◎ Science and Technology Daily reporter Liu Yan
On January 25, Baidu Research Institute released the top ten technology trend predictions for 2022, covering ten major areas at the three levels of AI core technology, interdisciplinary and cross-field research, and AI industry and social value.
In the era of steady progress, we use technology to explore the "unknown" of the world; in the era of uncertainty, we use technology to anchor the "certainty" of the world.
At the moment, our mission is more inclined to the latter. In the face of the already arrived 2022, the continuous impact of the new crown epidemic and the many challenges facing the global economy, science and technology have become an important force leading innovation and development. The artificial intelligence that integrates the development trend of technology and industrial value creation, the rapid evolution of core technologies, the enhancement of cross-field connectivity, and the increasingly solid industrial base are precisely such scientific and technological forces.
First of all, the core technology of AI continues to make breakthroughs and evolutions, and integration and innovation have become more and more significant. Taking pre-trained large models as an example, technical paths such as knowledge enhancement, cross-modality, and cross-language have activated the imagination space of large models, and even ignited the hope of general artificial intelligence.
Second, in interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, AI constitutes a common variable in scientific research and technological development. In the fields of quantum, biology, chemistry, etc., "+AI" has become one of the most exciting research directions.
Third, in terms of value creation, AI is promoting the development of autonomous driving, robotics, aerospace, life and health, and other fields, and plays an important role in achieving goals such as "double carbon" and scientific and technological inclusion.
Baidu Research Institute shared with you the prediction of science and technology trends in 2022, hoping that in the uncertain era, AI will be used as a lamp to illuminate the road to innovation; with AI as a paddle, rowing the boat of development.
——Baidu CTO, Baidu Research Institute President Wang Haifeng
1. The ultra-large-scale pre-training model shows the trend of knowledge enhancement, cross-modal unified modeling, and multi-learning methods to evolve together, and gradually become practical
The large model performs self-supervised learning based on massive data, uses a unified model and paradigm to solve various AI tasks, breaks the dependence of traditional technology on large-scale annotation data, and significantly improves the effect, versatility and generalization of AI models.
It is expected that in 2022, the direction of large model research and development will change from continuously increasing the scale of parameters to practicability, based on knowledge enhancement, cross-modal unified modeling, prompt learning, continuous learning, combined with model distillation, sparseness and other technologies, the effect, versatility, generalization, interpretability and operational efficiency of large models will continue to improve, and the application threshold will be continuously reduced, so as to achieve a wide range of landing in the Internet, intelligent office, smart finance and other scenarios. For example, AIGC (AI generated content, artificial intelligence to create content), with the help of large models of cross-modal integrated technical capabilities, can stimulate creativity, enhance content diversity, reduce production costs, will achieve large-scale application.
2. The emergence of new research fields in AI for Science is expected to bring about a change in the paradigm of scientific research
Machine learning has helped mathematicians discover two big conjectures, and solved real-time simulation problems of superscale quantum stochastic circuits using a combination of machine learning, multiscale modeling, and high-performance computing, showing the great potential of artificial intelligence to be applied to scientific research, processing data, designing new types of experiments, and creating more efficient computational models.
The emerging AI for Science is expected to promote the deep integration of the two major scientific research paradigms of data-driven and theoretical deduction. It is expected that in the next few years, AI will be further deeply integrated with different fields such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, materials, and engineering, and play a greater role in the progress of basic science.
3. AI-based biocomputing will still develop at a high speed, and new breakthroughs will be achieved in collaborative innovation in basic research and application scenarios
In the context of human society is still fighting against the new crown virus, the demand for technological innovation in the life and health industry is more urgent. AI allows gene editing to find targets more accurately and quickly, and AI has helped to make significant breakthroughs in protein structure prediction. The success of the new crown mRNA vaccine technology has brought about the outbreak of drug design and vaccine research and development based on large molecules such as RNA and protein, and the international mainstream pharmaceutical companies have accelerated the landing of mRNA technology.
In the future, AI-based biocomputing will also make breakthroughs in more basic research and application scenarios, such as protein-based drug design, synthesis, and screening, anti-cancer drugs based on mRNA technology, monoclonal antibodies, immunotherapy, etc. The deep integration of the two will significantly shorten the drug research and development cycle, reduce the cost of research and development, and promote precision medicine and personalized diagnosis and treatment.
4. Privacy computing technology has attracted much attention and will become a breakthrough in the release of data value and an infrastructure for building trust
With the increasingly sound global personal information and data security regulations, it has become the industry consensus that security compliance is the premise of promoting the effective release of data value.
Privacy computing technologies, represented by trusted confidential computing and federated computing, have attracted much attention because they take into account data security protection and data sharing and circulation from a technical point of view. With the improvement of the performance of privacy computing technology, the mutual promotion of technology and compliance standards, and the synergy of multiple parties to enhance the credibility of technology, relevant typical applications will appear in scenarios such as biocomputing, financial analysis and data transactions.
In the long run, privacy computing technology may promote data circulation and computing based on dense forms as the default option, and gradually become an infrastructure for building trust.
5. Quantum software and hardware integration scheme has become the mainstream trend, and the actual demand accelerates the integration and innovation of quantum computing and various industries
It is expected that in 2022, the design, preparation and measurement and control technology of quantum chips will continue to develop, and the number of qubits will achieve scale growth, and seek breakthroughs along the two ideas of reducing noise or adapting to noise. Quantum software and services are developing across platforms, users will get richer quantum back-end choices on cloud-native quantum computing platforms, and quantum platforms carrying quantum software-hardware integration solutions will gradually show their application value.
With the deep integration and innovation of quantum computing and intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence, chemical medicine, financial technology and other fields, a number of practical application solutions with significant quantum advantages will be produced. Government agencies, research institutes and industry will also work more closely together to build high-quality quantum devices, cultivate quantum science and technology talents, and initially open up the quantum computing industry chain.
6. Autonomous driving technology has entered a new stage of unmanned landing, and multiple "automotive robots" continue to emerge, connecting technologies and scenarios
In 2022, under the dual impetus of policies, regulations and technological progress, automatic driving will soar in unmanned, and the automobile form represented by diversified "automotive robots" will develop rapidly.
Through the application of passenger cars, buses, trunk logistics, warehousing and distribution, special operations in mines and ports, retail, sanitation and other rich scenarios, the diversified "automotive robots" will provide services to users more widely, create value for customers, and then gradually achieve stable commercial benefits, promote the development of science and technology and social progress.
7. The integration and innovation of AI technology and aerospace science and technology will promote deep space exploration to a new stage of intelligence
Deep space exploration carries human curiosity and reverie about the universe and itself. Realizing the residence of the moon and planets, carrying out scientific exploration and resource development and utilization as the main program, and carrying out deep space exploration in distant and unknown environments, the demand for the autonomy of probes is increasingly strong.
The field of construction machinery automation has realized the actual engineering scenario of 24-hour continuous unmanned excavation operation, and the related AI algorithms such as autonomous environment perception and motion planning will also enable the detector to have functions such as autonomous obstacle avoidance and decision-making, and flexible and autonomous operation of the robotic arm. In addition, AI technology is also expected to play an important supporting role in spacecraft fault detection and repair, construction digital twin simulation laboratory, deep space big data detection and analysis, etc.
8. "Social distancing" accelerates the symbiosis of man and machine, and supports the combination of virtual and real and intelligent interaction technology to quickly integrate into production and life
The COVID-19 pandemic has set up "social distancing" for people's communication, and the development of digital technology has allowed us to shorten this distance and accelerate the symbiosis between humans and digital people and robots. The future world of virtual and real combined with intelligent interaction is no longer far away from us.
Supporting this change is the continuous progress of AI technologies such as vision, speech, natural language processing, and XR in cross-modal understanding and generation, continuous learning, and the cross-technical support system formed by integrating hardware, networking, computing, ecosystem platform, and content.
With the acceleration of integration and innovation of related technologies and the maturity of the cross-technical support system, more virtual and real combinations and intelligent interactive products for industry and consumption scenarios will emerge, thereby promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy and enriching people's production and life experience.
9. Green and low carbon are more included in the AI blueprint to help achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality
With the acceleration of the integration and innovation of AI technology with all walks of life, data centers and large-scale AI computing have achieved important economic and social value, but their energy consumption and impact on the environment cannot be ignored, and it is urgent to develop more environmentally friendly "green AI" technology to reduce the energy consumption of model training and use.
In the next few years, "green AI" related technologies will continue to flourish, around the energy-efficient architecture design, training and reasoning strategies, data utilization and other construction system, the formation of performance and energy consumption evaluation standards; higher computing power, lower energy consumption AI chips will continue to emerge; leading AI companies to build intensive large computing power and large models, improve downstream performance, reduce the overall cost of energy consumption; the policy will also encourage the construction of green and low-carbon data centers, the introduction of AI technology to improve infrastructure energy efficiency ratio and other initiatives.
10. AI is more inclusive and inclusive, and the value creation orientation makes the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and vulnerable groups get more attention
Inclusive AI is not only about the vast number of AI practitioners, but also about the wider range of AI technology beneficiaries.
The open source platform with the deep learning framework as the core has greatly reduced the threshold for the development of AI technology, and public data sets, large model bases, and regional intelligent computing centers will be further developed to help small and medium-sized enterprises achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase, and stimulate innovation vitality. The national AI training system will also be gradually built to promote the reemployment of traditional industry personnel and AI science education.
The well-being of AI should also benefit all groups in society, with the promotion of policy guidance and sustainable development of the ESG concept, the focus of enterprises will shift to value creation, AI service providers will strengthen the needs of the elderly, children and other vulnerable groups, the development of corresponding inclusive AI services and products, so that everyone can enjoy the convenience of digital technology.
Source: Science and Technology Daily The pictures in the article are from Baidu Research Institute
Editor: Zhang Shuang
Review: Wang Xiaolong
Final Judgement: Wang Yu