Artificial intelligence usher in the year of the outbreak
Artificial Intelligence was foreseen by the 2016 World Economic Report as the core technology representative for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which Bill Gates calls the 'Holy Grail' of the computer science community.
In March 2016 and May 2017, the two human-computer war games in the Go community brought artificial intelligence to more people's perspectives. AI programs Alpha Dogs successively beat the top players, Li Shishi and Ke Jie, This dog 's first top butt has not sit hot, in October 2017, a new generation of Alfafar out of the mountain, without any chess, with 100 to 0 over the elvis dog.
However, artificial intelligence is much more than Go-Go, and it has become more widely used in areas such as speech recognition, face recognition, driverlessness, big data analysis and even disease prediction. All aspects of life.
China's AI field is also sparkling. Baidu has been betting artificial intelligence, driverless cars on Beijing's Fifth Ring Road, and announced that driverless technology is free; Jingdong, Ali, Xiaomi also actively to the artificial intelligence layout, involving Water smart speaker market; Internet giant Tencent released an artificial intelligence development strategy.In addition to the giant, Horizon, Cambria and other start-up AI companies are also very popular.
In fact, the concept of artificial intelligence as early as the 50s of last century has already been born. Why the rapid development of the trend in recent years?
For example, Lu Fan, founder of the National Thousand Talents Program who has been working in this field for many years, said that in recent years, the advent of deep learning has driven the emergence of artificial intelligence. "Deep learning has made algorithms more efficient and machines We can abandon the laws that people grasp and dig deeper into the essence of things. '
Deep learning is a machine learning method that rapidly evolves as the computing power of the computer increases dramatically, akin to the work of the human brain nervous system.
In addition, after decades of development, the chip has been able to support the AI algorithm with very high computational complexity. "Lu Fan said that big data is also a key factor in the development of artificial intelligence, which can give feedback to the machine, keep on training, and tell the machine that it is right And wrong '.
Talent demand explosive growth
To make a program as smart as a human being, first and foremost the need for so many smart people, as the concept of artificial intelligence heats up, so does the need for talent.
Researcher at a state-level chip design institute told reporters that this year is generally felt that newcomers are more willing to do artificial intelligence and big data.He disclosed that a domestic science and technology giant company's infrastructure department only received two resumes on campus this year, Hundreds of resumes in the startup's AI division stand in stark contrast.
Zhou Yang, who has been working in the traditional chip industry for nearly 20 years, chose to switch to an AI startup that is engaged in the design of embedded AI chips, and in his opinion, AI chips are now designed to focus on smart drivers, smart cities Application scenarios such as landing, there is more room for development.
Despite the large number of applicants, there is still a large talent gap in the field of artificial intelligence.
According to a report released by Zhaopin, the demand for artificial intelligence personnel nearly tripled in the past year, and the growth rate of algorithm engineers was the most rapidly, and the personnel with AI skills now mainly focus on the monthly salary ranges of RMB1,000 to RMB15,000, accounting for 40%.
Luo Huan, the founder of Dana Technology, has 20 years of experience in software engineering and artificial intelligence, and said that excellent algorithm engineers are of great help to the development of the company and the company is willing to hire a capable R & D personnel for hundreds of thousands or even millions of annual salary. Due to the lack of qualified personnel in this area, professors and researchers in academia are being besieged by the industry.
Globally, according to the "Global White Paper on AI Talents," jointly released by Tencent Research Institute and BOSS Direct, the total number of global AI professionals is about 300,000, while the current market demand is in the order of one million, while AI talent supply exists Big gap.
Capital influx cited foam concerns
Talent and funding are key factors in the development of the industry, and artificial intelligence is emerging as a new territory for capital chasing.
In July 2017, Shang Tang Technology was awarded $ 410 million of round B financing, setting a single-round financing record for the then global artificial intelligence field. In August, Cambrian Technology Inc., an artificial intelligence chip company hatched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, completed 100 million U.S. dollars A Round financing, becoming the world's first unicorn AI chip field start-ups.
In October, Kuang as Technology announced the completion of 460 million USdollars C round of financing, refresh the previous Shang-Tang technology to maintain the record; the same month, Horizon received about 100 million US dollars of Intel A + round of financing; December, Tu Lin Technology won 250 million yuan A round Financing.
The influx of funds, more and more companies began to affix artificial intelligence tags, triggering concerns about the bubble of artificial intelligence.
In March of this year, Kai-Fu Lee openly told the media that there was a lot of bubbles in investment and project valuation in the field of artificial intelligence, and many pseudo-artificial intelligence products appeared. 'I met an underwear maker and also said that I am an artificial intelligence enterprise It is a very abnormal phenomenon.
'Next year will certainly be eliminated a number of artificial intelligence companies.' Luo Huan said that now, really understand artificial intelligence, very few investors, few investors can correctly evaluate the technical content of a project, but investors learn fast, Artificial intelligence companies without core strengths have less access to finance.
Lu Fan believes that excessive capital inflows will inevitably lead to the formation of a bubble, but the bubble does not mean that the industry is false. Just as there was a bubble in the rise of the Internet, the general direction of the Internet was right and the wave went , The remaining have become the backbone of the force.
Can China overtake a corner?
Compared with western countries, artificial intelligence seems to be more sought after by Chinese capitalists, some analysts said that China's big data, demographic dividend, policy support and other advantages is an important reason.
From a policy perspective, in March this year, 'artificial intelligence' was first written into the government work report. In July, the State Council issued the "New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan." By 2030, the scale of artificial intelligence core industry exceeds 1 trillion In November, the Ministry of Science and Technology launched major projects and announced the four major platforms of artificial intelligence. In December, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a three-year plan of action to strive for a breakthrough in artificial intelligence by 2020 and form an international competitive advantage in several fields.
According to a report released by Eurasia Group, data size is the most important factor in the competitive edge in the field of artificial intelligence. China possesses vast amounts of data far beyond other countries.
The report said that while overall China's artificial intelligence lags behind the United States as a whole, it will shift from imitation to catch-up and lead or jointly lead the world in terms of data advantages, capital support, government policy support, talent expansion and hardware manufacturing advantages. Wave of artificial intelligence.