsourced to these algorithms.

Last year, the China Food and Drug Administration incorporated AI diagnostic tools into its list of permitted medical devices, but companies need to apply for accreditation for each product before setting a price.

The AI software Wu used, developed by a Beijing-based startup called PereDoc, has been installed in more than 20 hospitals in China. PereDoc has amassed a network of more than 180 hospitals that serve as research collaborators.

Crafting algorithms that can process medical images, such as CT scans and x-rays, is a particularly hot field for China’s startups. One reason is that image classification plays to the strength of the latest deep-learning algorithms.

But AI is also being used in other areas. Peijun Lv, a prosthodontist in Beijing, is collaborating with Tsinghua University to develop an AI program that can design dentures. A prototype algorithm was trained using rules on denture design, drawn from textbooks, and 30,000 real cases labeled by doctors. “It can replicate the expertise of experienced doctors,” says Lv. He plans to run clinical trials of the algorithm later this year.

And Peng Liu, a lymphoma doctor in Beijing, is working with researchers at Tsinghua to develop a machine-learning algorithm that can use ultrasound data to detect blood clots caused by lymphoma treatment. If caught early, often via an ultrasound scan of the patient’s veins, blood clots can be easily treated. But hospitals often do not have enough resources to screen every patient unless there are specific symptoms.

Other researchers in China are tackling general medical knowledge. iFlytek and Tsinghua University jointly created an AI system that scored higher than over 96 percent of human contestants in last year’s Chinese medical licensing exam. The difficulty of creating a system like this is not incorporating the breadth of existing medical knowledge, but teaching machines to understand the intricate connections between different facts and use these findings to reason and make decisions.

At its core, this is a natural-language-processing system that’s particularly adept at dealing with medical questions. The way it reaches a conclusion on a multiple-choice question is completely different from the way a human chooses the best answer. The algorithm looks for evidence needed to answer a particular question by calculating statistical similarities between words represented mathematically.

A detailed analysis of the exam results shows where machines cannot compete with humans: common sense and ethics. The algorithm scored lower than the national average on the section that tests ability to exercise judgment under stressful situations such as family disputes.

Ji Wu, an associate professor at Tsinghua University who led the project, is exploring ways to put this algorithm to clinical use. But he admits it’s not going to be as simple as installing this software in every doctor’s computer.

Doctors who do use the new tools can find them a big help, though. At Chongchong Wu’s hospital in Beijing, for example, the outpatient department sees about 10,000 people every day, so she doesn’t have enough time to read every image as carefully as she’d like. The scan-processing program, she says, “can relieve my burden.”


AI could alleviate China’s doctor shortage - MIT Technology Review

 

[Jlaw]

We must stick to independent research and development, building our own talent pool and R&D team, as well as mastering core technology," Dong said. "Only in this way can we lead the industry and the world.

China has more than enough talent at home. Just need to find it. Foreign talents are overrated. Most are good talkers, that's about it.

 

[TaiShang]

China has more than enough talent at home. Just need to find it. Foreign talents are overrated. Most are good talkers, that's about it.

Indeed. Looking at China's frontier industries and seeing the average age of the scientists there (such as space) gives a good idea about harnessing domestic talent.

China is giving full priority to home talent, I believe.

 

[cirr]

Cheetah to offer affordable intelligent robot

2018-03-22 15:17

chinadaily.com.cn Editor: Mo Hong'e

Zhang Quanling, former China Central Television anchorwoman, interacts with the Greetbot developed by Cheetah Mobile in Beijing on Wednesday. (Photo provided to China Daily)

Intelligent robots are often pictured as omnipotent assistants in movies and fiction, but in reality, they are far away from people's daily lives due to technological deficiencies and extravagant prices.

A Chinese company is aiming to change that by bringing smart machines to companies and houses at affordable prices.

With about 2,999 yuan ($475) per month, consumers can rent a smart robot produced by Cheetah Mobile Inc, best known for its utility apps in foreign countries. When consumers rent the robot for up to 18 months, at a total cost of about 54,000 yuan, they can keep the robot forever, for a price far lower than most rival products.

Cheetah Mobile claimed the robot, called "Greetbot", can serve as a security guard to patrol companies at night and automatically turn off all lights when employees are gone.

At the launch event, Greetbot showcased its ability to offer reception services to people who visit companies and hospitals. It can answer questions from human beings. More importantly, the robot can guide visitors to certain meeting rooms and when visitors stop midway, it will stop accordingly and suggest visitors to follow suit.

The robot is part of a broader product range Cheetah Mobile unveiled Wednesday night in Beijing, including an accompanying robot for children and a robotic arm that can make coffee.

The move showcased the company's determination to gain a presence in the booming sector. China is the world's largest market for industrial robots, and the aging population also creates a growing demand for service robots in the medical, healthcare, education and entertainment sectors.

China unveiled favorable policies in 2016, which stated its plan to triple annual production of industrial robots to 100,000 in five years and to sell more than 30 billion yuan's worth of service robots by 2020.

Fu Sheng, chairman and CEO of Cheetah Mobile, said despite intensifying competition the robotics industry still boasts tons of opportunities.

"Most companies are just assembling robots and few of their products are really helpful. We are rethinking what features are desired and which price range will be accepted by consumers," Fu said.

According to him, the company's years of experience in software and mobile apps can give it an advantage when building an integrated system to connect hardware and software.

http://www.ecns.cn/2018/03-22/296725.shtml

 

[TaiShang]

Fu Sheng, chairman and CEO of Cheetah Mobile, said despite intensifying competition the robotics industry still boasts tons of opportunities.

Artificial Intelligence

Cheetah Mobile has built an AI technology platform to power its full line of products, upgrade its utility product matrix and contribute to the growth of its content apps. Cheetah Mobile's subsidiary OrionStar is a leader in the industry with cutting-edge technologies such as voice IO, facial recognition and visual navigation. OrionStar won first place at the 2017 MS-Celeb-1M (LFW) challenge, a world renowned facial recognition competition.

http://www.cmcm.com/en-us/product/#Product_Games

 

[TaiShang]

China a pioneer in AI innovation

By Ma Si | China Daily | Updated: 2018-03-27

Google CEO Sundar Pichai (left) and Apple CEO Tim Cook speak at the China Development Forum 2018 in Beijing. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily]
Google CEO: We want to work alongside the world's best talents

Ideas and technologies created in China will have a bigger impact as artificial intelligence increasingly reshapes people's work and lives, according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Pichai's comments came a day after Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook announced plans to partner with China's Tsinghua University to create a joint research center for AI-related technologies.

The recognition from senior executives of two of the world's most valuable companies highlights the efforts being made by China into its transformation as an innovation pioneer from an innovation sponge.

"When it comes to AI, we want to work alongside the world's best talents. That is why we opened an AI research center in Beijing last year," said Pichai at the China Development Forum 2018 in Beijing on Monday.

"Openness will allow us to scale the impact of AI. No one company … will be able to do it alone. Everyone has a role to play," he said.

According to Pichai, China has already played a big part in promoting the development of AI and Chinese scientists have done a good job in research as they contribute to a significant number of papers in scientific journals.

The United States tech giant announced in December that it would establish a research center in Beijing, the first of its kind in Asia, to focus on basic AI research. According to Pichai, the center already has a team of researchers.

Google has been stepping up investment in China, one of the world's most dynamic tech landscapes. In January, it opened a new office in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, which functions as a service center to deepen its cooperation with Chinese hardware makers.

Pichai's praise for China's talents came a day after Cook made similar comments at the same forum.

Cook said it was China's huge manufacturing capacity that lured him to bring Apple's business to the nation. But now Chinese products are also known for its high quality and the country is playing a leading role in innovation.

As the nation steps up efforts to implement the "Made in China 2025" strategy, the world is witnessing local talents and professionals' research and development capabilities, Cook added.

According to Cook, the joint research center with Tsinghua University will "focus on advanced technologies, including machine learning, computer vision, augmented reality and wireless technologies."

China has for the first time surpassed the United States in equity funding to AI startups in 2017, according to a report released by US-based venture capital database CB Insights.

Last year, startups worldwide raised more than $15.2 billion, up by 141 percent from 2016. China's AI startups accounted for 48 percent of the global funding, up from 11.6 percent in 2016. The US was ranked second with 38 percent, the report added.

 

[JSCh]

AI hospital opens in Guangzhou
China Plus Published: 2018-04-03 20:46:36

A woman seeking the help from an AI doctor at the Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital. [Photo: VCG]

China's first smart hospital featuring artificial intelligence has opened in Guangzhou, reports ycwb.com.

Before patients arrive at the hospital, artificial intelligence (AI) can help patients with recommendations, make appointment and payments through the WeChat account of the Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital.

A smart diagnosis system also helps doctors prescribe medications.

In addition to paying for bills online, patients can also establish their medical profile through facial recognition on WeChat.

AI reduces the time of patient inquiries by as much as 50%, and can diagnose around 90% of illnesses that are treated at community clinics, according to the hospital's deputy chief Li Guanming.

Li says they are drafting a guideline on AI application for all major hospitals in Guangdong Province.

 

[JSCh]

AI training program enters Chinese universities
By Wang Mengzhen
2018-04-04 10:10 GMT+8
Updated 2018-04-04 10:39 GMT+8

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key aspect of technology in China, and universities in the country are ramping up their training programs to meet the growing demand for AI experts. A special five-year AI talent training program was unveiled on Tuesday by the Ministry of Education to help with that mission.

AI is becoming more and more prominent within our lives as it is now being used within the delivery service and the health sector. Alongside this, face and voice recognition are now a common security feature.

More than 300 companies offered about 14,000 AI-related positions during a recent job fair at Xi'an Jiaotong University, one of China's leading technology schools. Annual salaries for these types of positions can reach up to 60,000 US dollars, way above the average for most new graduates.

But how do we train a qualified AI expert? As a latecomer to AI education, China still lags behind.

“The talent shortage has become the bottleneck of China's AI development. So far, ten Chinese universities have set up AI-related majors. But with the limits of equipment and environment, many graduates lack the practical operational skills of AI, thus failing the urgent needs of employers," said Xu Tao, director of the International Cooperation and Exchanges Department at the Ministry of Education.

Goldman and Sachs released a special report on China's Rise in AI in 2017, suggesting that China would become a major global force in using AI to drive economic progress thanks to its supportive policies and booming technology.

However, another Goldman report suggested that while China has joined half of the world's new AI projects, it only accounts for five percent of the global AI talent pool.

The Ministry of Education and Sinovation Ventures launched a five-year education project on Tuesday to help bridge that gap. The project aims to educate 500 Chinese university teachers and another 5,000 students in AI.

One hundred and six teachers from 49 universities are already participating in the first round of training at Peking University. The curriculum includes the latest AI theories and practices.

A group photo of the 106 teachers from 49 universities who have joined in the first round of training at Peking University /CGTN Photo

It is China's first international AI training project at a university level and its faculty includes such luminaries as Turing-Award-winning computer scientist John Edward Hopcroft and Chinese AI expert Li Kaifu.

The faculty of the AI training project includes such luminaries as John E. Hopcroft (R) and Chinese AI expert Li Kaifu. /CGTN Photo

Professor Hopcroft, who has been involved in teaching AI in China for a decade, will teach a course at Peking University on "deep networks".

"I am hoping these 100 instructors will go back to their institutions and if each teaches a class of 100 students that's 10,000 students that will get educated rather than working at the level of 100 that I used to work on," said John E. Hopcroft, IBM professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Cornell University.

Award-winning computer scientist John E. Hopcroft, IBM professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, met with the press after the AI Training Program launching event at Peking University, Beijing, April 3, 2018. /CGTN Photo

China published its national development plan for AI in 2017 and aims to become a world leader in the sector by 2030. The country has also prioritized the training and recruitment of AI talent and the ministry says it is considering the establishment of an AI major in Chinese universities.

 

[TaiShang]

China to train 500 teachers in AI

CGTN
2018-04-07

A government program is training 500 university teachers and 5,000 students in artificial intelligence (AI).

The program organized by the Ministry of Education, Peking University and Innovation Works (a Beijing incubator) will last for five years.

Last year, China's cabinet issued an AI development outline, stressing the need to train AI talents and attract the world's leading professionals to China.

The new program targets teachers and students alike. They will participate in training sessions and camps.

Teachers of the course include US computer scientist John E. Hopcroft, a recipient of A.M. Turing Award and Kai-Fu Lee, venture capitalist and head of the Innovation Works research unit.

The program will train 100 teachers and 300 students this year.

Peking University Vice President Tian Gang said the school expects the program to become a model that can be expanded in universities across China.

 

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For shorthand typists, AI brings end to boom times

2018-04-06 09:26 China Daily Editor: Feng Shuang

At the start of his career, Li Zhengjie would scour the streets, wander university campuses and even climb skyscrapers to drum up business. He quickly realized that being a freelance stenographer is hard work－even before you've landed a client.

Twelve years on, the job is still hard, but at least his income has increased.

Li's first client was a professor who paid him 160 yuan ($25) in March 2006 to record and transcribe discussions during a two-hour seminar in Beijing. Li and his wife, also a stenographer, made about 1,800 yuan a month that year, but today they can earn up to 30,000 yuan a month.

"I could barely imagine such an income when I was starting out," said Li, 36, who now leads a team of 12 stenographers covering events across the Chinese capital.

However, some in the business fear breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and smart voice-recording software is threatening their industry.

"I'm kind of worried whether this job will still exist in the years ahead," said Pan Li, who has been in the business for 12 years. She works with her friend Ma Ruijuan from a home office in Handan, Hebei province, about 400 kilometers from Beijing. They handle interviews, academic speeches, court hearings, phone surveys and celebrity appearances, charging 80 yuan an hour.

Pan, Ma and Li were all inspired to become stenographers around 2006 after spotting advertisements in local newspapers that suggested demand for such skills would soar over the following decade.

The prediction was correct, and all three have so far enjoyed decent careers. Yet as demand begins to drop due to new technologies, so are incomes.

Li mostly now works conferences, seminars and forums, but in 2006 he was receiving a lot of business from journalists who wanted quick transcriptions of their interviews.

"They'd give me their recordings and I'd usually charge them 70 or 80 yuan an hour," he said. But since 2015, that kind of work has all but disappeared. "Few are still coming to me today because they can simply use smart software and apps to produce their own transcripts," Li added.

'Exciting experiences'

After graduating with an advertising degree from college in his native Shenyang, Liaoning province, Li worked for several months for a local ad agency. But he was not happy with the salary.

"Then I saw a newspaper ad for a stenography training school that said the industry would be one of the most promising for the next 10 years and promised high salaries," he recalled. "At that time, none of my friends and relatives had ever heard of such a job."

Li and his wife signed up for classes, paying about 10,000 yuan for tuition, and over the next six months dedicated themselves to learning how to use a stenotype, a machine that enables users to record speech in shorthand.

"The hardest part is improving your speed. To go from typing 60 words a minute to 120 words required us to practice by typing millions and millions of words," he said.

Due to the limited demand in his hometown, Li decided to move to Beijing shortly after completing his training. Stenographers typically start by transcribing audio files and then progress to conferences, which are high pressure but pay about 300 yuan an hour. Li started working conferences in 2008.

Ma from Hebei relocated to the capital in 2006 for the same reason as Li. "Most of my clients were introduced by friends in the same industry, and I was usually hired to do transcripts of media interviews," the 32-year-old said.

Before long, she was regularly working in the studios of China Central Television, the State broadcaster, and Beijing TV, and by 2010, she had helped produce transcripts of a number of high-profile shows, including CCTV's Legal Report.

"Those were the most exciting experiences of my 20s," she said, laughing. "I didn't know what a TV interview was like until I stepped into a TV studio."

Ma eventually moved back to her hometown with her husband and children, but she continues to work on interviews by receiving and sending files through the internet.

"I'm the main breadwinner in my family because this job allows me to earn more money than my husband," she said. "What's more, it keeps me connected with the outside world."

Coexisting with AI

Courts are a major source of work for stenographers, who record proceedings for the public record. However, tech tycoon Liu Qingfeng is hoping to change that.

Liu's company, iFlytek－which is headquartered in Hefei, Anhui province, and makes language input software and voice-recognition programs－unveiled an AI system last month that will not only record court hearings, but also aid judges in reviewing criminal cases.

"We're now able to use AI to help judges review four types of cases, namely homicide, theft, telecom fraud and illegal fundraising," he said at a news conference on March 5. As he spoke, his words appeared on a screen beside him almost instantly, demonstrating the speed and accuracy of the company's technology.

Stenographer Li Zhengjie said the rapid developments seen in AI in recent years have raised concerns about the future of his profession.

"I've been thinking about this problem since 2010, and I used to worry my job may one day no longer exist," he said, adding that voice-recognition software like that produced by iFlytek is the No 1 reason why demand from journalists for transcription services is drying up.

"When the conversation takes place in a very quiet environment and all the speakers are talking loudly and clearly, such apps work better and more efficiently than us humans," he conceded.

Yet he said he feels confident that such technology will not replace conference stenographers, at least not in the short term.

"I've never doubted the necessity for a human stenographer because only we can recognize who is speaking when, so we can record the correct order of speakers," Li said. "Plus, the environments at forums and conferences are usually too noisy for voice translation apps to work efficiently."

Ma agrees, and added that most interview recordings she works on are also conducted in noisy environments such as on streets or in restaurants.

Li said he ultimately believes his job can coexist with AI systems.

"It's like radio versus television," he explained. "When TV arrived and became popular in every household, many people were saying radio was a dying industry. Yet both are running well today and simply have adjusted to cater to varying customer demand.

"Such coexistence will also be seen between stenography and AI," he added.