From the imagination of MOSS in wandering Earth to the explosion of ChatGPT causing the whole network to follow; from the emergence of AIGC in 2023 to Sora stunning the world in 2024DerbycrashThe artificial intelligence iteration is beyond imagination.

What is the present situation of the development of artificial intelligence industry in China? What is the trend in the development and application of artificial intelligence? How will it integrate with the real economy? On April 28th, at the annual meeting of the 2024 Zhongguancun (000931) Forum-the Global Forum on Digital Application Innovation, a number of experts and scholars expressed their views.

Artificial intelligence leads the new wave

"can computers think?" Since the British mathematician Turing put forward the concept of "artificial intelligence (AI)" in a famous paper in 1950, human exploration in the field of artificial intelligence has never stopped.

As a strategic technology leading a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, the field of artificial intelligence has now entered a period of accelerated development. Wu Hequan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out: at present, international economic development is in a period of adjustment, the evolution from informationization to digitization, and the emergence of network technological innovation. the new generation of information technology, whether optical fiber communications, mobile communications, satellite communications, the Internet, the industrial Internet, and the Internet of things, have all entered a new period of technological change. Artificial intelligence has entered a transition period to general-purpose artificial intelligence, and there will be cloud network integration and computing network integration, which is still in its infancy. The new generation of information technology and the digital transformation and high-quality development of economy and society have achieved a historic intersection.

Specifically, the artificial intelligence technology represented by the large model is in-depth evolution. He Xiaodong, vice president of JD.com Group, said in his speech that starting from this year, large models have moved further to a multi-model era, where language is no longer limited to language, but language generates pictures, and even language generates video. One of the representatives is Sora at the beginning of this year, which can generate high-quality video content for up to one minute through a text description. The era of large model changes from linguistic large model to multimodal large model, which crosses the threshold of language and vision.

Compared with the past, the importance of artificial intelligence is increasing significantly. This year's government work report makes it clear that it is necessary to further promote the innovative development of the digital economy, deepen research and development applications such as big data and artificial intelligence, carry out "artificial intelligence plus" action, and create an internationally competitive digital industry cluster.

And the field of artificial intelligence is also starting a new round of science and technology competition. According to the White Paper on Innovation and Application of large models in Beijing artificial Intelligence Industry (2023), as of October 2023, there are a total of 254 manufacturers and universities with large models with more than 1 billion parameters in China, distributed in more than 20 provinces and cities.

From Digital World to physical World

In the eyes of experts and scholars participating in the forum, artificial intelligence should not be limited to dialogue, writing articles, and making videos, but should promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy through new technology. bring new industries, new models, and new momentum to all fields of economy and society.

He Xiaodong said that in the future, large models will move from the virtual digital world to the physical world, to the real world, and will be loaded on a series of mobile machines such as robots, and will really move towards embodied intelligence. so that the machine in real life also has high-intensity or general intelligence, really achieve the general intelligence of the real world.

Talking about the integration of artificial intelligence and real economy, Jiang Fan, rotating director of China Digital Alliance and chairman of Beijing Energy Group Co., Ltd., said that for enterprises, it is necessary to deeply understand the important strategic significance of this round of digitization to the survival and development of enterprises. Enterprises should seize this window of opportunity to explore boldly and make progress day by day, strengthen the innovation and application of digital technology, and speed up the development of new productive forces. Promote the high-quality development of enterprises. Jiang Fan also said that since its establishment, the Zhongguancun Digital economy Industry Alliance has always been committed to carrying out research and promotion work in the field of enterprise digital application innovation.

As far as enterprises are concerned, how can artificial intelligence be implemented? Wu Hequan believes that the landing of the big model will take many efforts. First of all, we should put the large model on the cloud, through the cloud, so that as long as many small and medium-sized enterprises can go on the cloud, they can use the big model. In addition, the ability of artificial intelligence needs to be sunk to the terminal in order to be better applied.

Build a platform for sharing resources and capabilities

The reality is that many small and medium-sized enterprises are eager to use big data, but they are worried about the privacy disclosure that big data may bring. Talking about this situation, Wu Hequan pointed out that the transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises to digitization, but worried about the digital transformation, mainly has three aspects: first, they will not develop and utilize data, lack of talent, lack of technology, and lack of data. Big models are out of reach. The second is afraid to develop and use data, worried about network security and corporate secret leakage, worried about cross-border flow data violations. The third is unwillingness to develop and utilize data.

How to make enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises dare and willing to develop and utilize big data, is a problem that the industry needs to consider. Wu Hequan said that the government can take the lead in building a platform for sharing resources and capabilities, and surfing the Internet will face the problem of network security, and each enterprise should strengthen the protection of network security on its own, but it is not enough to rely solely on "everyone sweeping the snow in front of the door." it is necessary to build a sharing mechanism of network security threat information and mobilize all parties in society to help enterprises solve network security problems. At this point, it is necessary for the government to come forward on the platform. The identity of the government itself has a kind of credibility, which can effectively help enterprises solve security problems.

"it is suggested that the government should make use of its own credibility to support the establishment of industry or regional network security threat intelligence sharing mechanisms and corresponding technical support platforms to support the construction of a third-party security cloud for small and medium-sized enterprises." Wu Hequan suggested.

While fully exploring the potential of artificial intelligence to various industries, we also need to pay attention to some risks that artificial intelligence may bring. Beijing Business Daily reporter learned that the European Union launched the "artificial Intelligence Act", which also provides a model for global artificial intelligence governance.

"For the legal supervision of artificial intelligence technologies such as large models, we need to keep pace with the times and formulate corresponding laws and regulations." Wu Gaobin, executive chairman of the Digital Chain Reform Working Committee of the China Association for Democracy and People's Political Consultative Conference, believes that the development of the new generation of artificial intelligence technology has brought many unprecedented challenges, such as data security, privacy protection, intellectual property rights and other issues. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on these issues and formulate corresponding laws and regulations to ensure the healthy and orderly development of artificial intelligence technology. In addition, for the application of artificial intelligence technologies such as large models, its legal responsibilities need to be clarified; forward-looking legislation is needed for the future development of artificial intelligence technologies such as large models.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Li Xiumei