1. Artificial intelligence will break through in the next 18 months;
Yesterday, the 2018 Global Governance High Level Policy Forum jointly organized by the China International Economic Exchange Center and the United Nations Development Program and the 2018 'One Belt and One Road' Financial Investment Forum continued to be held in Guangzhou. In the artificial intelligence technology and sustainable development sub-forum, guests attended the forum. They actively discussed how artificial intelligence technology should be applied to the construction of 'One Belt and One Road'. Participants believed that these 'black technologies' are gradually being realized. The macro goal should be to help achieve sustainable development.
Wen/Guangzhou Daily All-Media Reporter Shen Hui, He Ruiqi, Fang Qing, Zhang Xiaoyi
Figure / Guangzhou Daily reporter Zhuang Xiaolong
Technology is a double-edged sword that can solve a part of social problems and create new problems. Therefore, through the development of artificial intelligence and other technologies, the more macro goal is to achieve sustainable development.
-- H.E. Pickup Barak, Director of the Seoul Development Policy Center, United Nations Development Programme
At present, it is still in the era of weak artificial intelligence that uses artificial intelligence to assist human decision-making. People will also usher in the era of strong artificial intelligence. In the next 18 months, artificial intelligence will usher in a breakthrough.
-- Microsoft (China) Chief Technology Officer Li Jiang
AI companies have smart 'directors'
Through the human-machine interaction to achieve washing machine automation, face recognition, cloud technology to change your imagination of the home, so that life becomes simple ... ... in the cloud rice whole house Internet appliance founder Chen Xiaoping mouth, artificial intelligence to make it all gradually realized. Li Jiang, chief technology officer of Microsoft (China), said that Microsoft and partners have done a lot of artificial intelligence research and development and business solutions, artificial intelligence can be applied to education, translation, etc. 'Microsoft in the artificial intelligence translation, can be translated instantly In 8 languages, written languages can be translated into 6 languages, basically covering the languages of all countries in the 'Belt and Road'.
Even more shocking is the fact that Harilorda Cowley, CEO of the Santani International Group Emerging Markets Forum, said in his speech that an artificial intelligence company in India, one of the 'directors' is made up of artificial intelligence.' This 'director' has the learning ability to learn the operation of the company through the board of directors over the past three years, and it can make good suggestions on the board of directors. The capabilities of this robot far exceed the capabilities of many human directors.'
Artificial intelligence assists human decision-making
Still in the era of weak artificial intelligence
When artificial intelligence emerges, how should we embrace this technology? Harilda Cowley believes that it is necessary to integrate various technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things to solve more social problems such as poverty and the environment. sustainable development.
The director of the Seoul Development Policy Center of the United Nations Development Program, H.D. Houbashi Balaji, said that technology is a double-edged sword that can solve some social problems and create new problems. Therefore, through the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, more The macro goal is to achieve sustainable development. He cited the development of a digital platform for online education that can help children reach out to education and learn about culture. There are also banking, insurance, and use of new technologies to provide a variety of Banks and insurance products reduce costs and allow ordinary people to raise their living standards.
'Artificial intelligence can solve many social problems. We have done a lot with Pratt & Whitney.' Li Jiang said that through artificial intelligence + GPS detection, the soil environment can be better identified and the food situation can be predicted. There is also online medical care, because The allocation of medical resources is not so uniform. There are very few large-scale hospitals in the third and fourth-tier cities. Remote diagnosis of some intractable diseases can be done through artificial intelligence.
Take a picture of your retina. With artificial intelligence, you can immediately see if you have diabetes, your physical condition, etc. These are currently in use and are playing a large role in many areas. ' Li Jiang It is believed that the era of weak artificial intelligence that uses artificial intelligence to assist human decision-making is still in the era of strong artificial intelligence. In the next 18 months, artificial intelligence will usher in breakthrough progress.
2. Japan: Rational view of AI myth;
Ten years ago, the third wave of artificial intelligence (AI) has just begun; and now, the AI myth has become overwhelming, becoming the focus of media hype. From the perspective of AI's nearly 60 years of development process, the previous two climaxes are Because it has not been widely used in the real world, it has finally fallen into a trough. This AI boom, with deep learning as an opportunity, shows the prospects that can be widely used and created many mythical miracles. But will the myths be realized? A reporter from Science and Technology Daily recently interviewed Dr. Yang Kezhao, a senior researcher at the Japan Institute of Structural Planning.
At least for now, AI is not 'magic'
He is also a member of the Bridge Health Monitoring Committee of the Japan Civil Society. He is a member of the blast-resistant and impact-resistant design committee and has long served as the president of the China Association of Science and Technology in Japan. When he embarked on the development of an intelligent bridge detection and monitoring system more than a decade ago, AI has not yet reached. To civil construction industry.
Dr. Yang believes that today's AI is dependent on a very large amount of data. The technology implemented through machine learning and deep learning algorithms is only a black boxed thinking tool made from data. It is not omnipotent. Learning methods Breakthrough achieves higher prediction accuracy. As for how to achieve high precision, it is the result of high-density, high-precision interpolation of super-large amounts of data in the high-dimensional feature space. Therefore, it is necessary to use artificial intelligence to obtain accurate results. As a result, the premise is to have a large amount of data that can guarantee high-quality interpolation calculations, and to be able to accurately set the feature amount of the data. To be precise, the result obtained by the current AI is a correlation, not a causal relationship. Therefore, the AI At least for now it's not a magical tool.
Misunderstanding, hype and worship
Dr. Yang said that people’s biggest misunderstanding is to confuse the content that AI has already implemented, the content that will be implemented, and the content that is unlikely to be implemented. In fact, if you do not understand the practical capabilities of AI, you may do it. The ignorance of judgment and planning leads to failure. A common failure is to use AI but it is not possible to spend money as expected; the other is that although powerful AI tools are used, expectations are too high. By satisfying the results, we finally give up and lose opportunities for innovation. Those who have these two types of failure experience may instead strongly oppose the promotion of AI in the future and become a drag on the development of AI.
He believes that in order to make realistic judgments, we must first understand what AI can do. It is very important that we can do what we can and can do and what we can do in the future.
Secondly, on the technical level, the biggest topic of machine learning is the design of feature quantities. Determining the feature quantity manually depends on the familiarity of the setter with the object to be implemented. Deep learning solves this problem and achieves automatic extraction of feature quantities. The breakthrough only contributed to the third wave of AI. Now that AI's pattern recognition level is higher than that of humans, such as machines that beat world champions, etc., it has caused people to worship AI. In fact, AI is identifying objects and sequences. Competencies are far from humans.
In addition, it is difficult for AI to understand popularly as a major cause of worship. The more AI's performance improves, the harder it is to explain popularly, and the process is gradually becoming black-boxed, turning into black magic, causing misunderstandings. One of the most important human actions is through association. Forming inference stories and so on, decision making and intuitive cognition are more linear, and it is easier for high-dimensional non-linear AI to produce worship phenomenon.
Master the data and master the future of AI industry
Avoiding the above-mentioned misunderstandings can more objectively analyze and predict the future of AI development. Dr. Yang believes that the key to the future development of AI industry is the collection and accumulation of data. Whoever masters the data will grasp the future of AI industry. For the third wave of AI, Japanese political and economic circles have not waited.
For the application of AI in the intelligent detection and monitoring system for construction industry, Dr. Yang said that in the future, the damage degree identification of buildings, the explanation of damage causes and predictions, monitoring monitoring and detection, and construction management, etc., will all make breakthroughs in the introduction of AI. Civil engineering circles in Japan predict that from 2050 to 2060, the civil engineering industry can realize the automatic detection and automatic repair of structural damage, automatically build houses in the required places, and intelligentize the entire neighborhood.
If intelligentization of neighborhoods is achieved, then the construction engineer is not unemployed? Answers to the reporter of Science and Technology Daily, Dr. Yang will not answer. After realizing the intelligence of the neighborhood, the engineer's work can focus on the interactive interface, reducing the cost of AI calculation. On the other hand, it is responsible for decision-making responsibilities under very few data conditions.
According to data from the Japan Civil Society Society, the number of workers in the construction industry in 2014 was 3.43 million, and it is expected to be reduced to 2.16 million by 2025. The Japanese government put forward a target at the future investment conference in September 2016, and will build the construction industry by 2025. Labor productivity increased by 20%. (Technology Daily, Tokyo, April 12)
3. Director of the Huawei Terminal Innovation Center: 5G+AI is a twin-turbo that promotes the Internet of Things;
After each trainee reporter Li Shiyun reporter Xie Zhenyu, each edited by Wen Duo
On April 14th, 'King Rong Zhihui Road 2018 China Internet Summit Forum' was held in Chengdu. An investment opportunity analysis expert, Softbank Group Advisor Shimada At the meeting: 'The Internet of Things (IOT) will be the largest in human history. Scale project. '
In the past five years, China’s Internet of Things has developed rapidly. Some people think that the age of the Internet of Things belongs to the era of China.
'The future has come, the entire 5G and AI is to promote the twin-turbo industry of the Internet of Things.' Huawei's terminal strategy and innovation center Ou Peng said at the meeting, Huawei began its 5G investment and construction in 2009.
'What is the problem solved by the Internet of Things? The solution to this problem is time and space. It is a problem of efficiency. The Internet of Things is everywhere, enabling companies to connect even if they are connected. The efficiency of integration is enhanced.' This explains the Internet of Things.
To realize the interconnection of all things, 5G and AI are indispensable. Ou Peng said, 'The Internet of Things (IOT) industry, both IOT's terminals, IOT applications and services. 5G words, is equivalent to the main line below the computer, the entire main line Widening, thickening, IOT's terminals will run more smoothly. And AI's capabilities are processing and interaction. This piece must be intelligent. In the entire Internet of Things era, AI can quickly change to enhance the entire Internet of things intelligence. s level' .
According to Ge Zetian, Director of the Wireless Broadband and Smart Home Product Management Department of Huawei Terminal Co., Ltd., the reason why the Internet of Things has not yet been realized is because the infrastructure conditions have not been met, but the arrival of 5G has enabled the Internet of Things to meet the conditions and accelerate the entire Internet of Things. Layout.
What problems can 5G specifically solve? Ou Peng believes that first, if you buy 8K TV, you can't watch 8K movies by previous technology, but 5G can provide pipeline protection for the entire 4K, 8K, so that ordinary users can enjoy 8K movies. Second, 5G will allow traditional mobile VR and PC VR to go to VR in the cloud to achieve no VR and AR experience. This type of VR called cloud VR technology will be very large in the future. A 5G industry. The third is wireless ultra-broadband into the home. The fourth is automatic driving and telemedicine.
Ge Zetian introduced: 'In March of this year, Huawei released a 5G terminal chip. Now the discussion of 5G is very hot. In fact, 5G must have the terminal's carrying capacity. ' In this regard, Ou Peng also mentioned: 'The ability of the cloud is just No, there is also the ability to include the chip. With very high safety requirements, the requirements for the entire chip are also very high.
Based on the NPU on the chip, the first application scenario of AI can be realized, namely smart text image recognition. 'It can automatically recognize text and can be translated by taking a picture.' Oppon explained that this is the most basic, AI should also implement auditory and visual application scenarios, as well as related services such as car networking, smart home travel, etc.—for example, when you want to sleep, the appliance will automatically turn off the lights when you sense that you are lying down.
"Huawei's strategy has been inseparable from the IOT's all-round interconnection." Ge Zetian said at the meeting. During the meeting, Ou Peng told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that Huawei's investment in the research and development of 5G and AI technology exceeded 100 billion.
4. Shang Tang Technology C round of strategic financing of 600 million US dollars to accelerate the process of AI platform strategy;
SenseTime, a unicorn producer from the Science Park, announced that it has successfully raised US$600 million after B financing last year for US$410 million, once again setting a global record of financing in the field of artificial intelligence and becoming the world’s most valuable Artificial intelligence platform company.
Shang Tang stated that C-round financing was led by Alibaba Group, Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek, Suning and other investment institutions and strategic partners and investment. Business Tangzhi, attracting outstanding investors to invest in shares, is the development of Shangtang’s artificial intelligence platform. An important part of this round of investors, this round of investors will be able to bring comprehensive strategic value to Shangtang, provide a richer application scenario for Shangtang, and more powerful overseas distribution capabilities, accelerate the landing of AI technology.
Ali expects to inspire more innovation and create value for society
Cai Chongxin, executive vice president of Alibaba Group, stated that Shangtang Technology actively expands the field of artificial intelligence, especially in deep learning and visual computing, and its scientific research capabilities are impressive. Cai Chongxin also believes that Alibaba’s investment in artificial intelligence is its The business brings significant benefits. It is expected that the strategic cooperation with Shangtang Technology will inspire more innovation and create value for the society.
As for Shang Tang co-founder, CEO Xu Lizhi, as the world’s leading artificial intelligence platform company, this round of financing will further strengthen the company’s leading position in the field of artificial intelligence, strengthen the upstream and downstream industrial chain, and deepen Shangtang's role in the artificial intelligence industry. Chain Layout. Unwire HK
5. Behind Shang Hu’s huge financing: Start and landing for new retail;
Compared with the traditional security and financial fields, the new retail scene application further narrows the distance between AI unicorns and money and buyers.
The AI Unicorn company Shang Tang Technology has just announced the completion of a $600 million Series C round of financing led by Alibaba Group, Suning's participation, and CB Insights has given a current valuation of $3 billion.
After following the plan and despising it, Shang Tang has also become a new target of “Ali” capital in the field of computer vision, and it has achieved the highest level in history – RMB 1.5 billion (according to the “Financial” magazine’s previous report). .
The combination of "Alibaba + Shangtang + Suning" is seen as a powerful team that undermines the new retail scene under the line, and heralds a new trend in the commercialization of computer vision technology - starting and landing new retail scenes.
This will be another new battlefield for AI after security and finance, and the new field is of great excitement. Investors commented that "it is closer to the buyer and closer to the money."
Why Ali: New Retail Layout
It is not surprising that Ali's stockholders are decent. Compared with Tencent, Ali's layout in the AI field, especially in computer vision, has been more positive.
In 2014 and 2017, Ant Financial Team led the B-wheel and C+ round of Contempt Technology. In addition, the Yunfeng Fund, which Ma Yun personally held shares in, led the investment in B-round of Yitu Technology in 2016.
The reason why “Ali” is emphasized is that no matter which track is used in the Internet field, the startup company has basically gone through A-round, B-round, C-round... and will all enter the “BAT round” – it will inevitably be Faced with the "two horses" dispute.
But this time, Tencent’s actions were relatively conservative. Geek Park consulted several investment field professionals on this issue. They gave this analysis:
First of all, Tencent's main battlefield is not in the computer vision and new retail areas. It can be seen from the AI business setup diagram published by Tencent that Tencent AI's application scenarios mainly focus on content AI, social AI, game AI and platform tools AI.
In addition, while Ma Yun vigorously marches into and lays out the new retail area under the line, in addition to vigorously taking shares in mergers and acquisitions, it also includes incubation and self-doping (Tmall Unmanned Store). Tencent still focuses on business investment and Dora. Shang Jingdong together.
In yesterday's Tencent Internet+ event, Ma Huateng further explained Tencent's idea of new retail sales. “We don't want to be retail and we want to become a digital assistant for the retail industry.”
Ma Huateng stressed that Tencent "has no intention of opening a store," but is eager to "incubate" Tencent’s currently mastered technology in the field of smart retail sales and applications.
Secondly, Tencent’s technical background is more important than Ali. Ali itself is mainly model-driven, and Tencent is more technology- and product-driven. From the perspective of Tencent’s and Ali’s respective AI research institutes’ development models and personnel, Tencent’s AI’s With more understanding, technical strength may be stronger.
Currently, Ali's strength in the field of artificial intelligence is relatively weak. It is very important to invest in a scarcity company with platform capabilities to master its own intelligent ecology.
When it comes to ecological layout, the core element is still the “new retail” scenario. The essence of this topic is mainly “the fusion of offline online data”.
For Ali, holding major channels such as Taobao, Alipay, and being hungry, has been able to fully grasp the online (retail) data; Correspondingly, the offline data has become a short board that is urgently needed to make up for the current Ali.
At this stage, face recognition is the most important way to collect offline data, and Shangtang is considered as one of the best algorithm vendors. Therefore, Shangtang is one of the factors that contribute to this. Ali is also looking Zhong Shang Tang was able to help it better obtain offline data before joining Su Ning.
In fact, at the end of 2017, Shangtang had already settled in the offline store in Suning and provided its face recognition algorithm for its “no one” store. It has realized the unmanned flow and brushing of the entire process from entering stores, shopping, checkout, and going out. Face payment.
In Bloomberg's latest report, Xu Li, co-founder and CEO of Shang Tang Technology, revealed that Shang Tang is developing a service called "Viper" to analyze data from thousands of real-time camera sources.
At the same time, Xu Li revealed that Shang Tang will build at least five small supercomputing centers in the first-tier cities in the next year to promote Viper and other services. This business theme is basically consistent with the smart city strategy advocated by Alibaba Cloud. .
However, it is not known how much of this data is related to "off-line retailing," because the current security project with government and enterprises is still the main business of Shangtang.
Why Shang Tang: Approaching the Vertical Market's "Escape Rate"
According to the data released by CB Insights, for the reference of Shangtang, with a valuation of US$3 billion, the other two top-ranked companies in China’s “AI Four Little Dragons” are valued as follows: According to the figure, the valuation is US$2 billion. Worth one billion US dollars.
From the perspective of time dimension and industrialization experience, Shangtang, which was established in 2014, does not have an advantage. However, in fact, in less than four years, Shang Tang has been “competent from behind,” pulling in with other players. distance.
To a certain extent, Shang Tang’s employees are very familiar with the accidental world and compare them with entrepreneurial competitors, especially the appellation “AI Four Little Dragons.” In their view, their goals and visions are much greater—become a platform level. The artificial intelligence company, not only limited to a single computer vision technology.
In this regard, Xu Lihe and his teacher Tang Xiaoou, the founder of Shang Tang, had been clear when he was engaged in research at the Multimedia Lab of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and had elaborated on his early investor, IDG Niu Kuiguang. Also accepted such views and ideas.
Following, the official data on Shangtang characteristics facilitates us to more intuitively understand this company:
1) Since the establishment of the early Shang Tang, the monopoly strategy of talent has been used. To date, the team has recruited more than 150 doctors in computer vision related fields around the world. This is roughly a statistical analysis. This basically includes the major groups of talents in the AI field.
2) After getting B1 round of financing to survive the winter of capital, Shang Tang began to step up to invest in building a supercomputer center. Now he has more than 8000 GPUs. At the beginning of this year, he purchased another 100,000 yuan from Nvidia.
3) In the past three years, the average annual growth rate of Shangtang's revenue reached 400%. In 2017, the company achieved positive profitability and revenue was less than RMB 1 billion.
4) Shangtang serves more than 400 customers including Qualcomm, Honda, China Mobile, China UnionPay, China Netcom Information Office, Huawei, Xiaomi and other companies and government agencies.
5) Shangtang's business scope mainly covers security, smart phones, mobile internet, automotive and other industries. At the same time, education, new retail, airport, finance, building, operator market are its sprint into the industry, covering a total of more than 10 details. Vertical business line.
In simple terms, this is an AI startup that grew up with "Chinese speed."
Although the founding team had academic and laboratory backgrounds, its business model and trader's style were very "internetized." The "national team," which was established later in the year, is still yelling "Become an industry. To break through the slogan, Shang Tang has gradually established his "4+6" and "1+1+X" business model.
“4+6” refers to the scope of business mentioned above. “1+1+X” refers to the business model of “1 (basic research)+1 (industry integration)+X (industry partners)” to create Artificial intelligence platform. In addition, since its inception, Shang Tang has started to set up joint ventures with traditional companies in the industry to cut into the vertical market faster.
In the past two years, Shang Tang also actively conducted joint investment with local governments and well-known funds. The company also set up a special warfighting department within the company.
From the perspective of its external capital operation mode, Shangtang has gained its essence in the three capital operation modes of “investment, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures.” This is very rare for a startup with a technological background.
It seems that there are some radical business operation models. The founding team has its own set of interpretations.
Xu Li called it "escape speed."
At an awards ceremony at the beginning of 2018, Xu Li once said, “When you innovate fast enough, when you really can really combine innovation and industry, then you have a very efficient move forward. The speed of rushing, and this speed is called escaping speed in physics. After reaching this speed, we can get rid of gravity, happily swim in our industry, and subvert our industry."
The "gravity" behind this comes from the fact that the window period caused by the fast iteration of the algorithm is shortened.
According to statistics, in the past five years, the image recognition neural network has had a 350-fold improvement in complexity, especially in the last two years. The neural network for speech recognition is also complicated by 30 times.
Faced with such rapid algorithmic iteration speeds, it will not be too long for companies that are known for their algorithmic expertise and growth as their core competencies. After that, strong landing and commercialization capabilities are needed.
For this reason, Shang Tang invested money in the early stages of establishing a deep learning algorithm framework, two sets of core infrastructure such as the Supercomputer Center, and even started the laboratory of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Because the underlying infrastructure is firmly established, So it is possible to use AI to empower the industry," Xu Li once said.
Through this round of cooperation between Ali and Shang Tang, "AI Energizing Business" has finally reached the "new retail" category from the traditional starting point. Many people believe that since then, this will become a technology company and giant ecology. A combined reference template.
6. Another Bitcoin exchange was 'black' this time may be a prisoner
Finance Magnates reported on Friday (April 13) that Coinsecure, a cryptocurrency exchange in India, had stolen almost $3.5 million in Bitcoin, suspected of being insiders. The exchange suspended trading on Friday and cooperated with the police in a related investigation.
'Our Bitcoin fund was exposed and appeared to be moved to an address outside our control,' the company said in a statement.
However, Coinsecure admits that the system has not been attacked by the network, and the exchange will pay its customers for compensation.
Mohit Kalra, the company's founder and CEO, told the local media that he suspects that Amitabh Saxena, the chief security officer of the exchange, was guarding theft. He was the only high-level executive who had the exchange's main wallet private key.
Kalra said: 'Private keys should not be exposed to the Internet. It looks like an internal crime. We have shared this suspicion with the online investigation department and contacted experts to search for the source of hacking and lost bitcoins.'
He added: 'Since the private key was kept by Amitabh Saxena, we felt he was involved in this matter. His passport should be detained to prevent him from fleeing overseas.'
Coinsecure claims to be India’s leading Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange. It claims to have detected unauthorized system intrusions on Monday. This incident caused about 438 Bitcoin to be stolen, worth US$3.5 million.
In the previous few days, the Indian Central Bank just decided to prohibit banks from working with cryptocurrency exchanges.
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