Focusing on the practical requirements of promoting the healthy and rapid development of artificial intelligence, the mainland government mainly focuses on five angles. Artificial intelligence technology has formed a high degree of penetration and cross-border integration of production, circulation, consumption, etc., and new formats and new models are constantly emerging, bringing unprecedented new changes to the previous industrial ecology, social division of labor, industry and enterprise boundaries, production organization methods and many other aspects. The key to promoting the development of new formats and industries lies in strengthening industrial policies and creating a more favorable external environment for the development of emerging industries. Therefore, the mainland government mainly adopts the "five major types of policies" to properly respond to the challenges that artificial intelligence may bring, form institutional arrangements to adapt to the development of artificial intelligence, and consolidate the social foundation for the development of artificial intelligence. The five categories of policies mainly include relevant laws, regulations and ethical norms, AI development support policies, standards and property rights systems, supervision and evaluation systems, and AI talent training.
Setting the tone at the top level, the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" confirmed for the first time the "three-step" strategy of the artificial intelligence industry. The "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by the State Council in 2017 is the first deployment document in China in the field of artificial intelligence, which determines the overall thinking, strategic goals and tasks of the development of the artificial intelligence industry, and determines the "three-step" development goals of the artificial intelligence industry in 2020, 2025 and 2030.
The "1+N" policy system has been gradually constructed. With the setting of the tone of the top-level plan, artificial intelligence has been elevated to a national strategy, and the policy layout has been successively carried out at the ministerial level, that is, the "1+N" policy system has been formed, "1" represents the "new generation of artificial intelligence development plan" issued by the State Council, "N" refers to the development plan, action plan, implementation plan and other landing policies on the artificial intelligence industry successively issued at the ministry level, of which the policies issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology mainly involve digital and real integration, scene innovation, regional innovation, etc. The NDRC focuses on the standard system, ethics, infrastructure construction and other contents.
Looking back at the policy history related to artificial intelligence, the focus of policies has become more specific and targeted. Since the "Made in China 2025" issued by the State Council in 2015 proposed the development of intelligent equipment and intelligent production, and then artificial intelligence-related plans and policies have been intensively promulgated. In March 2016, artificial intelligence was written into the 13th Five-Year Plan. After 2016, the State Council, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other departments have issued a number of AI-related plans and work plans to promote the development of AI. In October 2017, artificial intelligence was written into the report of the 19th National Congress, which will promote the deep integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy; In July 2020, the Central Cyberspace Administration and other five departments issued the Guidelines for the Construction of the National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Standard System, which clearly stated that by 2023, an artificial intelligence standard system will be initially established, focusing on the development of key and urgently needed standards such as data, algorithms, systems, and services, and taking the lead in promoting key industries and fields such as manufacturing, transportation, finance, and security; In September 2021, the National New Generation AI Governance Professional Committee issued the New Generation AI Ethics Code, marking that AI policy has gradually shifted from promoting application to supervision. Subsequently, in the "14th Five-Year Plan" national informatization planning document, statistics found that the frequency of artificial intelligence words was as high as 47 times, which was much higher than the number of occurrences in the "13th Five-Year Plan", reflecting the continuous increase of national artificial intelligence-related requirements.
As a key force leading a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, artificial intelligence chips have also been valued by policies. The State Council, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments have successively issued policies to support and guide the development of the AI chip industry, which mainly focuses on chip technology routes, chip industry specifications and chip safety operation specifications. From the perspective of historical policies, artificial intelligence chips were written into the outline of the national development plan in the "13th Five-Year Plan", and then the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Industry 2018-2020" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology focused on supporting neural network chips and promoting the large-scale application of artificial intelligence chips in China. The 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021 proposes to focus on the development of digital technology innovation and improve the research and development and application of artificial intelligence chips.
Therefore, it can be seen that the development of mainland artificial intelligence policy has roughly gone through three stages. In the first phase (2015-2016), the policy focused on pilots and scenario exploration, and the number of policies was relatively small. Because manufacturing is one of the first areas of artificial intelligence, the relevant layout for intelligent manufacturing and "Internet +" is the focus at this stage, and the intelligent application of the industrial field can also lay a solid foundation for the extension of artificial intelligence to other fields; In the second phase (2017-2019), the national top-level plan is gradually clear, "comprehensively promoting the integrated development of artificial intelligence and the real economy" has become the main theme, and the policies and action plans at the level of various ministries and commissions are very specific, and the number of policies issued at this stage is relatively large; In the third stage (2020-present), the challenges arising in industrial practice have gradually become the focus of policies, and policies have begun to focus on key scenario applications, standardization, supervision and ethics, and policies have begun to shift to industrial governance. At the same time, with the acceleration of the industrialization application of AIGC, artificial intelligence regulatory technology has been continuously upgraded and complicated, so relevant regulatory policies will be further updated and optimized.
Generative artificial intelligence has formed a new driving force, and local artificial intelligence policies have been intensively introduced. With the rise of AIGC trend triggered by ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence has a far-reaching impact on the real economy and related industries, in order to seize this round of intelligent transformation, various localities have gradually increased the guidance and support of relevant policies. Among them, the more influential is the heavy implementation plan released by Beijing on May 30, 2023, Beijing issued two heavy policies to promote the development of the artificial intelligence industry, of which the "Beijing Accelerate the Construction of a Global Influential Artificial Intelligence Innovation Source Implementation Plan (2023-2025)" proposes that by 2025, the scale of artificial intelligence core industries will reach 300 billion yuan, maintaining a continuous growth of more than 10%, and the scale of radiation industry will exceed 1 trillion yuan. Another "Several Measures to Promote the Innovation and Development of General Artificial Intelligence in Beijing" puts forward 21 specific measures around five aspects: computing power, data, models, scenarios and supervision. According to the new policy description, Beijing will accelerate the construction of an AI innovation source with global influence.
Each locality has also put forward its own development goals related to the artificial intelligence industry. On May 31, 2023, Shenzhen issued the Action Plan for Accelerating the High-level Application of Artificial Intelligence (2023-2024), which coordinated the establishment of an artificial intelligence fund group with a scale of 100 billion yuan, plus the "Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Artificial Intelligence Industry Promotion Regulations" issued and implemented in 2022, to build a high-quality AI development policy system of "one regulation, one plan, one list, and one fund group"; On May 25, 2023, the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission also made it clear that it supports private enterprises to widely participate in the construction of artificial intelligence infrastructure such as data and computing power, extend the implementation period of the new infrastructure project discount policy until the end of 2027, and provide interest subsidies of up to 1.5 percentage points. In addition, first- and second-tier cities have also set targets for the number of enterprises and industrial scale targets for the AI industry, highlighting the full confidence of each region in the contribution of the AI economy.
This article is reproduced in Computer Renaissance for learning and exchange only