On July 6, experts discussed in front of an intelligent generation painting about Shanghai. On the same day, the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference kicked off at the Shanghai World Expo Center. Xinhua news agency

　　The 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai from July 6 to 8. The theme of this conference is "Zhilian World Generates the Future". More than 400 exhibitors are exhibiting scientific and technological achievements in the fields of large models, chips, robots and intelligent driving in the main exhibition area of 50,000 square meters of the Expo Exhibition Hall. The number of exhibitors and exhibition area are the highest in history.

　　The conference launched forward-looking discussions on frontier topics such as big model, generative artificial intelligence, scientific intelligence, embodied intelligence and meta-universe, and looked forward to the new form of human civilization after "intellectual change". Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi Group, said a few years ago that the past decade is the era of mobile Internet, and the future is the era of intelligent interconnection of all things. "Whoever grasps AI will grasp the future." To this end, all countries and regions have been working on the AI ? ? track in recent years.

　　At present, how is the overall development of AI industry in China? What layouts are being made at the national and local levels? As the venue of WAIC, what position does Shanghai occupy?

　　Global manufacturers rush to the beach AI Blue Ocean

　　Since the beginning of this year, ChatGPT, a chat bot developed by OpenAI, has spread all over the world, which has triggered a wave of competition among technology giants. Baidu ERNIE Bot, Ali Tongyi Qianwen, Tencent Mixed Assistant, JD.COM ChatJD, and Huawei Pangu all came to the end, rushing to the vast blue ocean of artificial intelligence.

　　In fact, language recognition and human-computer interaction are just the tip of the iceberg in the application of AI technology. As Kai-Fu Lee, President and CEO of innovation works, said, AI technology will have a far-reaching impact on finance, manufacturing, education, film and television, entertainment, medical care and many other fields. In reality, artificial intelligence has already spread all over various production scenes, such as the automatic unmanned wharf in Qingdao, the unmanned locomotive in Fankou Mine in Shaoguan, and the research and development of AI innovative drugs in the field of smart medical care.

　　This time, WAIC in Shanghai showed us a broad picture of AI life: competing with AI robots to shoot and play chess, enjoying its creation of paintings and calligraphy on a round fan, and tasting its ground coffee … … It can be said that human beings are entering the "artificial intelligence era". It is believed that before long, it will become an indispensable necessity for human beings like computers, cars and even air and water.

　　It is precisely for this reason that all countries are striving for AI as a key industry with priority development. Among them, not only major economies such as the United States, Britain, the European Union, Japan and South Korea continue to strengthen policy guidance, increase support, and seize the commanding heights of artificial intelligence competition, but some small and medium-sized countries also go all out and even "All in AI".

　　For example, the Danish government released the National Strategy of Artificial Intelligence in March 2019, aiming to make Denmark get the maximum benefit from the huge potential of artificial intelligence. In November of that year, Singapore also released an 11-year national artificial intelligence strategy, and planned to invest 500 million Singapore dollars to promote the application of artificial intelligence technology in five major areas: transportation and logistics, smart cities, medical care, education and security, and strive to complete the intelligent upgrade of national infrastructure in 2030.

　　As for China, in terms of quantity and scale, it has become a big country of artificial intelligence. According to the calculation of China ICT Institute, by the end of 2022, there were 27,255 representative enterprises of artificial intelligence in the world and 4,227 enterprises in China, accounting for about 16% of the world. In 2022, the scale of artificial intelligence core industry in China reached 508 billion yuan, up 18% year-on-year. All these mean that China’s artificial intelligence industry has entered the first gradient in the world, and its industrial scale continues to expand, and its industrial ecology has taken shape.

　　On the other hand, as Mei Jianping, deputy director of the High-tech Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology and a first-class inspector, pointed out at the 2023 Zhongguancun Forum on Artificial Intelligence Open Ecological Construction, China still lags behind the world’s leading level in the fields of underlying algorithms, key software and hardware, and ecosystems. How to narrow this gap and whether we can overtake in corners in the AI field is related to the national movement, which requires the joint cooperation and joint efforts of the state and local governments, science and technology and industry.

　　Who is the first city in domestic AI industry?

　　2016 is known as "the first year of artificial intelligence". That year, AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence robot developed by Google’s team, defeated the Go champion twice, causing a sensation. In May of the same year, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments jointly issued the Implementation Plan of the Three-year Plan of Artificial Intelligence in internet plus, and in July of the following year, the Development Plan of a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence was released. As a result, the domestic AI industry gained more policy and financial support and began to enter the fast lane of development.

　　According to the statistics of China Artificial Intelligence Industry Picture Book, the number of artificial intelligence-related enterprises in China increased from 279,500 to 600,500 in just six years from 2016 to 2022, more than doubling.

　　In terms of geographical distribution, Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Beijing have obvious advantages as the three major gathering areas of domestic artificial intelligence industry. Among them, the number of artificial intelligence-related enterprises in Guangdong reached 130,000, ranking first in all provinces and cities, and the total amount was more than twice that of the second place. Since then, 56,582 companies in Jiangsu, 47,793 companies in Beijing, 42,785 companies in Zhejiang and 39,202 companies in Shanghai have formed the head camp of domestic AI industry together with Guangdong.

　　As far as the number of enterprises is concerned, in the past six years, the number of AI-related enterprises in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces has grown the fastest, with 95,701, 42,560 and 35,009 newly added respectively. In addition, Shandong, Anhui, Sichuan, Beijing, Shanghai and other provinces and cities have also added more than 20,000.

　　Among them, Beijing, where Baidu and ByteDance are located, said that it would be a "leading city" for artificial intelligence; Shanghai, with Microsoft, IBM, Infineon and other layouts, proposed to speed up the creation of artificial intelligence "Shanghai Highland"; Shenzhen, with Tencent and Huawei, is committed to becoming the "industrial highland" of artificial intelligence … … Then, in this fierce AI industry competition, who is currently leading temporarily, and who can finally reach the top of the first city of artificial intelligence?

　　In terms of the number of enterprises alone, from 2016 to now, the city with the largest number of new AI enterprises is Shenzhen, with 42,598, followed by Guangzhou (29,922) and Beijing (21,483). Therefore, Shenzhen has become the first city in the national artificial intelligence "density" with the total number of 63,800 AI-related enterprises. However, the advantages of Shenzhen are mainly concentrated in the downstream of the AI industrial chain. Although the scale and innovation of the industrial chain are leading the country, there are insufficient financing and growth.

　　According to the data of China Artificial Intelligence Industry Illustrated, during the period from 2016 to 2022, the top five cities in total financing amount of AI-related enterprises were: Beijing (6,716.182 billion), Shanghai (4,355.743 billion), Shenzhen (2,706.635 billion), Hangzhou (1,769.097 billion) and Nanjing (8,036.44).

　　Generally speaking, the AI industry in all parts of China is still in the stage of letting a hundred flowers blossom and competing with each other, and the winner has not yet been decided, which also gives opportunities for all localities to catch up and catch up with each other.

　　Shanghai’s AI industry ambition

　　Just the afternoon before the opening of the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, a high-level expert meeting on artificial intelligence strategy consultation attended by both the secretary of the municipal party committee and the mayor was held in Shanghai, which showed the importance attached to the future development of the AI industry and the "Shanghai as a universal artificial intelligence".

　　Subsequently, Wu Qing, member of the Standing Committee of Shanghai Municipal Committee and executive deputy mayor, attended the AI+ Industry-Finance Collaborative Development Forum in Wisdom and delivered a speech, which directly declared the ambition of Shanghai’s AI industry: Shanghai regards artificial intelligence as one of the three leading industries and accelerates the creation of artificial intelligence "Shanghai Highland".

　　Shanghai is emboldened to say so. At present, the number of AI enterprises above designated size in Shanghai has reached 350, almost doubling in the past five years; The output value reached more than 380 billion yuan, almost three times that of five years ago; The number of industrial talents has reached 230,000, accounting for about one-third of the country.

　　The achievement of these achievements is inseparable from Shanghai’s early planning and long-term layout of artificial intelligence. As early as 2017, Shanghai issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Development of a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence in this Municipality", which made AI a priority development strategy for Shanghai for the first time. Since then, the Implementation Measures for Accelerating the High-quality Development of Artificial Intelligence, the Action Plan for Building an Artificial Intelligence Shanghai Highland and Building a First-class Innovative Ecology (2019-2021) and the Tenth Five-Year Plan for the Development of Artificial Intelligence Industry in Shanghai have been successively formulated.

　　On September 22, 2022, the Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on Promoting the Development of Artificial Intelligence Industry was officially promulgated, which is also the first provincial-level local regulation in the field of artificial intelligence in China.

　　In terms of organizational guarantee, Shanghai has established a leading group for artificial intelligence industry work and a Shanghai artificial intelligence strategic consulting expert Committee; In terms of resource integration, Shanghai has built the country’s first pilot zone for innovative application of artificial intelligence and the national experimental zone for innovative development of new generation artificial intelligence; In terms of ecosystem, Shanghai has successively established the municipal artificial intelligence industry association, the global academic alliance of artificial intelligence in colleges and universities, the alliance of young AI scientists and other industry organizations.

　　At the same time, Shanghai attaches great importance to giving full play to its advantages as an international financial center and providing a steady stream of living water for the development of the AI industry. For example, the establishment of Shanghai artificial intelligence industry investment fund to promote the listing of a number of leading enterprises in science and technology innovation board; Give AI key technology projects no more than 30% of the project investment; Encourage private enterprises to invest in AI infrastructure and provide interest subsidies; Issue "AI computing vouchers", focusing on supporting &hellip, an enterprise that rents smart computing power and is used for core algorithm innovation and model development; …

　　At present, Shanghai’s artificial intelligence industry is in a "butterfly change period" from local exploration to overall promotion, from pilot application to empowerment, and from gathering wisdom to attracting talents. Firmly grasping the wave of new scientific and technological revolutions such as artificial intelligence will not only help to accelerate the leap-forward development of science and technology, industrial optimization and upgrading, and overall productivity jump in Shanghai, but also inject surging momentum into building a modern international metropolis with world influence.

In chengde mountain resort, the Lake Saihu is beautiful in winter, and an ice rink "hides" in the quiet and beautiful scenery. This ice rink was established spontaneously by local citizens who love ice and snow sports in the early years. Every winter, it attracts many sports teams and citizens to come for training and play, and becomes the punching place for "online celebrity". In recent years, Chengde City has made use of abundant ice and snow resources to develop the ice and snow industry and promote the development of ice and snow sports. This ice rink has been built as an important venue for the local ice and snow sports.

On January 27th, Calvin Automobile, a brand new energy commercial vehicle brand under BAIC Group, was officially released. In the future, Calvin Automobile will launch brand-new platform products around the two major technical routes of pure electricity and hydrogen fuel cells, accelerate the transformation of Beiqi Futian into new energy, and help the construction of the Capital Science and Technology Innovation Center.

Nearly 500 people including Zhi Xianwei, deputy secretary of Changping District Committee, Su Guobin, deputy director of Beijing Economic and Information Bureau, and Jiang Zili and Chang Rui, leaders of BAIC Group, attended the conference.

New positioning, activation and development of new kinetic energy

In recent years, BAIC Group has been based on the construction of the "four centers" in the capital, integrated into the "five-child linkage" development pattern, adhered to science and technology-driven development, and continuously promoted the top-level strategic deployment in the field of new energy. The "BLUE Plan" released in 2022 shows that BAIC will further promote comprehensive new energy utilization and intelligent networking, build a full range of green and low-carbon products for passenger cars and commercial vehicles, and fully realize peak carbon dioxide emissions in 2025, and fully decarbonize products and operate carbon neutrality in 2050.

At present, BAIC Group is accelerating the pace of comprehensive new energy strategy, based on the new energy technology innovation of "pure electricity+hybrid", promoting the new energy strategy to land in the whole value chain of technology, products and supply chain, and the genealogy of new energy products is gradually clear in the rapid adjustment of product structure. Among them, in the field of passenger cars, supported by two brands, Extreme Fox and Beijing, a new energy-based product system of BAIC’s own brand passenger cars is composed of pure electric power and hybrid power. In the field of commercial vehicles, Beiqi Foton has formed a full product matrix of commercial vehicles covering all technical routes of pure electricity, hybrid and hydrogen fuel, covering the whole scene.

In this context, Beiqi Foton has made clear that the new energy strategy is the first strategy for the company’s development. In 2022, BAIC Foton and Bosch, Yihuatong, BAIC Investment Co., Ltd. jointly invested and established Calvin Automobile, focusing on a brand-new pure electric and hydrogen fuel platform, positioning to create a low-carbon and zero-carbon industrial ecology, deeply cultivating the global zero-carbon heavy truck, and committed to becoming a unicorn enterprise in the field of new energy vehicles around the world. In the future, Calvin Automobile will introduce more high-quality industrial chain partners as investors, and promote the healthy development of the company through the asset-light strategy way with a more flexible shareholding structure.

At the press conference, Zhi Xianwei, Su Guobin, academicians of China Academy of Engineering, professors of Beijing Institute of Technology, Sun Fengchun, Tsinghua University and Zhang Xiliang, members of the National Committee of Experts on Climate Change, delivered speeches on the development of new energy automobile industry and the development trend of the industry at Beijing and district levels, respectively, and made suggestions on the development of Kawen automobile. Jiang Zili, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of BAIC Group, said that the development of Calvin Automobile will play an important role in supporting and promoting BAIC to implement the "double carbon" strategy and realize the transformation and upgrading of the commercial vehicle sector. The Group will fully support the development of BAIC Foton and Calvin Automobile in the field of new energy commercial vehicles.

Brand new and build a green ecosystem

After the establishment of Calvin Automobile, the company’s headquarters was settled in the Future Science City of Changping District. Over the past year or so, Calvin Automobile has introduced a large number of talents to build a new system around the technology, products, supply chain and brand of new energy commercial vehicles. At the press conference, Calvin Automobile released a brand-new brand strategy.

Calvin Automobile brand will focus on the bright future of new energy technology leadership, user value creation and sustainable development, take "making every kilometer better" as its brand mission, and devote itself to delivering intelligent vehicle services that exceed customers’ expectations, achieving the leading position in platform technology and new energy technology, developing a new eco-business model with high intelligence and building a sustainable green energy business system.

The brand logo of Calvin Automobile was also officially unveiled at the meeting. Among them, the Chinese word "Ka" is fully integrated with the image of leaves, which means that Kawen absorbs natural energy and empowers the industry to develop sustainably with low carbon through the transformation of new energy technology and scientific and technological ecology. English logo "CAVAN", the initial letter C stands for Carbon, which reflects the firm commitment to the development of low-carbon era; The suffix n stands for New Energy and Nature, which promotes the harmonious coexistence of green transportation and nature with new energy technology innovation; AVA is the symbol of Calvin’s "3A" spirit-Advanced new energy technology, Advanced design concept and Advanced quality.

At the same time, Calvin Automobile will build a sustainable zero-carbon ecosystem in the whole value chain with all walks of life through the creation of zero-carbon supply chain, zero-carbon factory and zero-carbon products from the three dimensions of "car-chain-circle". Qin Zhidong, general manager of Calvin Automobile, said that the company promised to achieve carbon neutrality in the whole value chain by 2040.

Brand-new products exceed expectations to meet demand

At present, Calvin Automobile has built the Master architecture technology through independent innovation, focusing on breakthroughs and innovations in core technologies such as vehicle platform architecture, electronic and electrical architecture, fuel cells, hydrogen storage systems, and Sanpower. The company also pioneered a cross-platform, extensible and highly heterogeneous centralized electronic and electrical architecture for commercial vehicles, developed an industry-leading high-power hydrogen fuel cell engine and a liquid hydrogen storage system focusing on trunk transportation, and independently developed cutting-edge new energy and intelligent technologies such as high-performance electric drive bridges.

At the product level, Kavan focuses on two technical routes, pure electric and hydrogen fuel cells. All products are developed in the forward direction, focusing on three platforms, namely VAN, light truck and heavy truck, to create products that meet the needs of urban logistics, medium and long-distance trunk logistics and other scenes, and meet the needs of users with the characteristics of light weight, low energy consumption, long battery life, intelligence and high comfort.

In addition, Calvin Automobile will optimize the supply chain construction, create a green supply chain, and actively explore the continuous innovation of business ecology to provide users with new energy solutions integrating vehicle, intelligent transportation capacity, charging facilities and energy management.

Qin Zhidong introduced that in the next three years, Calvin Automobile will launch three platform products in domestic and foreign markets, and this year will be the first to launch a highly intelligent pure electric VAN product.