ANN/THE CHINA DAILY – Leading figures from China’s major Internet and technology firms advocated for the swift advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and the establishment of an open AI ecosystem during the Wuzhen Summit of the World Internet Conference (WIC).
The conference also underscored the importance of international collaboration in AI governance, considering it a crucial approach to effectively leverage AI for the benefit of humanity amid escalating uncertainties. A session involving top executives from Baidu Inc, Alibaba Group and JD emphasised to foster a more open and collaborative AI ecosystem.
Alibaba Group Chief Executive Officer Wu Yongming said; “The key to developing AI is to create a strong infrastructure and an open ecosystem.
“AI and cloud computing will become Alibaba’s two-wheel drive for future underlying capabilities and the company will insist on building a more solid infrastructure base and a more open and prosperous AI ecosystem.” With around half of the country’s AI large models running on Alibaba Cloud, Wu said Alibaba will soon enable its large model with 72 billion parameters to be in open source, expected to become the largest open-source model in China.
Baidu Inc Chairman Robin Li emphasised that current large models and computing power cannot generate value themselves and the key is to use large models and other technologies to build a prosperous AI native ecosystem.
Recalling that some entrepreneurs are still buying chips and drivers to build large models from scratch, Li said it is a wrong direction to take and could lead to a huge waste of social resources.
Tencent Holdings Senior Vice-President Guo Kaitian said in a separate session that the company has developed technologies related to large models, including model algorithms, machine learning frameworks and AI infrastructure, all by itself.
“Tencent also pays more attention to the effectiveness of applying large AI models to real business scenarios,” Guo said.
Adding Tencent Cloud has offered more than 50 large model solutions to 10 major industries, including finance, cultural tourism, media, government affairs and education.
