Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang has urged efforts to strengthen basic research and the integration of scientific and technological innovation with industrial development, so as to expedite the achievement of self-reliance in high-level scientific-technological research and development.
Ding, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the statement on an inspection tour of north China's Tianjin Municipality from Wednesday to Thursday.
During the inspection tour, Ding visited the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tianjin University, to learn about the situation of basic research and the integration of scientific-technological research with education.
Ding emphasized the need to place the promotion of original innovation capabilities in a more prominent position, strengthen support for basic research, and accelerate core technology research by fully leveraging the strengths of China's new system and mobilizing resources nationwide.
He urged efforts to improve the coordination between sci-tech research and education, in order to foster a positive interplay between education, sci-tech innovation, and talent cultivation.
The vice premier also encouraged researchers to champion the spirit of scientists and make greater contributions to solving critical sci-tech issues.
Ding also inspected several technology firms to gain insights into their innovation and progress in developing new quality productive forces.
He pointed out the need to focus on key tasks, including increasing supply for high-quality sci-tech research and development, reinforcing the principal role of enterprises in sci-tech innovation, and promoting the application of sci-tech advances, so as to facilitate in-depth integration of sci-tech innovation with industrial innovation.
While meeting with representatives of entrepreneurs during the inspection, the vice-premier highlighted the necessity to guide financial capital towards early-stage, small-scale, long-term, and hard technology investment, stressing that both the government and the market should play a collaborative role in this endeavor. He also encouraged scientists, investors, and entrepreneurs to work together towards achieving this goal.
Ding also went to a local tax bureau to learn about the implementation of tax policies and meet with grassroots-level staff.
He emphasized the need to optimize tax services and effectively implement preferential tax and administrative fee policies, thus creating a favorable tax environment for both enterprises and the public and supporting the stable and healthy development of various types of market players.
Chinese vice premier urges efforts to strengthen basic research
The 2024 World AI Conference (WAIC) and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, which concluded in east China's financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday, served as an important platform for exhibitors to showcase their diverse offerings, ranging from large-scale model service to scientific data platforms.
More than 1,300 industry insiders from over 50 countries and regions have participated in the three-day conference this year.
The event had attracted more than 300,000 visitors and another 1.9 billion people joining online as of 14:00 on Saturday, both setting record highs since the first edition of the annual event in 2018.
This year's WAIC is the first to emphasize AI safety and governance, as reflected in its theme -- Governing AI for Good and for All." Experts said the theme has emerged as a response to the need to reinforce responsibility as the field rapidly expands.
"New technology means new players, new players come in with, potentially, a new agenda, new power. And so the importance of governance is to establish trust between all the actors. And we think it's important because we think that society in its whole means to adopt this new technology and to make it its own. And for this, regulation and governance can help by being a third party," said Gael Varoquaux, research director of the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology.
Over 500 renowned companies showcased more than 1,500 exhibits at the event, setting another record. The event also witnessed the unveiling of more than 50 new products and facilitated the signing of 24 major industrial project, with an estimated investment reaching 5.5 billion U.S. dollars.
Exhibitors from Chinese brands were eager to tout the rising popularity of their innovations. For tech and e-commerce giant Alibaba, their business-oriented platform Model Studio helps improve generative AI models using what is called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), a system that helps optimize large language models without touching the underlying system.
"Model Studio has more than 150 million function calls per day. It's an open-source community-based model. So you can use the community version, or use our enterprise model to build a RAG system, using such as five to ten lines of code," said Gao Jinyang, a chief architect with Alibaba Model Studio.
Domestic institutions at the fair also attracted attention for bringing new ways to security in the field of AI.
"The Shanghai Academy of Artificial Intelligence for Science has taken the lead to build a multi-modal platform for scientific data. We want to enhance the efficient processing, trustworthiness, and secure circulation of data by developing this platform which covers the whole process including data cleaning, processing, management, and modeling,” said Cao Fenglei, an AI scientist with the Shanghai Academy of Artificial Intelligence for Science.
AI conference reveals vast diversity among new players in emerging field
