China Economic Weekly reporter Song Jie | Shanghai Report
"Our three staff members have to receive inquiries from 30 spectators at the same time. I really didn’t expect this exhibition to be so hot." At the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai from July 6 to 8, the first Hong Kong pavilion enterprise — — Cao Xiaolei, founder of Health Shooting, told the reporter of China Economic Weekly.
Just as generative AI and artists performed together in the opening show of the conference, a new round of artificial intelligence represented by generative artificial intelligence and big model has accelerated its evolution, leading the scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution sweeping the world. Human beings are approaching a brand-new era of general artificial intelligence as never before, which has aroused common concern and heated discussion around the world.
This year’s conference attracted many international organizations, people from international academic circles and foreign-funded enterprises, including UNIDO, UNESCO, IJCAI, IEEE Metacosmic Standards Association, Microsoft, Google, Intel, NVIDIA, OpenAI and so on. According to reports, the conference docked 210 upstream and downstream enterprises, reached an intentional purchase amount of 11 billion yuan, and promoted the signing of 32 major industrial projects with a total investment of 28.8 billion yuan.
The reporter of China Economic Weekly saw at the conference site that over 400 exhibitors displayed scientific and technological achievements in the fields of large models, chips, robots and intelligent driving in the main exhibition area of 50,000 square meters of the Expo Exhibition Hall, and a large number of products integrating cutting-edge AI technology appeared, bringing a unique "talent show" to the audience.
Fourier universal humanoid robot performed at the opening ceremony.
The Lite3 laser version robot attracted the audience’s attention.
Robots! Intelligent application scenarios generate the future
Robots are known as "the jewel at the top of the manufacturing crown". More than 20 robots were unveiled at this year’s conference, and many of them were the first shows, including a biped robot equipped with large model dialogue ability, a Tesla humanoid robot, a minimally invasive surgical robot, a U.S. UAV V4, a robot dog from Iflytek, and a quadruped robot from Yun Shenchu.
Elon musk, CEO of Tesla, who attended the World Artificial Intelligence Conference via video link, said that the computing power of robots is much stronger than that of human beings, and the ratio of robots to humans will exceed 1∶1 or even greater in the future, which seems to have become a development trend. The positive impact of this is that mankind will enter an era of prosperity, because there will be many robots in the future, and their production efficiency will be much higher than that dominated by human beings.
He cited Tesla’s humanoid robot "Optimus" as an example, saying that it is smart enough to help human beings do some boring, repetitive and dangerous work, which human beings are unwilling to do.
At the opening ceremony, Fu Liye Intelligent released a newly developed universal humanoid robot GR-1 in the first show of major innovations. As a domestic self-developed universal humanoid robot product that can be commercialized, GR-1′ s technological breakthrough has attracted the attention of the industry.
GR-1 is 1.65 meters tall, weighs 55 kilograms, has 40 full-body degrees of freedom, the maximum peak torque of joint module can reach 300N·m, the walking speed can reach 5km/h, and the load is 50 kilograms. This robot has a highly bionic trunk configuration, anthropomorphic motion control, fast walking, agile obstacle avoidance, steady uphill and downhill, anti-impact interference and other motion functions, combined with cognitive intelligence, can cooperate with people to complete actions, and has great potential in many application scenarios such as industry, rehabilitation, home, scientific research and so on.
The person in charge of Fu Liye’s intelligence told the reporter of China Economic Weekly: "From special use to general use is the development trend of many technologies and products, which will greatly change the way people live and work. Humanoid robot is a good carrier, once it is generalized, it will meet the huge market demand, similar to the popularity of computers and electric vehicles. Our rehabilitation robot technology has achieved global leadership and landed in more than 40 countries and regions. General robots will continue their globalization strategy and actively expand overseas markets. "
With the theme of "Mobile Overcharging AI Space", Dark Horse Force, which exhibited for the first time, demonstrated its safe and efficient MPS intelligent mobile charging network and its innovative charging experience without awareness of the whole link. Two intelligent charging robots, G60 Xiaohei, demonstrated the whole process of non-inductive charging operation on the spot, and their cool design and flexible skills attracted many guests to stop and watch.
"In the past, new energy owners had to go to the parking lot to find charging piles. In many places, if they don’t pull out the charging gun after charging, they will face fines. The pain point we solved is that the owner doesn’t have to worry about charging, stop at any position in the parking lot, place an order with one button of the mobile phone, and the robot will come over and insert the charging gun into the charging port of your car, and pull it out after it is full; In large supermarkets, hospitals, transportation hubs and a private residential area where charging piles are hard to find, G60 Xiaohe can intelligently charge in the whole process, and complete the unmanned gun insertion and removal operation with high robustness (robustness is transliteration of mechanical engineering, which means "easy to use and durable") by the intelligent mechanical arm. " The field staff told the reporter of China Economic Weekly.
At the conference site, the Yun Shenchu Science and Technology booth attracted many people to stop filming. The reporter saw that the dexterous quadruped robot Ghost Lite3 demonstrated advanced sports ability and AI perception ability through dexterous jumping, voice interaction, human body following and navigation obstacle avoidance. The industrial robot X20 shows multi-sensor fusion gait planning by going up and down stairs steadily and naturally. According to the on-site staff, Lite3 introduced the industrial real-time control system with deep optimization kernel for the first time, which improved the overall computing power by nearly 3 times, climbed 15cm steps, almost the limit height that quadruped robots of the same size can complete, and also supported high jump, forward somersault and other difficult movements.
The US group drone used for delivery attracted the audience to stop.
The humanoid robot "Optimus" at Tesla booth
Hong Kong pavilion enterprises exhibiting for the first time — — Cao Xiaolei (middle), founder of Health Shooting, is introducing products to the audience.
Black Horse Force’s first MPS robot G60 Xiaohe made a stunning debut, attracting many viewers to stop and watch the experience.
Big model!
Empowering all walks of life to create diverse ecology
"Please write a poem to describe the future world of artificial intelligence?"
"Can wok cooking supplement iron?"
At the Iflytek booth, the iFLYTEK Spark Cognitive Model attracted many guests to stop. Everyone crowded around the big model to ask questions to it, and the big model quickly gave the answer, which became one of the hottest "punch points" in the exhibition.
At present, the big model of artificial intelligence pre-training is setting off a new round of intelligent upsurge, leading artificial intelligence from dedicated to universal. More than 30 large models, including Baidu Wenxin, ali tong Yi, Huawei Pangu, iFLYTEK Spark, and Shang Tang Ririxin, all appeared on the stage, showing that the large models can empower the diverse ecology of all walks of life.
For domestic large models, the key to sustainable security and development depends on the rapid development of domestic AI chips and supporting software. As Hu Guoping, senior vice president of Iflytek and director of the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Intelligence, said: "The domestic big model will have a big future only if it is based on the computing base of China’s independent innovation."
It is based on this background that during this conference, Huawei and Iflytek Big Model officially unveiled their cooperation and made every effort to build a new base of general intelligence in China.
Huawei Ascent Platform is one of the representative works of domestic independent computing power. Hu Guoping said: "The strong alliance between iFLYTEK Spark and Shengteng AI makes the domestic large-scale model architecture based on independent innovation of software and hardware."
According to reports, on the one hand, the iFLYTEK Spark Cognitive Model is based on the integrated design of training and reasoning, which can realize the technological breakthrough of thinning and low-precision quantification of the large model, effectively adapt to Ascending AI, and accelerate the industrial application and iteration of the large model; On the other hand, with Ascension AI as the core, software and hardware can be co-optimized, and a large model training cluster with concentrated computing power, superior performance, stable supply and data security can be built.
Hu Guoping believes that the large model is similar to the principle layer of the brain. They are all combined by over 100 billion neurons, receiving input stimuli and then generating intelligent output, and have similar intelligent excitation and operation mechanisms. "What the brain can do, the big model can also be realized. This indicates that the big model has unlimited potential. "
According to Hu Houkun, the rotating chairman of Huawei, the basic model is "reading thousands of books", while the industry model and scene model are "walking Wan Li Road".
He said, "From ‘ Read thousands of books ’ To ‘ Take Wan Li Road ’ There are still many challenges to be overcome. One of the key points is to fully match and integrate the knowledge of all walks of life with the big model. Huawei is working with partners in various industries. "
Li Xu, Chairman and CEO of Shangtang Technology, said: "The breakthrough of big model has set off a new round of technological revolution of artificial intelligence, followed by explosive growth of industrial demand, and brand-new application scenarios and application modes are rapidly emerging. Shang Tang hopes to pass ‘ Large model+large device ’ Continue to promote the leap-forward improvement of AI infrastructure capabilities, not only to create a basic model with stronger general capabilities, but also to further efficiently integrate professional knowledge in different vertical fields, build a professional large model with better understanding of the industry and more expertise, and fundamentally reduce the downstream application costs and thresholds of large models, so that the industrial value of large models can bloom in thousands of industries. "
With the rapid development of general artificial intelligence represented by big models, Shanghai, which is at the forefront of science and technology, is actively promoting the construction of an open and safe big model innovation ecology and building a world-class industrial cluster of artificial intelligence, and the innovation and development policy on big models will soon be introduced.
Zhang Ying, deputy director of Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Commission, said at the closing ceremony that Shanghai will implement three plans to solve the bottleneck of large-scale model development. Among them, the "Big Model Innovation Support Plan" will focus on supporting Shanghai innovators to develop internationally competitive big models, and will implement special awards to accelerate model iteration. The "Intelligent Computing Acceleration Plan" focuses on strengthening the construction of large-scale intelligent computing power and establishing a green channel. The "Demonstration Application Promotion Plan" will strengthen the deep application of large models in vertical fields such as intelligent manufacturing, education and teaching, technology and finance, design creativity and scientific intelligence, and create benchmarking scenarios.
(The pictures in the article were all taken by Song Jie, a reporter from China Economic Weekly.)
(This article was published in the 13th issue of China Economic Weekly in 2023).
Cover of the 13th issue of China Economic Weekly in 2023.
