AI juvenile chuangguan hard technology
Original title: AI juvenile hard technology
In March, 2023, a ranking released by Zeta Alpha, an American industry research institution, made many domestic artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners feel very excited. Among the top 100 cited AI papers in the world, China’s Defiance Technology, a unicorn enterprise founded by three Tsinghua "Yao Ban" students, ranked second only to the "popular star" of international artificial intelligence.
As early as before the artificial intelligence surge, they embarked on the journey of sending artificial intelligence technology from the laboratory to real life, and finally let China’s artificial intelligence industry stand on the world-class track.
Xueba juvenile "assembly number"
Where can I see the most Olympic gold medal winners in China? The answer may be-Defiance Science and Technology Research Institute of Jinyu Zhizao Workshop in Haidian District. Among the 500 researchers, there are more than 30 former gold medal winners of the International Informatics Olympiad, the acm international collegiate programming contest and the National Youth Informatics Olympiad.
The leader of the research institute is Yinqi. Inki, an 18-year-old boy, was admitted to Tsinghua University in 2006. After entering the school, he was selected to enter "Yao Ban".
"Half the talents in Tsinghua, half the talents in Tsinghua are in Yao Ban" —— Yao Ban, which won such praise from the outside world, is the computer science experimental class of Tsinghua School, founded by Academician Yao Qizhi, an American Turing Award winner and a world-famous computer scientist.
"World-class computer professionals must explore the most cutting-edge issues of global science and technology." In the class of "Yao Ban", Yinqi buried his life ambition to pursue cutting-edge technology diligently, and also met like-minded classmates Tang Wenbin and Yang Mu.
At that time, technological change was driving "the potential of starting a prairie fire" with "a spark" on the other side of the ocean. Facebook created by Zuckerberg has changed the traditional social model in the world, and Apple led by Jobs has launched the epoch-making electronic product iPhone.
Change is opportunity. In 2011, three Tsinghua "Xueba" jointly founded Defiance Technology, becoming the earliest artificial intelligence startup company in China. However, AI’s extremely attractive technical vision cannot directly bring the future to the front. Young geeks who are full of blood just broke into the society and were splashed with cold water. "Where is a technology startup company in China?" An investor left a word to Inch and Tang Wenbin, and the tone was beyond doubt.
The stereotype of investors was faced by China science and technology entrepreneurs more than ten years ago. At that time, most of the capital’s eager eyes on entrepreneurial projects focused on mobile Internet applications and business model innovation that could become popular overnight. There are few precedents for the success of technology entrepreneurship, and as for artificial intelligence, few people care.
Despite this, several young people firmly believe in their own judgment-mastering the underlying technology, they will embrace the "BRIC" that will shine sooner or later.
Yinqi and the team worked around the clock to train the visual recognition cloud platform with a billion-level algorithm every day through the "neuron-like deep learning algorithm" to accelerate the self-repair of the platform. Just like sea tactics, the more data systematically analyzed, the more accurate the calculation and identification results will be.
Only one year later, the false recognition rate of the contemptuous visual service platform Face++ has dropped to one in ten thousand, which is equivalent to growing into an 18-year-old adult’s brain in three years in the direction of visual recognition. By the second half of 2014, its recognition rate has reached 97.27%, and it has won the champion of three international evaluations, namely FDDB, 300-W and LFW, exceeding the recognition rate of Facebook of 97.25%. This is the catch-up of latecomers.
Patiently cross the "Death Valley"
In March 2016, Google’s artificial intelligence Go software AlphaGo beat the former world Go champion Li Shishi, and artificial intelligence became a household name overnight. Startups based on artificial intelligence technology have suddenly become hot. In 2017, Defiance Technology received $460 million in Series C financing.
However, the growing pains also follow-more players, more expensive research and development, but less technology.
Yinqi realized that after the early honeymoon period, the industry was entering the deep water area. The application of artificial intelligence technology will be the first to mature in the enterprise market, and the key battle for artificial intelligence start-ups to cross the "Valley of Death" will also start on this "battlefield". Attack the enterprise market!
However, compared with the consumer market with high outbreak and high growth, the enterprise market is a "bitter" business. No matter in the fields of finance, security or supply chain, every industry is occupied by giants who have been deeply cultivated for many years. For a group of young geeks, it is not easy to gnaw such "hard bones".
Shortly after entering the security industry, Tang Wenbin, as the company’s chief technology officer, found that many face recognition systems obtain information from the video shot by the front-end ordinary camera and then identify it, so it is difficult to store and transmit the video. "Why not directly make a smart cameras that can be identified immediately? It must be very valuable. "
Just do it. A high-end smart cameras comes out, which is not only equipped with a self-developed intelligent identification system, but also uses a sensor with leading performance, an expensive processor and even a seven-color shell.
However, when communicating with users, the team found that these products, which are cool enough in terms of technical indicators and appearance, did not meet the demand. Customers in an industry require power consumption within 3 watts, while their smart cameras consume nearly 18 watts. The cost of a piece of equipment of 10,000 yuan was even more unacceptable in the market environment at that time.
"Looking for nails with a hammer." This experience is a detour that many companies that started with technology have gone through. On the long March of technological entrepreneurship, there is never a shortcut, and the only way is to keep going.
Go to the nearest line of demand-
Standing in an e-commerce platform warehouse with a temperature of minus 10℃ and an area of 20,000 square meters, Tang Wenbin and Yinqi found that any air conditioner and heating can’t play any role here. In this environment, the total walking distance of the picking team can reach 30 to 40 kilometers at the end of the day. Is there any way to improve the efficiency of warehousing and logistics? Since then, in this large warehouse, more than 500 robots of three types of partners have been ignored and worked together, which has improved the efficiency of personnel by 40%.
Go to the "battlefield" where the demand for technology is the most urgent-
At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic broke out in COVID-19, and the emergency project team headed by Yinqi was set up on the first day of New Year’s Day. More than 100 people joined the research and development of artificial intelligence temperature measurement scheme. Ten days later, Ming Ji AI intelligent temperature measuring system was officially delivered for trial operation, and it was applied to Beijing’s major subways, supermarkets, hospitals and other scenes.
Nowadays, in more than 100 domestic cities, more than 10 countries and regions, ignoring urban Internet of Things solutions is always exerting wisdom for urban operation; In the smart warehouses of major enterprises, the smart pallet four-way car with small body and standard load of 1500 kg has been put into battle; Hundreds of millions of smart phones around the world have used the contemptuous device unlocking and computational photography solutions …
The technical vision of "using artificial intelligence to benefit the public" of young geeks 12 years ago has blossomed in fields, factories, mines, schools and communities.
Embrace the wave of hard technology entrepreneurship
An armored robot gradually learned human actions, language, creativity and even emotions in the process of long-term contact with human beings, and was finally recognized by human beings and integrated into human society. The science fiction film Machine Butler released in 1999 showed people the future life of robots and human beings. The intelligent and warm robots in the film are now accelerating into reality.
Yinqi said with emotion: "Technological changes will definitely roll forward, whether you join or not. If it can’t lead in core technology, China’s AI enterprises will gradually lose their position in global competition. "
On the road of technological exploration, he is not alone with contempt.
In 2014, Dai Wenyuan, who won the world championship in the ACM acm international collegiate programming contest, known as the "Computer Olympics Competition", and his mentor Professor Yang Qiang established the fourth paradigm. In 2016, Lou Tiancheng, who graduated from "Yao Ban" like Yinqi and was called "the leader of the building" by Tsinghua students because of his superior programming ability, and Peng Jun set up an autonomous driving company Xiaoma Zhixing. In the same year, Chen Tianshi and Chen Yunji, two brothers who graduated from the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China, founded the CAMBRIAN artificial intelligence chip company.
Yinqi, Chen Tianshi, Lou Tiancheng, Dai Wenyuan … In Beijing, the new generation of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs have emerged, and the wave of hard technology represented by artificial intelligence has also swept across the country with Beijing as the center. At present, Beijing, which has gathered nearly 30% of artificial intelligence enterprises in the country, has become a veritable "AI first city".
The innovation spiral of hard technology touches more than artificial intelligence. Relevant persons in charge of the Municipal Science and Technology Commission and Zhongguancun Management Committee observed that in the fields of high-tech and cutting-edge technologies such as new materials, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and precision medical care, a large number of technology entrepreneurs emerged, and a number of entrepreneurial enterprises with extremely high technological competitiveness and wide market application prospects rose strongly. On the road of exploring the mystery of the frontier of science and technology, the new generation of entrepreneurs will have more and more colleagues.
Beijing becomes the first city of AI.
By October 2022, there were 1,048 artificial intelligence core enterprises in Beijing, accounting for 29% of the total number of artificial intelligence enterprises in China, ranking first in the country, and more than 30 artificial intelligence unicorn enterprises have been born.
Twenty-four enterprises in China have been approved to build a new generation of national artificial intelligence open innovation platform, of which 10 enterprises are headquartered in Beijing.
There are more than 40,000 core technical talents in the field of artificial intelligence in Beijing, accounting for 60% of the country; The number of artificial intelligence papers published ranks first in the country; Among the top 100 institutions in the world in terms of the number of patents granted, there are 30 Beijing-based institutions.
The two major industries, medical health and information technology, are becoming the "twin engines" of Beijing’s sophisticated economy under the cross-integration of artificial intelligence platform technology. In 2022, the related output value of Beijing artificial intelligence industry is estimated to be about 227 billion yuan.
Hard technology is written into the five-year plan
On March 12, 2021, the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Outline of Long-term Goals in 2035 was officially released, in which it was specifically mentioned that it was necessary to enhance the characteristics of "hard technology" in science and technology innovation board and enhance the function of Growth Enterprise Market in serving growth-oriented innovative and entrepreneurial enterprises.
In November, 2021, the Plan for the Construction of Beijing International Science and Technology Innovation Center during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period also proposed to carry out pilot projects of equity investment and venture capital share transfer in depth to guide early investment, hard technology investment and long-term investment; Support the development of market-oriented and specialized hard technology incubators, promote the verification and maturation of scientific and technological achievements, and quickly realize transformation and industrialization.
Hard technology refers to the key core technology that needs long-term R&D investment, has a high technical threshold, is difficult to be copied and imitated, and has a significant supporting role for economic and social development. Hard technology is at the high end of the global value chain, which has the characteristics of high intellectual property barriers, high capital investment, high information intensity, high added value of products and high industrial control, and is an important symbol to measure a country’s core competitiveness. At present, the representative fields of hard technology include photoelectric chips, artificial intelligence, aerospace, biotechnology, information technology, new materials, new energy, intelligent manufacturing and so on.(Sun Qiru)