On March 4, the Fifth Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference opened. Li Yanhong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of Baidu, submitted three proposals this year, focusing on the innovation of autonomous driving policies, promoting the popularization of intelligent transportation to alleviate traffic congestion, helping carbon emission reduction and developing the theme of "green AI".
Xinhua News Agency photo, March 15, 2018 Li Yanhong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, was interviewed.
Accelerate the innovation of unmanned autonomous driving policies
Robin Li believes that the unmanned automatic driving is an inevitable trend in the development of intelligent and connected vehicles. Unmanned is becoming the commanding heights of global autonomous driving technology and industrial competition. At this stage, the competition for unmanned autonomous driving in various countries is focused on policy innovation. Which country can introduce more breakthrough innovation policies, take the lead in realizing large-scale commercial use, and achieve unmanned, it can win the initiative in international competition.
At present, mainland autonomous driving has entered a critical period of landing, and technology has been combined and even led the world, but the development of high-grade autonomous vehicles in the mainland is still facing the situation that cannot enter the market, cannot be licensed, cannot be completely unmanned, cannot operate and charge, and is difficult to determine the responsibility for accidents.
In this regard, Robin Li put forward three suggestions: First, guide and support local governments to introduce policies, clearly support unmanned vehicles without safety personnel on the road, and create a pilot zone for the manned operation policy of fully unmanned autonomous vehicles.
Second, accelerate the revision and promulgation and implementation of the Road Traffic Safety Law, and lay a legal foundation for accelerating the large-scale commercial and unmanned use of autonomous vehicles from the national level. Clarify the admission rules for L4 autonomous vehicles. Formulate policies such as autonomous driving operation management measures, insurance packages, accident handling mechanisms, etc., and issue official number plates for vehicles that meet the requirements.
Third, moderately advance the construction of intelligent transportation infrastructure, give full play to the remote control advantages of 5G, improve traffic efficiency and safety through vehicle-road coordination, and drive the transformation and upgrading of the automobile industry to intelligence and networking.
Accelerate the promotion of the intelligent transportation operator model
Transportation is one of the key areas of carbon emissions in the mainland, and promoting its comprehensive green and low-carbon transformation is the key to promoting the high-quality development of transportation. The "14th Five-Year Plan for Green Transportation" proposes to "promote the integration and development of green transportation and intelligent transportation".
Robin Li believes that intelligent transportation provides a new and effective path for alleviating carbon emissions in transportation, and the electrification and intelligence of vehicles, the networking of roads, and the sharing of lines are the core focus. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), intelligent transportation technologies such as driverless and operation, intelligent information control, smart parking, and MaaS one-stop travel services contribute more than 40% to energy conservation and emission reduction.
In recent years, in the field of intelligent transportation, the state has accelerated the introduction of relevant policies, and local governments have also actively promoted the landing. However, in some areas, there is still a lack of coordination in construction and a lack of unified standards for the assessment of carbon emission reduction benefits.
In this regard, Robin Li suggested that we should strengthen policy guidance, promote the popularization of intelligent transportation, and make transportation and travel safer, more efficient and greener. The specific recommendations are as follows: accelerate the promotion of the intelligent transportation operator model, promote the transformation of one-time integrators to a sustainable operator model, guide the state-owned enterprises or platform companies in charge of the government to accelerate the construction of intelligent transportation operator functions or establish special companies, support technology enterprises to empower intelligent transportation operators with technology and operational experience, etc.; establish evaluation standards for the benefits of intelligent transportation to help carbon emission reduction, and unite industry associations, universities, scientific research institutions and leading enterprises to accelerate the research on carbon emission reduction benefit evaluation standards. Formulate quantitative calculation rules for intelligent transportation to help carbon emission reduction, so that the originally difficult to evaluate the benefits of intelligent transportation to help carbon emission reduction become quantifiable, statistical and evaluatable, explore the carbon emission reduction effect evaluation of new entities such as autonomous driving operators, and determine their carbon reduction value; carry out pilot individual carbon credit incentive system, support local governments to introduce incentive policies, build a public carbon emission related data platform, and explore the linkage mechanism between personal green travel carbon credits and preferential policies for public services.
It is worth noting that this is the seventh consecutive year that Robin Li has put forward proposals related to driverless and intelligent transportation. At the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2016, Robin Li suggested attaching importance to unmanned driving at the national level; in 2017, Robin Li called for the use of artificial intelligence technology to promote the construction of intelligent traffic light systems; in 2018, Robin Li suggested supporting enterprises to become bigger and stronger open platforms for autonomous driving; in 2019, he proposed to build intelligent transportation solutions; in 2020, Li Yanhong proposed to accelerate the pace of intelligent transportation infrastructure construction; in 2021, Robin Li once again called for accelerating the commercialization of autonomous driving and the popularization of intelligent transportation, making people's travel greener and more convenient, and achieving the goal of carbon peaking.
Develop "green AI" to achieve low-carbon development of computing power and algorithms
In 2022, Robin Li proposed the development of "green AI" for the first time. At present, AI, 5G, big data and other technologies are deeply integrated with various industries, and computing power and algorithms have become important productivity in the era of digital economy. Robin Li said that under the guidance of the "3060 double carbon" goal, it is necessary to develop a more environmentally friendly "green AI": on the one hand, it is necessary to develop green computing power, use technology to optimize processes, and reduce data center energy consumption; on the other hand, develop greener algorithms, build a green intensive model, and improve infrastructure energy efficiency ratio.
Xinhua News Agency photo, located in the data center room in Guizhou.
The "14th Five-Year Plan" is a critical period for the mainland to accelerate the promotion of green and low-carbon development, and the state has successively made a series of major deployments, such as the recent full launch of the "East Counting West" project. At the same time, the development of "green AI" in terms of evaluation and assessment, effect evaluation and other aspects still exist in the use of green electricity in data centers still face the dual control assessment of energy consumption, the green algorithm measurement standard system has not yet been established, and the lack of a sound carbon emission statistics accounting system.
Robin Li suggested that the exploration of dual control of carbon emissions should be the first to land in the data center, the amount of green electricity used in the data center should not be included in the energy consumption assessment, the implementation of hierarchical classification management, the appropriate relaxation of energy consumption audit standards, and the promotion of the country to accelerate the opening of green electricity cross-provincial and municipal transactions. According to the Calculation of the National Information Center, data centers only use about 2% of the electricity consumption of the whole society, supporting the scale of the digital economy, which accounts for about 36.2% of the country's GDP.
Establish green algorithm metrics that take into account performance and energy consumption, advocate leading artificial intelligence enterprises to build pre-trained large models with high energy efficiency and excellent performance, and open them to the industry, guide enterprises to develop and purchase low-energy artificial intelligence chips, and better adapt to green algorithms; accelerate the improvement of carbon emission statistical accounting system, open the issuance of national certified voluntary emission reductions, and accelerate the establishment of scientific and technological emission reduction methodologies and industry standards.
Nandu reporter Manningning