Friday, November 9, 2018 CHINA DAILY
20 WORLD INTERNET CONFERENCE
An AI logistics vehicle, developed by ecommerce giant Alibaba Group, undergoes a road test in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. HE GUANG / FOR CHINA DAILY
A woman photographs a distribution vehicle, developed by MeituanDianping, a major Chinese provider of ondemand online services, displayed at an exhibition booth. CHENG GONG / FOR CHINA DAILY
Digital economy driving progressChina’s technology firms have seen explosive growth and new breakthroughs promises more to come
By OUYANG SHIJIA in Wuzhen, [email protected]
Government officials, business executives and experts hailed the role of the internet in empowering the digital economy, saying it is pivotal todriving economic and social development.
In a forum during the ongoing Fifth World Internet Conference, participants touted the internet as a key driving force for improving people’s lives and regarded the conference as a sharing and cooperation platform that helps promote technological innovation and industrial upgrading.
Held in Wuzhen of Zhejiangprovince, the event will last until Friday.
“As today’s most innovativeand dynamic sector, the internet is profoundly changing people’s production and daily lives,” Zhuang Rongwen, minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, said on Wednesday. “Turning the world into a connected global village, the internet is injecting fresh vigor into innovative development.”
According to Zhuang, moreefforts are needed to advance fundamental research, make breakthroughs in core technologies, foster the sustainable development of cuttingedge internet technologies, build up the industrial ecosystem, strengthen international cooperation, and build a digital world of mutual trust and governance.
Powered by blossoming artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other technologies, China is gradually transforming into a leading global internet powerhouse.
Statistics from the ChinaInternet Network InformationCenter show the rapid growth of the booming internet trend:China’s netizen population hit a new high, reaching 802 million by the end of June this year.
In 2017, the country’s digitaleconomy amounted to 27.2 trillion yuan ($3.9 trillion), ranking No 2 globally and accounting for 32.9 percent of national GDP, according to a recent report released by the Cyberspace Administration of China.
The achievement was lauded by Neil Shen, global managing partner of Sequoia Capital,
who said: “There was a time when Chinese startups were imitators and not innovators. Now the times have changed. Buoyed by the booming mobile internet in the last ten years, Chinese internet firms are now at the forefront in terms of innovation and leading business models, extending into more businesses than their foreign counterparts.”
In particular, Shen said Chinese companies have a distinct competitive advantage interms of talent.
“Embracing the industrialinternet, the abundant engineering talent has laid a solid foundation for future innovation and entrepreneurship,” Shen said. “Compared with their parent generation, the younger generation has adopted a boarder mindset. Born in
the internet era, techsavvy young people usually have a deeper understanding of the mobile internet.”
Chinese technology titanXiaomi is one among the growing number of companies that have been reaping the benefits.
Founded in 2010, the Beijingbased smartphone vendor reported more than 100 billion yuan in revenues last year.
“The key competitiveness ofXiaomi is striving for an open mind and employing internet technologies to improve the production and services,” said Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi.
Entering more than 80countries globally, 36 percent of Xiaomi’s revenuescome from the overseas
market, Lei said.With the industrial internet
on the horizon, Xiaomi is actively gearing up in the expansion of IoT sector. Cur
rently, Xiaomi has established the world’s largest consumer internet of things platform, with more than 115 million smart devices powered by AI.
“It will be much more convenient to use smart hardwareproducts as assistants to connect all the internet of things devices,” Lei said. “In the near future, each electronic device may be equipped with the smart voice system. Powered by AI technologies, I believe the whole internet of things will definitely take a big step forward.”
John Chisholm, a member ofthe Development Committee of the MIT Corporation, said that devices will not only become smarter, but also adoptusers’ style and personalities.
However, as more peopleenjoy the convenience brought by the internet, security risks remain.
Last year, the WannaCryransomware virus reportedly affected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries and regions, including China. The virus wreaked havoc in around 30,000 institutions, such as universities, hospitals and research centers, as well as gas stations.
Zhou Hongyi, chairman ofthe board and CEO of 360 Security Technology Inc, said we are entering the age of “big security”.
“After years of development,society and the internet have become extremely close. Today, the internet actually breaks the boundaries between the physical world and the virtual network,” said Zhou, whose security company is known for its antivirus software.
“So, cybersecurity is notonly related to the internet butinvolves national security, social security, infrastructure security and even personal safety. That is why we are now entering the new big security age,” he said.
Zhou said that cyberattacksand cybercrimes will increase in the future.
This will put at risk not onlypersonal details but reams of company data. To combat the threat, a growing army of professionals will have to be recruited.
“Relying on traditionaldefensive thinking and means can no longer effectively solve security problems. We need to reach a consensus on building a community of shared interests in cyberspace.” Zhou said.
Sogou, Xinhua virtual anchor heralds AI eraBy WANG KEJU in Wuzhen, [email protected]
Chinese search engineSogou launched an AI virtualanchor — the world’s first human replica intelligent virtual host, at the Fifth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, East China’s Zhejiang province.
The technology simulatesnatural speech and expressions, integrating advanced image detection and prediction capabilities, as well as speech synthesis, to allow the virtual anchor to “broadcast” text inputs in real time.
His appearance and voiceare modeled after Zhang Zhao, a real anchor at Xinhua News Agency, an official Staterun media outlet. Oncea user inputs news text, a virtual Xinhua news anchor will appear onscreen.
The virtual anchor speaksin Zhang’s voice, and offers a believable image of him, complete with appropriate mouth movements and natural facial expressions, meaning the virtual anchor is not much different from a real one.
According to Xinhua, “he”has become a member of its reporting team and can work24 hours a day on its official website and various social media platforms, reducing news production costs and improving efficiency.
“Virtual assistants are rapidly gaining traction as an efficient way to solve daily problems,” said Wang Xiaochuan, CEO of Sogou. Creating a more realistic virtual character will facilitate more natural interactions and enable this technology to become an even more integral part of everyday life, saidWang.
While still in the early stages of exploring potential applications for this technology, there is no doubt that Sogou will continue to push the boundaries of AI, Wang said.
Based on “Sogou avatar”technology and using such cuttingedge techniques as facial landmark localization and face reconstruction, the AI Virtual Anchor was developed successfully sidebyside with multimodal information for joint modeling training.
According to Wang Yanfeng, general manager of the intelligent voice division at Sogou, “Sogou avatar” technology is one of the division’score achievements, which follows the concept of “Nature Interaction plus Knowledge Computing”.
This form of broadcastingbreaks through the restriction that virtual images mustbe created first and with the accompanying voice being added later, Wang said, as using the “Sogou avatar” technology, the AI Virtual Anchor can produce synchronized video in real time.
Users can provide text invarious ways such as text typ
ing, voice input and machinetranslation. Then, they instantly obtain a realtime broadcast video. This method of newsmaking will greatly reduce the costs of post production and improve efficiency, Wang said.
As early as 2000, researchers in both the academic and private sectors have worked to develop technology that could create a virtual anchor.This type of research has advanced quickly in recent years thanks to the evolutionof AIenabled technologies such as facial recognition, lipreading and machine learning driven by big data analytics.
In developing its virtualanchor technology, Sogou’s team of AI researchers analyzed audio and visual data from a live anchor, allowing them to develop a model thatcould then produce a realistic virtual anchor.
With a focus on naturallanguage processing and machine learning, Sogou hasdeveloped industryleading capabilities in speech recognition and image recognition. Sogou’s speech recognition technology possesses an accuracy rate of over 97 percent, while its image recognition technology has achieved an accuracy rate of 96 percent.
Currently, there are 500million voice requests onSogou each day. The engineprocesses these with multilingual and multitonalspeech synthesis capabilities that help it to realizepersonalized voice synthesis and emotional transference.
Wang said the technologyhas the potential to enable more natural interaction between humans and machines in a wide range of different scenarios. In addition to generating entertainment content, AIgenerated characters could also be equipped with Sogou’s interactive voice operating system and utilized to deliver personalized content in the education, medical and legal fields.
Wang said he anticipatedthis new technology will improve social productivity and service efficiency, reduceindustrial production costs, and enhance people’s experiences in science and technology.
Xinhua contributed to this story.
An autonomous driving car, launched by Didi Chuxing, China’s top ridehailing service provider, is displayed at an exhibition booth.
CHENG GONG / CHINA DAILY
Visitors watch an AI virtual anchor at a booth of search engine Sogou at an exhibition on Thursday during the Fifth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. ZHU XINGXIN / CHINA DAILY
Virtual assistants are rapidly gaining traction as an efficient way to solve daily problems.”Wang Xiaochuan, CEO of Sogou
Turning the world into a connected global village, the internet is injecting fresh vigor into the innovative development.”Zhuang Rongwen, minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China
802 millionnumber of Chinese netizen population by the end of June this year
3.9 trillionthe value of China’s digital economy in dollar terms, the world’s secondlargest