Xu Bing, Co-founder of SenseTime: Ignoring AI Infrastructure Investment Poses Greater Risks than Taking Action

HONG KONG, Oct. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- As the AI 2.0 era unfolds, investing in AI infrastructure has become crucial for the future growth of AI enterprises. During the Fireside Chat "AI Innovation in Action with SenseTime: AI Ethics & Future Trends" at Hong Kong FinTech Week, Xu Bing, Co-founder and Executive Director of SenseTime, said, "guided by the core strategy of 'infrastructure, AI models, and applications,' SenseTime is constructing one of China's largest AI cloud service platforms, built on its SenseCore AI infrastructure to support the industry's transition to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

"SenseTime, together with other leading tech companies, continues to prioritize AI infrastructure and making strategic long-term investments to boost relevant capabilities. Failing to invest could mean missing out on significant opportunities, which is a risk that far outweighs the initial investment costs," Xu emphasized.

With AI set to fundamentally transform how people process information, SenseTime aims to establish a leading AI cloud platform accessible to everyone, everywhere - extending beyond AI data centers to all deployable devices. Xu pointed out that past cloud services primarily focused on retrieving pre-stored information, and the next era of computing will prioritize information generation through AI prompts, shifting the emphasis from retrieval to creation.

Reducing Computational Costs and Seizing AI Opportunities

Xu also noted that society's demand for AI and computing power is growing exponentially. Whether driven by the current AI boom, the gaming industry, or even the popularity of short video formats, the need for computing resources is increasing. He anticipates that the traditional data center market will be redefined, with the AI computing center sector poised for triple-digit growth driven by this surging demand.

In terms of applications, Xu pointed out that the emergence of super apps will enable the AI industry to unlock its tremendous potential, especially in areas like personalized AI assistance, autonomous driving, and robotics. In these areas, SenseTime has launched the Cantonese AI assistant, 'Sensechat,' developed on the SenseNova Large Model, which is available for free to users in Hong Kong. Additionally, SenseAuto has made substantial R&D investments in autonomous driving and is actively involved in advancing vehicle networking and smart road infrastructure throughout mainland China.

Xu highlighted that SenseTime is dedicated to reducing computational costs to make AI affordable and accessible. Over the past decade, SenseTime has developed a comprehensive AI ecosystem that excels in training high-quality AI models. The company has expanded the infrastructure into a robust AI cloud platform that offers various model and application capabilities. This has established SenseTime as the preferred AI cloud service partner for a myriad of companies, startups, and research laboratories engaged in the training and inference of AI models.

"I believe we are at one of the best starting points in history, riding on what could be the biggest technology wave ever. This allows us to take multiple shots in the right direction and increase our chances of success, allowing us to be more adaptable, more resilient, and the flexibility to transform quickly," Xu said.

Collaborating with Startups to Foster an AI Ecosystem

China's AI ecosystem is thriving, with new startups emerging each year across various sectors, including internet services, manufacturing, and the electric vehicle industries. These startups are collaborating with AI experts to form innovative teams. SenseTime has been investing in and supporting promising startups by providing them with computing power and model capabilities through its AI cloud services. This collaboration facilitates the development of AI applications and contribute to the co-creation of a vibrant ecosystem.

About SenseTime

SenseTime is a leading AI software company focused on creating a better AI-empowered future through innovation. We are committed to advancing the state of the art in AI research, developing scalable and affordable AI software platforms that benefit businesses, people and society as a whole, while attracting and nurturing top talents to shape the future together.

With our roots in the academic world, we invest in our original and cutting-edge research that allows us to offer and continuously improve industry-leading AI capabilities in universal multimodal and multi-task models, covering key fields across perception intelligence, natural language processing, decision intelligence, AI-enabled content generation, as well as key capabilities in AI chips, sensors and computing infrastructure. Our proprietary AI infrastructure, SenseCore, integrates computing power, algorithms, and platforms, enabling us to build the "SenseNova" foundation model sets and R&D system that unlocks the ability to perform general AI tasks at low cost and with high efficiency. Our technologies are trusted by customers and partners in many industry verticals including Generative AI, Traditional AI and Smart Auto.

SenseTime has been actively involved in the development of national and international industry standards on data security, privacy protection, ethical and sustainable AI, working closely with multiple domestic and multilateral institutions on ethical and sustainable AI development. SenseTime was the first AI company in Asia to have its Code of Ethics for AI Sustainable Development selected by the United Nations as one of the key publication references in the United Nations Resource Guide on AI Strategies.

SenseTime Group Inc. has successfully listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (HKEX). We have offices in markets including Hong Kong, Mainland China, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and South Korea, etc., as well as presence in Germany, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. For more information, please visit SenseTime's official website or LinkedIn, X, Facebook and Youtube pages.

** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **

Xu Bing, Co-founder of SenseTime: Ignoring AI Infrastructure Investment Poses Greater Risks than Taking Action

ISTANBUL, Nov. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 10th Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF 2024), David Wang, Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, delivered a keynote speech titled "UBB Advanced Paves the Way to All Intelligence". When opening the event, he shared his latest insights into the AI industry and elaborated on Huawei's All Intelligence strategy. He also proposed a new direction for the synergistic development of UBB and AI to help the industry reach the intelligent world faster – technological innovation and business incubation.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been progressing rapidly thanks to AI, with AI becoming a major driver of global economic growth. Widespread commercial use of AI is accelerating, and new applications for personal use, enterprise efficiency, and smart homes are disrupting multiple markets. It is also driving communications network upgrades, in terms of capacity, latency, and architecture.

In his speech, Wang noted, "Huawei has continued innovating by focusing on two areas: UBB for AI and AI for UBB. The innovation we are doing under UBB for AI is based on ultra-large bandwidth, deterministic low latency, and network architecture. The network capability improvements we've achieved support higher quality AI development which will help carriers achieve business growth. This innovation also focuses on AI for UBB. We are applying AI to networks to improve network experience, to speed up service provisioning, and to streamline network O&M. This helps carriers build highly autonomous networks."

Last year, Huawei released its All Intelligence Strategy to, "show how to connect all things, model all applications, and compute all decisions." Huawei offers leading digital and intelligent infrastructure that provides computing, storage, and transmission power for industry. Huawei is also using its Pangu Models to create advanced industry-specific models, with the aim of supporting a vast range of models and applications, and helping customers from different industries pursue intelligent transformation.

Within the telecom industry, Huawei offers leading AI solutions, which must be supported by transmission power. As critical infrastructure, UBB networks provide this kind of power to help other industries go digital and intelligent more easily. To this end, Huawei advocates two development paths for UBB networks: "UBB for AI" and "AI for UBB".

UBB for AI: high-quality AI development

UBB 5.5G incorporates technological innovation at multiple network layers to support AI requirements.

For data center networks (DCNs), Huawei offers a Dragonfly+ Topology architecture and new DC-OXC technologies that help build large-scale computing centers.

For data center interconnect (DCI) networks, Huawei uses a number of innovative technologies like 800G IP + Optical networking, flexible IP service-flow level scheduling, and lossless transmission to realize more efficient use of computing power across data centers.

For data center access (DCA) networks, Huawei's OXC Mesh networking is capable of greatly reducing network latency. Its Wi-Fi 7 and 50G PON technologies can provide the ubiquitous 10 gigabit access that is necessary for widespread AI adoption by end users. In addition, Huawei's FTTR is already being used to create "intelligent hubs" and enable intelligent applications for many homes.

Huawei's Xinghe security gateway and hybrid ASON also guarantee resilience over end-to-end networks for AI application connections.

These innovations significantly improve bandwidth, latency, availability, and large-scale networking capabilities and will help carriers differentiate themselves in the intelligent era.

AI for UBB: highly-autonomous networks

UBB networks are also becoming larger and handling more complex scenarios, driving carriers to seek new ways to improve O&M efficiency and network autonomy. A promising method being explored is embedding AI directly into networks.

Huawei has built an AI-enabled O&M architecture for UBB networks that uses digital twins and its own Telecom Foundation Model. This architecture enables the creation of intelligent role-oriented "copilots" and scenario-specific "agents" that automate onsite operations and remote maintenance and optimization, which is necessary for the evolution to level 4 autonomous driving networks (ADNs).

Multiple leading carriers have successfully improved their network O&M efficiency by working with Huawei to apply this architecture commercially.

For home broadband, ADNs can support network self-optimization to ensure user experiences, reducing the churn rate by 57%.

For transmission networks, network planning and service deployment efficiency is crucial. ADNs can support service self-planning and deployment based on service level agreements, rather than manual planning. This can cut service provisioning times from one month to one day.

For IP network maintenance, fault location has always been a challenge. ADNs can enable virtual employees to support troubleshooting, reducing network troubleshooting times by 50%.

At the end of his speech, Wang called for the entire UBB industry to actively embrace the intelligent era by pursuing innovation in UBB 5.5G network technologies for long-term competitiveness. He also advocated for industry-wide incubation of new intelligent services in addition to new network capabilities, saying that new partnerships and business opportunities in AI applications will drive intelligent service transformation and new business growth.

** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **

Huawei's David Wang: UBB Advanced Paves the Way to All Intelligence