China's AI Vision for Itself and beyond
What has China done to promote AI development ? Peking Ensight digs into the country's recent major moves and looks at the broader blueprint behind.
The 78th UN General Assembly on July 1 reached a historic consensus: A resolution proposed by China on enhancing international cooperation for artificial intelligence (AI) capacity building was unanimously adopted, with over 140 countries saying yes.
This resolution, the UN's first on global AI capacity building, puts under the spotlight China's pivotal role in driving international AI collaboration.
How does China envision the AI future for itself and the world? Peking Ensight looks into several major moves taken in this country this year, which might shed light on how the world's second-largest economy positions itself in this new round of sci-tech revolution, and how the country steers its ongoing AI drive.
CHINA'S AI BLUEPRINT
While inspecting east China's Jiangsu Province this week, Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited the conversational AI platform unicorn AISpeech. This was the second time this year that Li inspected large AI model firms during inspection trips.
The premier experienced large language model technologies first-hand there and stressed work to harness the power of AI, as well as efforts to accelerate the construction of digital infrastructure and promote "AI Plus" manufacturing sector.
"AI" made its debut in China's government work report in 2017. In this year's report, the country for the first time floated the concept of "AI Plus." The innovative phrase carries profound strategic implications.
The new concept underscores empowering full-chain industrial development, covering R&D and scenario applications, further clarifying the role of "AI Plus" in digital economy.
Yang Jie, chairman of telecom giant China Mobile, said that the new wording mirrors a big change in how China plans to leverage AI to propel growth.
In the past, AI was regarded more as a supporting auxiliary tool to improve industrial efficiency. Nowadays, however, it is deemed as a fundamental infrastructure and core capacity essential for the social and economic development of the country.
China's AI gambit started early. In a guideline unveiled in 2017, the country set the target of becoming a major global AI innovation center by 2030 and leading the world in AI theory, technology and application.
Chinese authorities have set up a policy system bit by bit, with both top-level design and specific measures to explore development models and pathways.
Scenario applications, generative AI and integrated computing power network were among the priorities set in the policy documents introduced in recent years.
One recent move, for instance, is a guideline on building a standard system for AI, in which the country vowed to develop more than 50 national and industrial AI standards by 2026.
Boosted by policy support, China's AI industry has attained visible progress. The country is now home to more than one-third of the world's AI large language models, the second-largest proportion only after the United States, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
According to a report released this week by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China ranked first globally in the number of generative AI patent applications over the past decade ending in 2023, with Chinese entities including Tencent, Ping An Insurance, Baidu, Alibaba and ByteDance listed among the global top 10 applicants.
The country's core AI industry reached a scale of more than 578 billion yuan (about 81 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, up 13.9 percent year on year, official data showed.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
The China-proposed resolution underlined that AI development should adhere to principles that are people-centered, promote the greater good and benefit humanity as a whole.
In an address to the UN General Assembly, Fu Cong, China's permanent UN representative, said that developing countries have not yet been able to truly access, use and benefit from AI, as the global digital divide is still widening.
In the resolution, China called for international cooperation and concrete actions to help all countries, especially developing nations, to enhance their AI capabilities.
"China looks forward to taking the adoption of this resolution as an opportunity to work with member states toward active follow-up and implementation of the resolution by prioritizing development and following a people-centered approach based on equality, mutual benefit, integrity and innovation," Fu stressed.
The unanimous adoption of this resolution reflects a widespread agreement among UN member states on the necessity of enhancing global AI governance through dialogue and cooperation. It also demonstrates China's responsible approach and significant leadership in AI development and governance.
China launched the Global AI Governance Initiative in October 2023, setting the course for global AI development.
BEIJING AND WASHINGTON
Observers noted that the United States was among the 140-odd co-sponsors of Monday's resolution.
In response to media inquiry on the matter, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China commended the United States and other UN member states for actively participating in the consultation on the draft resolution and appreciated their support for the resolution's adoption by consensus.
"China stands ready to work with the United States to act on the common understandings reached by the two presidents in San Francisco, step up bilateral and multilateral dialogue and cooperation on AI, and make sure all humanity can share the benefits of AI," Mao added.
As bellwethers in AI development, dialogue and collaboration between China and the United States concerns not only the future of the two states, but also the well-being of the mankind.
Signals of China-U.S dialogues on AI were captured in early June. While speaking at Asia Society, the U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said that the two sides had been "talking to each other" since leaders of the two countries met in California last year.
Developing shared AI policy were one of the four topics that have been a key focus of dialogues between the two sides, according to Burns.
In its latest efforts to facilitate global governance, China for the first time added a high-level meeting on global AI governance to the 2024 World AI Conference in Shanghai.
With the aim of making the meeting into a "chamber" for global AI governance, China has invited both developed and developing economies. These representatives are expected to sit around the discussion table and engage in discussions on the development, security and governance of AI.
For those interested in the ongoing 2024 World AI Conference in Shanghai:
You may refer to a Xinhua report for Premier Li Qiang's speech at the 2024 World AI Conference: Chinese premier urges consensus-building among countries on AI development.
Also, the Shanghai Declaration on Global AI Governance, launched at conference, might be useful for learning about China's latest vision for global AI governance.