(Economic Watch) Big Model Boom China focuses on building an open source ecosystem

Beijing, 5 May (ZXS) -- China has occupied a place in the global large-scale model competition. From the reporter at the 29 Zhongguancun Forum, it was learned that building an open source ecosystem has become the choice of the Chinese industry.

Wang Huaimin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Open Source Development Committee of the China Computer Society, quoted statistics that there are about 5 large models with more than 45 billion parameters in the world in the past five years, of which 32 appear in the United States, 9 appear in China, and 4 appear in Europe.

The development prospects of large models are widely optimistic. Wang Huaimin said that the development of large models in the field of artificial intelligence is very rapid, and people hope that large models can become an important technical way for general artificial intelligence to make breakthroughs.

Mei Jianping, deputy director and first-level inspector of the High-tech Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that emerging technologies represented by pre-trained large models, AI (artificial intelligence) and computing power are triggering a new round of AI innovation, creating a good artificial intelligence development ecology, which can inject strong impetus and provide solid support for the development of the real economy and digital economy.

China is deploying a new generation of artificial intelligence in many ways. The Ministry of Science and Technology launched the implementation of the major project of "New Generation Artificial Intelligence" in Science and Technology Innovation 2030, promoted the construction of the national public computing power platform and the China computing power network, promoted the sharing and circulation of data, computing power, algorithms and other elements, and built a computing power base.

In May, Beijing launched the "Beijing General Artificial Intelligence Industry Innovation Partnership Program" to promote the development and application of artificial intelligence models and empower the digital and intelligent transformation of thousands of industries.

With the joint efforts of all parties, the rapid development of Chinese intelligence has initially formed an application-oriented, scenario-driven, and technology-supported artificial intelligence development ecology. However, further development is still needed in terms of underlying algorithms, key software and hardware, and ecosystems.

Looking at the world, to build an artificial intelligence ecosystem, there are two routes: open source and closed source. Wang Huaimin introduced that the big model has formed a basic pattern of simultaneous promotion of open source mode and pre-research mode due to its uncertainty. Of the 32 large models in the United States, 15 are open source. Five of China's 9 big models are open source.

Open source has become the mainstream model since the Internet era. After the release of ChatGPT2, OpenAI implemented closed-source development for ChatGPT.

For the construction of artificial intelligence ecology, Wu Zhaohui, vice minister of science and technology, said at the 2023 Zhongguancun Forum that China adheres to open source collaboration, strengthens continuous innovation in large model technology, collaboratively solves common problems such as transparency and stability, further promotes the open sharing of computing power resources and digital resources, and accelerates the formation of an industrial ecology of large models.

Huang Tiejun, secretary-general of the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance, said that after the recent big model boom swept the world, the vitality of open source has been further stimulated, and open source is becoming the leading force shaping the future development of artificial intelligence. After more than 30 years of development, China's open source must have entered a new stage of development.

In 2017, China released the "New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan", which wrote open source and openness as basic principles into the plan. In the major project of scientific and technological innovation 2030 new generation artificial intelligence, it is proposed to guide and encourage national projects to support the open sharing of R&D results, rely on artificial intelligence leading enterprises to build a new generation of national artificial intelligence open innovation platform, build an open ecology, and promote the development of the industry.

Chinese technology companies such as Baidu, Huawei, Alibaba, and iFLYTEK are actively engaged in the work of opening up the framework and model of artificial intelligence. Zhou Bin, CTO of Huawei's Ascend computing business, said that Huawei has built capabilities based on Ascend's underlying software and hardware to support an open-source AI framework.

Wang Huaimin said that China's development of open source ecology should create star projects such as ChatGPT, which can attract more developers and have the dominance of defining users. After the establishment of a new platform for artificial intelligence open source innovation, it can effectively support the development of AI chips, intelligent computing centers, supercomputing centers, etc., reflecting the influence and competitiveness in this field. (End)