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With the world transfixed on the 2016 US presidential election, a Chinese photo-editing app tapped into the mood by transforming the candidates’ serious faces into a rosy-cheek cartoon styles — and scored a global viral hit.
Face detection is key to the app’s success, automatically identifying key points of a face and then stretching and twisting them, adding virtual effects to make skewed yet recognizable – and sharable – caricatures.
The technology is part of visual recognition, a key subset of artificial intelligence (AI), at the forefront of the tech boom in China and excitement round the globe.
The US ranks top in terms of the number of AI enterprises, with 2,905 companies in total, about four times the number in China, according to an AI industry report released by Internet industry think tank Wuzhen Institute at the 2016 World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, east China’s Zhejiang Province.
But as one of the most dynamic economies in the world, China is powering forward with AI development and application. Experts expect the country to be a critical hub in the global development of AI, as the technology becomes a fundamental part of human life.
CGTN spoke with several innovative enterprises and experts in the AI industry to discover their insights and outlook for this fast-growing sector.
Tracking AI trends
The large Chinese market's passion for Internet-related trends has driven many enterprises and research institutions to devote themselves to finding new ways to apply AI technology.
Yin Qi, founder and CEO of Beijing-based startup Face ++, told CGTN that computer vision is the most widely used technology in the AI application portfolio.
Computer vision encompasses facial recognition, body recognition, optical character recognition and vehicle recognition. Such technology has been utilized in the finance and surveillance industries, for identification and security needs, Yin noted, and Chinese companies have taken a leading position in this field.
At the annual CeBit tech exhibition in Hanover, Germany in 2015, Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings, displayed the facial recognition tool “Smile to Pay”, which is supported by Face ++’s technology.
Face ++’s facial recognition technology was also utilized at the 2016 G20 Summit in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province to facilitate hotel check-in and monitor personnel flow.
Yin predicted that in the following three to five years, facial recognition technology will make the world a safer place by flagging up potential danger signs in advance.
Another popular application involves voice recognition and processing, which has improved the performance of voice assistants. Speech technology has particularly high potential in China, as it can act as a handy, time-saving replacement for typing Chinese characters on a tiny screen.
Voice interaction performs well on smartphones but needs improvement when applied to Internet of Things (IOT) products, Gao Shixing, CEO of Suzhou-based AiSpeech Co. Ltd., explained to CGTN.
His company offers speech recognition and interaction solutions for smart devices, including home appliances.
Gao said that in IOT and smart home scenarios, the main challenges are how to filter the noise, plus recognize and correct users’ oral mistakes.
AI's hardware advance
Boosted by growing technology assets and enhanced data, Chinese companies are promoting their products in a wide range of areas and extending their efforts into hardware.
Xiaoi Robot, a language-controlled virtual service robot developed by Shanghai Xiaoi Robot Technology Co. Ltd., has been used as a virtual service assistant in many fields, including banking, telecoms and public service.
China’s service robots marched ahead of overseas competitors because China jumped into the Internet era before diving into phone services, Zhu Pinpin, founder and CEO of Xiaoi, told CGTN.
Zhu Pinpin, founder and CEO of Shanghai Xiaoi Robot Technology Co. Ltd.
Smart device is another area which Chinese AI enterprises are exploring. Beijing-based Mobvoi Inc. started its business with an emphasis on voice search, but now produces smart watches and car-connected devices in cooperation with Volkswagen.
“The smart watch is definitely a unique platform, very promising. But connected cars and smart homes, these are all areas where innovation can happen,” Lin Yili, product VP of Mobvoi, told CGTN on the sidelines of the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen.
Must AI companies deal in both software and hardware? Lin argued that to offer good products, AI companies have to integrate and master core technologies by themselves in a bid to interact with users and gather data.
Zhu from Xiaoi agreed, and pointed out that in addition to algorithms, AI companies also need enough users to collect data and further improve their products.
AI devices currently in use linger in the early stages of human-machine interaction and machine automation. But in the future, machines will learn and make decisions independently, Wang Feiyue, director of the State Key Lab for Management and Control of Complex Systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told CGTN.
Different from amassing data in the manner of traditional statistics, machine learning (ML), a way of making computers program themselves after gobbling up vast quantities of data, has opened new opportunities for the AI industry.
According to a definition from MIT Tech Review, ML involves feeding data to a large network of simulated neurons, which then gradually learn to recognize abstract patterns in that input.
Deep learning, a leading ML approach, is an overturning point and a better imitation of the human brain, a general-purpose experience-based learning system, said Yin from Face ++.
Chinese Internet giants have entered the AI race -- and decided ML is a baton that must be grasped.
For example, Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings Ltd., the company behind the hugely successfully mobile app WeChat, which has more than 800 million active users, has launched its third generation of Angel, its high-performance machine learning computing platform. It plans to open-source it in the future.
Angel is positioned to improve ML efficiency, and Tencent has already made use of the platform in its products and services, including personalized news and video recommendations, the company told CGTN.
Changes destined to happen
As AI develops to be increasingly smart with astonishing self-learning abilities, it may seem that humans have no shot at competing – mirroring the despair of Ke Jie, the best human weiqi player in the world, as he was outclassed by AlphaGo in Wuzhen.
The current utilization of AI has already caused concern about job losses across a range of industries, but experts and entrepreneurs are steadfastly optimistic about the future.
Indeed, some basic jobs, such as online client services, have already been partially taken over by AI. But the changes indicate human progress, just as has happened repeatedly through history, Zhu contended.
AI will bring a redistribution of human’s wisdom and time and enable humans to be more creative and productive, Zhang Peng, founder and CEO of startup community GeekPark, argued when talking to CGTN.
AI will affect all industries and humans will be the beneficiaries, according to Wang. For example, with enough data, AI can achieve better transportation planning for crowded cities by effectively analyzing and testing every solution to achieve the limit of optimization, he added.
For China, there is no choice but to wholeheartedly embrace the AI era, Wang stressed.
And China has done just that. South China Morning Post labels AI as a “must have” in any self-respecting Chinese investment portfolio. And the Chinese government has included AI in its 2030 tech innovation plan.
The future is already happening.
(CGTN)
