Tianjin to set up USD16 billion fund for artificial intelligence (AI)
May-22-2018 By : fcccadmin
Tianjin plans to set up a CNY100 billion (USD15.7 billion) fund to spur development of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, in what is the latest and probably largest effort by a single Chinese city amid the country’s push to fulfill its ambition to become a world leader in AI by 2030. The AI industrial fund is part of Tianjin government’s grand plan to “speed up the development of the smart technology industry”, which includes a CNY10 billion smart manufacturing fund financed by the municipal government and a string of talent incentives – up to CNY2 million cash reward per person – to attract high-end tech talent.
The planned fund comes as competition heats up between China and the United States in dominance of AI technologies, which are vital to enable an array of emerging applications from talking robots to self-driving cars. Tianjin’s fund amount also dwarfs funding announced last month by the EU Commission, which said it would boost investment in AI by 70% to €1.5 billion (USD1.78 billion) between 2018 and 2020. The investment is expected to boost total private and public European investment in AI to at least €20 billion by 2020.
China’s goal is to develop itself into a key global AI innovation center and build an AI industry valued at more than CNY1 trillion by 2030, according to three-step development road map released by the Chinese government in 2017.
Local governments in China have been investing money and devising policies to spur AI development ever since the central government made AI a national priority. In January, Beijing municipality announced a plan to build a CNY13.8 billion AI development park, aiming to house up to 400 enterprises with an estimated annual output of CNY50 billion. At the end of last year Shanghai announced a plan to build a globally competitive AI industry with an output of CNY100 billion by 2020.
Besides investment funds in major cities, companies are also investing in AI. Chinese voice recognition company iFlyTek plans to raise up to CNY3.6 billion via a private placement to ramp up research and product development in an effort to maintain its “world-leading position in core artificial intelligence technologies”. The Shenzhen-listed iFlyTek said the proceeds will be used for further development of its so-called next generation cognitive technology, an AI speech open platform, smart service robots, as well as upgrading sales and services, and improving the company’s cash flow. The AI speech open platform alone will receive a total of CNY2.05 billion of investment. The fundraising comes six months after iFlyTek was tasked by the Chinese government to spearhead the country’s development in voice intelligence by building an “open innovation platform”, the South China Morning Post reports.
In November, the Chinese government said it would build four national AI open innovation platforms by relying on Alibaba Group Holding in smart city technologies, Baidu in self-driving technologies, Tencent Holdings in AI-enabled medical treatment, and iFlytek in voice-recognition technology, while China Mobile is building a large scale internet of things (IoT) network.
The second World Intelligence Congress was held in Tianjin last week.
Chinese start-ups pushing facial recognition technology
Feb-27-2018 By : fcccadmin
China’s goal of becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) is nowhere more manifested than in how facial recognition technology has become a part of daily life. Facial recognition systems, which are biometric computer applications that automatically identify an individual from a database of digital images, are now being used extensively in areas such as public security, financial services, transport, and retail across the country. The global facial recognition market is forecast to be worth USD6.5 billion by 2021, up from USD2.3 billion in 2016, according to the latest estimates from research company Technavio. The South China Morning Post listed five start-ups that are spurring further innovations in facial recognition systems:
DeepGlint: Founded in 2013, DeepGlint is an AI company based in Beijing that specializes in the field of computer vision, focused on the automatic extraction, analysis and understanding of useful information from a single image or sequence of images. Its technology is used to track and recognize people and vehicles by banks, museums and public security agencies. The company is exploring the application of its technology in driverless vehicles as well as robotic and smart medical systems.
Megvii: The Beijing-based company, which is also known as Face++, was established in 2011 by three Tsinghua University graduates. Its Face++ facial recognition software platform is recognized as the world’s largest, used by more than 300,000 developers in 150 countries. The technology platform is behind many popular applications implemented in China, including those from payments firm Alipay, mobile photo editing app provider Meitu, ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, computer maker Lenovo Group, smartphone supplier Xiaomi, China Merchants Bank and China Citic Bank. Megvii’s technology is also used by the Ministry of Public Security, which oversees a facial scan database of more than 1.3 billion people in China.
SenseTime Group: Based in the Hong Kong Science Park, SenseTime was founded in 2014 by a group of academics involved in artificial intelligence (AI) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The company became the city’s first hi-tech unicorn. It is currently valued at more than USD2 billion after Alibaba made a USD227 million investment in November last year. SenseTime has more than 400 customers and strategic partners.
Yitu Technology: Founded in 2012, Shanghai-based Yitu has gained wide recognition for its Dragonfly Eye System, a facial scan platform that can identify a person from a database of at least two billion people in a matter of seconds. The company last month opened its first international office in Singapore, where it plans to hire more than 50 researchers.
Zoloz: Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial paid an estimated USD100 million to take over EyeVerify months after the Kansas City, Missouri-based company reached a deal to integrate its Eyeprint ID into Alipay’s payments authentication system. That ID technology turns a selfie of a user’s eye into a biometric security key. In August last year, EyeVerify changed its name to Zoloz to reflect the company’s mobile-centric mission to fuse biometrics with authentication technology into a comprehensive platform. Zoloz, now a subsidiary of Ant Financial, claims to have more than 200 million users worldwide.
Chinese drone maker Ehang launches trial of flying taxis
By : fcccadmin
In Guangzhou earlier this month 40 people, including Deputy Mayor Wang Dong, took a ride in an autonomous flying taxi. The Ehang 184 drone flew the passengers on round trips of up to 15 kilometers, with some reaching the top speed of 130 km per hour. “This makes you feel like you have traveled into the future, like you’re in a sci-fi movie. But this is real,” Ehang’s Founder and Chief Executive Hu Huazhi said in a company video that showed footage of the flight tests. “It’s so easy and stable, the operation is very simple. I’ve flown so many helicopters, but nothing feels like this,” he added.
The successful manned flights of the Ehang 184 come as technology companies and governments seek new ways to optimize urban transport and mobility. Ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Didi, as well as Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, are testing autonomous driving technology which companies believe will improve safety on roads. Sharing autonomous cars could also eliminate the need for car ownership.
“Companies like Ehang and any form of mobility-on-demand, whether with wheels or without, is something that you’re liable to see experimented with as a way of getting away from the congestion problem in China’s densely populated urban areas,” said Bill Russo, Founder and Chief Executive at Shanghai-based strategy and investment advisory firm Automobility. “This is a three-dimensional world, we shouldn’t just be limited to traveling on the flat plane of the earth. Why not go vertical?”
To fly the Ehang drone, passengers input their flight path into the control system, tap a button and the drone will take them there. At present, the electric-powered flying taxi has a limited range, but Ehang said it is stable enough to fly in thunderstorms and even typhoon conditions. In the event that something goes awry, a human pilot in a control center can take over piloting of the drone remotely, the South China Morning Post reports.
The company does not yet have a concrete timeline for when its drones will be ready for public use, and is currently working on adding optional manual controls to allow passengers with piloting experience the choice to fly the vehicle manually. The fact that China is amenable to new ideas is proof that it is serious about solving some of its most entrenched problems, according to Russo. “We need a place in the world where you can dream big and hope to achieve something within a reasonable period of time, and more recently that place has been in China,” he said. “The lack of legacy in China lends itself to creating the future, as opposed to defending the past.”
China’s tech push likely to increase trade and security tensions with U.S. and Europe
Feb-13-2018 By : fcccadmin
China’s push to build technological knowledge through overseas acquisitions is likely to drive economic growth, but it will also heighten trade tensions with the U.S. and Europe over mounting security concerns. The China Dashboard report published by the Asia Society Policy Institute and Rhodium Group said that China’s policies have continued to foster an entrepreneurial environment to encourage tech breakthroughs. But advancing innovative technology with heavy state backing is likely to cause U.S. and European governments to upgrade national security reviews of Chinese investment.
The report cited the government’s recent roll-out of industrial policy plans for new energy vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI). Such efforts show that “China’s leaders are determined to boost the innovative capability of domestic firms in promising emerging technologies,” the report said. In November, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) urged Congress to step up its reviews of foreign investments, especially those by China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and sovereign wealth funds.
At its current pace, “China will catch up to the 2011–2014 levels of U.S. contribution” from innovative sectors to national economic growth in the quarters ahead, according to the China Dashboard report, based on data as of last year’s third quarter. At the quarter’s end, about 32.2% of industrial growth in China came from its innovative sectors, compared to 33.6% in the U.S. It was “evident” that innovation was the area where China continued to make the greatest progress, according to the report.
Ann Lee, author of Will China’s Economy Collapse? and a New York University Professor, said that “if the U.S. decides to go hardcore on China on security issues, it’s going to take China longer” to advance its innovative industry “despite its growing capability to develop home-grown innovations.” The U.S. government’s decisions to block a number of high-profile cross-border deals showed how difficult such acquisitions may be to complete, the South China Morning Post reports.
Private firms to play greater role in developing hi-tech global leading players
Nov-28-2017 By : fcccadmin
China’s private businesses – from internet service provider Tencent to carmaker Geely – are to play a greater role in the country’s top technology programs and backbone infrastructure projects as Beijing seeks to give fresh momentum to its “Made in China 2025” initiative, according to a joint policy directive by 16 Chinese ministries. In addition to adding energy to the government’s effort to comprehensively upgrade Chinese industry by tapping advanced technologies from artificial intelligence to robotics, the policy aims to “unleash private investment vitality”.
The assigning of a more prominent role to domestic private firms under the guidelines, led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), comes as the “Made in China 2025” plan raises concerns in the United States and European Union that China is putting pressure on foreign businesses to surrender their technology to continue operating there. Under the guidelines, private domestic companies are to set up government-supported, state-level laboratories as well as trying to develop “global leading players” in technology.
Private businesses also are to be encouraged to take part in core projects, opening up private investment in areas such as industrial control systems, industrial software, computer chips, sensors and cloud systems customized to fit specific industries and intelligent platforms. The government is also to allow more private players to enter the telecommunications sector, supporting private funding of technological research for both civil and military uses. A goal for China will be growing an army of “little giants” with specialities in one product or segment, the directive said.
Despite a lack of details, the guidelines send a strong signal that Beijing is ready to let its private sector share more and more of the state research budget. Moreover, the government is set to provide China’s private companies with help previously reserved for state-owned enterprises, the South China Morning Post reports.
“The private sector is the major power and vanguard for Made in China,” the government said in a statement.
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