From “Deep Blue” to AlphaGo, and now to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence industry has experienced ups and downs for decades. ChatGPT has sparked heated discussions in the internet and global markets, accompanied by major signals from domestic and international internet giants such as Google, Meta, and Baidu, increasing public curiosity and expectations for “AI.”
What innovative applications and industrial transformations can artificial intelligence technologies, represented by ChatGPT, generate? How should China accelerate its pace in the AI race? Recently, a reporter from Guangming Daily interviewed Li Tao, a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Progressive Party, a member of the Henan Provincial Political Consultative Conference, and the founder of Qilin Hesheng Group (APUS).
Exploring the Four Steps for AI Implementation in China
If we turn back to 1956, the concept of artificial intelligence was first proposed at the summer academic symposium held at Dartmouth College. In 1957, economist Herbert Simon predicted that computers would defeat humans in chess matches within ten years. This prediction was realized in 1997 during the man-machine battle when “Deep Blue” defeated chess giant Garry Kasparov, marking an important milestone in the history of AI development.
Currently, artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a core technology leading a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation. Especially with the phenomenal application of ChatGPT, it demonstrates the enormous potential of general artificial intelligence to empower various industries. As a practitioner in the global mobile internet sector, Li Tao believes that the fourth wave of AI development, represented by ChatGPT, will drive disruptive social change through four major steps: “internal efficiency tools, evolution of existing products, AI + scene reshaping, and building new industrial engines.”
“Although it shows great potential, the public is still in a stage of ‘curiosity.’ Moreover, the packaging of these applications is not yet mature, and there is a significant threshold for ordinary people without relevant background knowledge. Therefore, it has not yet been popularized among the public,” said Li Tao.
In terms of AI assisting efficiency improvement and becoming a “productivity tool,” the true recognition of its value is found in the industrial sector. Artificial intelligence can already perform multiple tasks such as writing emails, creating content, translating, programming, and testing, and more companies are applying it as an efficiency tool in their daily work.
In the aspect of empowering existing products through platforms, many enterprises have seen the tremendous value of artificial intelligence in enhancing existing product capabilities. Especially in the internet sector, the “support” of AI technology significantly improves service convenience and provides richer and more exciting content. For example, it can become a “thoughtful assistant” for users, helping them handle daily chores; it can reduce media production costs, assisting novelists, news editors, cartoonists, photographers, composers, self-media authors, and the film industry to produce content at lower costs and faster speeds. This process represents the second stage of the AI development wave— the popularization period.
In reshaping AI scenarios, enterprises not only transform and empower existing products and scenarios but also innovate more new scenarios. For instance, AI can customize exam questions for students, and it can be imagined that with the assistance of AI video technology, there may be an “AI virtual teacher” in the future to guide students in answering questions; AI can design advertising video scripts, and in the future, it may be able to “shoot” these scripts into films; AI can write novels and develop subsequent plots based on interactions with users, leading to the possibility of open-world games where plot progression can interactively involve users…
In building new industrial engines, it is widely recognized in the industry that AI technology is the most influential and impactful technological wave since the emergence of internet technology, comparable to the advent of internet technology twenty years ago. If the development of the information technology industry over the past forty years is likened to the “manual era,” recent breakthroughs in AI technology will push the information technology industry into the “automation era.” This will also be an “industrial revolution” for the information technology industry.
Issues Such as Data Fragmentation, Insufficient Algorithms, and Weak Computing Power Cannot Be Ignored
According to statistics, there are over 1.09 million existing artificial intelligence-related enterprises in China. In key areas such as funding, talent, and underlying technology, the AI industry is working to fill gaps. Some sci-tech innovation enterprises have already developed capabilities for deep semantic understanding and generation across modalities and languages, possessing industry-level knowledge-enhanced large models, gradually delving into and laying out in areas such as chatbots, intelligent search, smart maps, smart cloud, autonomous driving, content creation, smart retail, and supply chain management.
“However, we are still in a critical period of accelerating the narrowing of the gap in the AI industry. Issues such as data fragmentation, insufficient algorithms, and weak computing power cannot be ignored,” said Li Tao.
Regarding data privacy and security issues, artificial intelligence requires large amounts of data for training and learning, but this data often contains users’ personal information, privacy, or copyright-protected content. If this data is accessed by unauthorized individuals or organizations, it may lead to privacy breaches and security issues.
In terms of generating fake news and information leaks, AI can produce realistic fake news and false information, which can have far-reaching impacts on politics, business, and society; additionally, AI may also be used to steal confidential information and sensitive data.
In terms of automated attacks and hacking behaviors, attackers can use machine learning to quickly scan and exploit network security vulnerabilities, thereby increasing cybersecurity risks.
Furthermore, the “correctness” of AI cannot be ignored. That is, ChatGPT occasionally generates some plausible but incorrect answers, which are difficult to detect unless the user is knowledgeable. In the future, AI may also produce a large amount of seemingly correct content, and the cost of identifying its errors is high.
Li Tao suggests that it is essential to ensure data protection and privacy, ensuring that copyright data is not publicly accessible. Internet companies also have a responsibility to protect users’ personal information from unauthorized access and utilization; automated security monitoring defenses should be strengthened, with enterprises and organizations utilizing AI and machine learning to identify and respond to security threats more quickly; continuous improvement of AI algorithms is necessary to ensure the correctness of output results; and multi-party participation should be encouraged to promote the joint governance of AI development by enterprises, governments, and society.
Building an AI Engine to Serve Global Users
The popularity of ChatGPT has brought keywords like “computing power, algorithms, data, and training” into the public eye. “Computing power is the foundation, algorithms are the core, and data is the raw material,” Li Tao explained. In the global AI R&D landscape, the “positioning battle” for applications such as chatbots, intelligent search, smart maps, smart cloud, autonomous driving, content creation, smart retail, and supply chain management has long been in motion, and industry reshuffling has become a foregone conclusion. More critically, the technological high ground is key to great power competition.
In China, artificial intelligence, as a frontier for the innovative development of the digital economy and big data industry, has already been elevated to the level of “national strategy.” Since the concept of “artificial intelligence” was included in the national “13th Five-Year Plan” in March 2016, China has placed great emphasis on the development of AI.
Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that in 2022, the scale of China’s core AI industry (added value) reached 508 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18%, with AI continuously empowering various fields of the economy and society, becoming an important driving force for technological leapfrogging, industrial optimization, and overall productivity enhancement.
“We must continue to solidify R&D technology, innovate application scenarios, uphold the mission of strategic technological strength, leverage the unique advantages of China’s sci-tech enterprises in application implementation and innovation, and promote the deep integration of AI with the economy and society through collaborative innovation among industry, academia, and research. In this world-class technological contest, we must create ‘digital products’ that lead the world and a ‘digital ecosystem’ that serves global users,” Li Tao believes. Currently, it is both a global competition in artificial intelligence and a collaborative exploration of unknown fields, “The world needs an AI engine that can serve global users, which is an opportunity for China and a developmental direction for all Chinese enterprises.”
Li Tao suggests that it is urgent to leverage China’s policy, funding, and other advantages to continuously strengthen top-level planning and design; to pay attention to the foundational technology and innovative research of AI, and accelerate the cultivation of core talents; to vigorously support the construction of new infrastructure required for ChatGPT alternative products, such as computing power, algorithms, and data, to promote the long-term, systematic, and innovative development of China’s technological advancement. “Respecting the rules, continuously accumulating, and looking globally is the necessary path for China’s AI industry to achieve a critical leap,” Li Tao said.
Editor: Yue Pei Editor: Li Jiaqi
Source: Guangming Daily Reporter: Li Zhengwei