According to the Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) White Paper released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, major risks and challenges of AI includes application hazards caused by insecure algorithms, nontransparent algorithmic models, data-derived decision bias, confirmation of liabilities and privacy leaks. China is more or less in the same league as other developed countries in terms of AI advancements. There is a genuine lack of an existing set of proven rules to regulate this market.
China needs to develop technology and formulate governance rules at the same time, which could be the biggest challenge compounding the sector’s development. China once issued principles for next-generation AI governance, pledging to develop responsible AI. The directive addressed eight tenets－harmony and friendliness, fairness and justice, inclusiveness and sharing, respect for privacy, security and controllability, shared responsibility, open cooperation and agile governance.
China has undergone two stages of AI governance, namely responsive governance involving taking reactive measures when problems occur, and concentrated governance that adopts proactive approaches to tackle issues comprehensively. Agile governance, by comparison, manages to strike a balance in promoting technological innovation and balancing potential risk.
One critical objective is to develop reliable AI technology, which can be characterised by its stability, explainability, privacy protections and fairness. The first and foremost task is to find suitable methods to quantify algorithms, models and systems in the above four aspects.
The corporate world has a big role to play. Companies need to fully utilise their suite of retail, logistics, health and technology industrial chain strengths to achieve industrial breakthroughs and contribute to more fundamental research.
An AI company is training its proprietary AI technologies to simulate hacker invasions in a bid to enhance risk-detection capabilities and thus boost its defensive resilience. The technology is now being applied to risk-control scenarios like anti-fraud issues and safeguarding secure transactions on multiple occasions on its mobile wallet.
The scale of the global AI industry reached $156.5 billion in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 12%, according to the research firm. That number stood at 303.1 billion yuan ($46.92 billion) in China, up 15% from the previous year, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
China’s AI industry development has made significant progress, with the technological innovation capabilities in some areas ranking among the top in the world. As reported by OpenGov Asia, China ranks first in the world in the number of Artificial Intelligence (AI) patents.
More than 10 AI chips, as well as innovative products brought by more than 300 major AI companies, will be shown at the conference.
According to a report on China’s AI development released by three institutions including the Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence, nearly 390,000 AI patent applications were filed in China over the past 10 years, accounting for 74.7% of the world total. The core industry size is continuously growing and the integration of AI and the real economy has further deepened.
According to a report on the AI ecosystem in China, along with the gradual maturation of AI technology observed in recent years, many industry giants in China progressively increased their investment in this new market. The burgeoning applications of AI technology have also expanded the scope of this technology from niche research fields to broader commercial areas. Besides being among the leading nations—in terms of AI research output, China is ideally positioned for the rapid development of AI technology.
