Located at the estuary of the Yangtze River, Shanghai is uniquely located and has been known as the "Pearl of the Orient" for many years.
However, with the rapid development of the artificial intelligence industry in recent years, Shanghai, the Oriental Pearl, has also become a battleground for many AI companies.
The Oriental Pearl of AI
In the Internet era, Internet companies represented by the three giants of BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) have risen rapidly, and cities such as Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen have also fully enjoyed the various dividends brought by the Internet tide.
However, due to various reasons, Shanghai missed the development opportunity of the rise of the Internet. Therefore, when the tide of artificial intelligence began to sweep the world, and the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also proposed to accelerate the deep integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy, Shanghai began to do its best to promote the development of the artificial intelligence industry.
On November 14, 2017, Shanghai officially issued the implementation opinions on promoting the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence, proposing to fully implement the "Smart Shanghai (AI@SH)" action, and plan to achieve Shanghai's overall goal of becoming a national artificial intelligence development highland by 2020.
With the support and cultivation of relevant policies in Shanghai, coupled with the local developed capital market, a strong industrial and commercial foundation, a good business incubation environment, abundant universities and human resources, in just a few years, a large number of AI startup companies have begun to spring up like bamboo shoots. General rise in Shanghai. Speech and semantic recognition, intelligent manufacturing, intelligent robots, autonomous driving, brain science and brain-like intelligence, risk control safety, intelligent connected cars... AI companies covering various industries and application scenarios have now blossomed in Shanghai.
In September 2018, the first WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai, which also highlighted Shanghai's important position in the field of artificial intelligence in China.
Recently, the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference came to an end in Shanghai. At the closing ceremony of the conference, Ying Yongwei, deputy secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and mayor, SenseTime Group China Headquarters and Global R&D Headquarters, Fudan University-Shanghai Institute of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms, Tongji University-Shanghai Institute of Intelligence Science and Technology, Shanghai Jiaotong University -Four artificial intelligence industry institutions including Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute Co., Ltd. were unveiled. This also means that as a representative innovative enterprise in the field of artificial intelligence in China, SenseTime's Chinese headquarters and global R&D headquarters have officially settled in Shanghai.
The world's most valuable artificial intelligence innovation company
Why do people from the WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference to well-known AI innovation companies in the industry choose to settle in Shanghai? This naturally stems from Shanghai's great attraction to artificial intelligence companies and talents. As a strategic partner of the WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference, SenseTime, which has participated in the WAIC Conference for two consecutive years, can be said to empathize with this. The official establishment of SenseTime's China headquarters and global R&D headquarters in Shanghai highlights SenseTime's far-reaching AI strategy.
As a start-up company born in 2014, SenseTime has developed and established the world’s top deep learning platform and supercomputing center with the vision of “persist in originality and let AI lead human progress”, and launched face recognition and image A series of industry-leading artificial intelligence technologies such as recognition, text recognition, medical image recognition, video analysis, unmanned driving, remote sensing, etc., are among the top market shares in multiple vertical fields, and its business covers smart phones, Internet entertainment , Automobiles, smart cities, education, healthcare, retail, advertising, finance, real estate and many other industries.
As the world's leading artificial intelligence platform company, SenseTime has already cooperated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Honda, SNOW, Alibaba, Suning, China Mobile, OPPO, vivo in just a few years after its establishment. , Xiaomi, Weibo, Vanke, Sunac, and more than 700 world-renowned companies and institutions at home and abroad have established cooperation, and set up offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Singapore. Up to now, SenseTime has grown into the largest AI algorithm provider in Asia. At the same time, SenseTime is also the world's largest artificial intelligence innovation company in terms of total financing and valuation.
On September 20, 2018, Wang Zhigang, Minister of Science and Technology, awarded SenseTime the title of "A New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Open Innovation Platform for Intelligent Vision Country" and awarded the license.
Three elements of source innovation in the AI era
At the opening ceremony of this WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Professor Tang Xiaoou, founder of Shangtang Technology, delivered an opening speech on "AI+ From China", expounding the path of artificial intelligence innovation and development, and summarizing The core elements of “source innovation” in the era of AI big data.
Professor Tang Xiaoou said that with the rapid development of AI technology, AI has now begun to penetrate into each of us. The first word of artificial intelligence is "person". It is with top-level AI talents that first-class AI will come naturally, and China's AI industry is currently in need of a large number of innovative talents.
So how can China's AI industry change from "original" to "source innovation"? Tang Xiaoou said that the three points of the three-point water in the word "source" exactly represent the three core elements of "source innovation":
The first drop of water represents a good environment for innovation, protects intellectual property rights, respects originality, and allows original creators to feed themselves;
The second drop of water represents respect for talents and emphasis on talent training. As the saying goes, "Ten years of trees, 100 years of people", only by attaching great importance to "AI+education", can originals have a long history;
The third drop of water represents the full exchange of academics, and the spark of thought can be collided. AI needs to break through the boundaries between traditional industries, between academics and industries, and break through academic boundaries. AI needs everyone's exchanges and cooperation.
"With these three points, the flowing water at the source will naturally come." Tang Xiaoou concluded.
What kind of development concept should the AI industry have
During the current WAIC World Artificial Intelligence Conference, at the "Smart Renewal Momentum" theme forum held by SenseTime, Dr. Xu Li, co-founder and CEO of SenseTime, presented "Artificial Intelligence Development Concept: Inheritance and Innovation" Delivered a speech on the topic.
Through the analysis of ancient Chinese original design concepts such as Tiger Symbol, Zhaoyutu, Shangyang Fangsheng, Dr. Xu Li not only made the audience look back to the Warring States period more than two thousand years ago, but also recognized Shangtang Technology’s face. In combination with innovative artificial intelligence technologies such as verification and AR measurement, the future path of artificial intelligence innovation and development is vividly explained with a scientific and technological dialogue that has traveled through thousands of years of time and space. This speech not only disseminated AI knowledge in a profound and simple way, but also naturally and clearly conveyed SenseTime's industrial model of inheriting innovation and recreating the future at the logical level.
It is worth mentioning that Dr. Xu Li’s keynote speech also echoed the "Yuanchuang" story shared by Professor Tang Xiaoou at the WAIC opening ceremony, demonstrating the unified and consistent concept of SenseTime as a representative of artificial intelligence enterprises. Originality, acceptance of inheritance, combined with innovative progressive ideas, and unremitting efforts to create a good entrepreneurial environment and industry ecology.
"A special writer of "The New Yorker" once said: If New York is a city that never sleeps, then Shanghai doesn't even have the time to sit down." Dr. Xu Li said, "I want to say that now with AI technology The evolution of artificial intelligence will certainly create a higher level in Shanghai."
SenseTime's perfect demonstration of AI+ empowerment
With the vigorous development of AI technology, many traditional industries have also ushered in new opportunities for technological improvement and model optimization. The new business format empowered by AI+ contains huge development potential, and new economic development momentum supported by AI technology is also taking shape.
In the final session of the "Smart Renewal Kinetic Energy" theme forum, Professor Tang Xiaoou, the founder of Shangtang Technology, and the participating leaders of artificial intelligence industry, academia and research at home and abroad gathered together to "solve the problem" with "industry-university-research cooperation"—— "How AI empowers industrial upgrading" as the theme, published insights, talked about hot topics such as cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology, development trends, and industry applications, and launched a collision of ideas that broke the boundaries between industry and academics.
For AI companies, technology is the life of AI, but for corporate customers, it is the ultimate goal to commercialize AI and realize its value. Compared with many peers, SenseTime, which attaches great importance to basic research, not only has the strategic advantages based on insisting on original excellent technology and artificial intelligence platform, but also has the advantages of core talent reserve, patent accumulation, academic research capabilities and underlying R&D capabilities in the industry Accumulated, it is the company with the largest number of high-quality patents and the largest number of professional academic papers published in China, and has been working hard to promote cross-border and interdisciplinary academic research cooperation.
However, while obtaining numerous technology patents, SenseTime is not satisfied with just staying on the high ground of technology and academics, but actively uses AI technology to empower various industries and help customers, partners, and upstream and downstream ecological chains to innovate and develop China continues to maintain its source power and new kinetic energy, and finally allows AI technology to be implemented in rich application scenarios in all walks of life, and has yielded fruitful results in the "AI+" of one industry, industry, and enterprise.
These unique abilities of SenseTime have helped to promote the faster popularization and implementation of AI technology, and at the same time they have completed the commercialization of AI value closed loop, creating a complete AI value cycle from initial technology research and development to the final business path closure system. It can be predicted that after SenseTime's China headquarters and global R&D headquarters are settled in Shanghai, SenseTime's technological innovation and commercial accumulation in the AI field will further accelerate, and its future development space is incalculable.