AI is splitting the world in half.
The advent of artificial intelligence applications such as ChatGPT has revolutionized many industries and ways of working. Creative mental work, once considered irreplaceable, is ushering in decomposition and reconstruction, and "inspiration" has removed the veil of mystery. AI has begun to take its place in games and music, design and other fields, according to media reports, some of the companies that are deploying AI in large numbers are expected to save 200,000 yuan a year.
AI has also brought huge wealth effects to the primary and secondary markets. From suppliers of computing power and chips, to developers of large models, and even related concept stocks at the application layer, they have experienced soaring revenue or valuation leaps. Brooke Day, portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs Technology, said: "I've been investing in the tech industry for over 30 years, and AI is one of the most exciting developments I've seen.
Such two sides are the characteristics of AI as an industrial outlet: it may not only burn money wildly, but also improve efficiency; It not only challenges traditional industries, but also creates a new wealth myth; It can not only leave people without saying hello, but also send the enterprise to the wind.
For us, how to seize the AI outlet? Before considering countermeasures, we must first think about the question, why did AI suddenly explode?
01
A Brief History of AI
AI is like a milestone on the side of the highway, "When you see it on the horizon, it will quickly come to you." ”
The origins of large models can be traced back to the 80s of the 20th century, and in the decades that followed, the depth of neural network models and the size of training data slowly increased as the performance of computers evolved. By 2006, the deep belief network model was proposed, which opened up ideas for deep learning models. In 2017, the Google team developed the Transformer architecture, and the scale of deep learning parameters reached hundreds of millions, and the real sense of the large model was born, and at this time, it was less than 5 years before the birth of GPT-3.
Overall, the development characteristics of the AI industry are "slow accumulation and sudden outbreak". Unlike new energy, the Internet, etc., which require long-term infrastructure construction and product popularization, AI has the advantages of easy deployment of infrastructure such as chips and cloud services, and low marginal cost, so its development core is technological progress, as long as the technical parameters reach the threshold, then its application scale will expand rapidly.
And, ChatGPT is far from what AI is all about. Abroad, Meta (Facebook) and Google closely follow Microsoft's footsteps; In China, from Baidu's "Wen Xin Yiyan", to Ali's "Tongyi Qianwen", from Tencent's "Mixed Yuan", and then to Huawei's "Pangu". Since March this year, more than 20 companies have entered the big model track, including both general large models benchmarking against GPT and vertical large models that focus on vertical industries and are trained on the basis of open source large models.
In addition to the "technical layer" industry involving algorithm research and model construction, the artificial intelligence industry chain also has two parts: the basic layer and the application layer. As the name implies, the basic layer is the infrastructure that mainly provides hardware equipment and software services, which mainly involves AI chips, cloud computing and other fields; The application layer mainly covers application scenarios that require artificial intelligence technology, including finance, automotive, and medical care, and the participants are companies that focus on various specific scenarios.
It can be seen that AI has crossed the initial stage of focusing on the development of general large models, and has moved towards a new stage where the basic layer pursues low-cost and high computing power, the technical layer moves from general to vertical categories, and the application layer realizes landing value in different industries, resulting in greater industrial opportunities.
However, because the opportunity is too great, there are elusive opportunities lurking under the secluded depths.
02
When we invest in AI, what are we investing in?
Like many outlets, behind AI investment, there are difficulties and obstacles.
As mentioned earlier, the core driver of AI is not popularity, but technology. Therefore, once the technological level progress is not as expected, or it cannot support the actual application scenarios, the development of the AI industry will become a "beautiful" illusion.
GF Securities believes that it is difficult for the domestic capital market to influence and determine the trend of future AI industry investment, which is mainly affected by two external factors, on the one hand, the breakthrough of the industrialization practice of the domestic large-model platform, on the other hand, the technology monetization of overseas generative AI commercialization, especially the commercialization scale of industry applications If it cannot meet expectations, then the investment logic of the entire AI industry will be shaken.
The essence of these two points is the accuracy and cost of AI content, which must reach a level that can be commercialized in specific scenarios.
On the other hand, because of the characteristics of AI development that does not move, it has already exploded, so it puts forward higher demand for investors' forward-looking. Obviously, how to remove the fake from countless AI investment suggestions, different investors will have different views. The inability to form an investment consensus means that there will be a "constant pace" in the field of capital market AI.
Huaan Securities pointed out that the market hopes to take the lead in reflecting the possible emergence of "exceeding expectations", but different investors have different tolerance for the time lag of performance cashing, so under the inconsistent pace, the industry may adjust after experiencing a large increase this year.
The consensus of investment institutions at this stage is that AI will be the main line of investment this year and even for a considerable period of time in the future, and people's daily lives will be the primary object of AI change. Of course, under such a trend cognition, different capital markets, the focus of investment is not the same.
In the primary market, because the investment peak in 2021 has just passed, the attitude of investment institutions is relatively cautious, and some investors said, "The AI track has reached a high valuation before, but the business model is not clear, so it is cold for a period of time." ”
Therefore, even with the explosion of large models and the heat of the track heating up, institutions still tend to seek "certainty", such as computing power chips, autonomous and controllable underlying large models, and vertical industry large model companies and other "infrastructure" and "scene applications" are the direction that institutions focus on. Data show that since 2023, there have been 254 domestic AI investment events, with investment and financing amounts reaching 100.6 billion yuan. Among them, computer vision and image, intelligent robots, intelligent driving and other subdivisions are highly popular.
In the secondary market, there are also a large number of enterprises involved in the AI field in the domestic capital market. For example, the 50 index sample companies selected by the CSI Artificial Intelligence Theme Index from the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets cover the basic, technical and application layers of the artificial intelligence industry chain, including household appliances, automobiles and other industries involving artificial intelligence extension application scenarios. Most of these companies are concentrated in the two major industries of computer and electronics, and the combined weight has reached 90%. It can be seen that most secondary market investors still regard the computer and electronics industry as the driving force of AI development.
Most of the AI-related companies come from the computer and electronics fields, but they are not from the electronics and computer fields to be AI-related, and how to bet on potential companies is obviously the most concerned issue in the secondary market.
The most stable investment strategy is not to bet.
03
How many golden houses are there in the future of AI?
Lu Qi, former CEO of Baidu, believes that from 2022 to 2023, the new paradigm has ushered in a new inflection point, "model" knowledge is everywhere, and technological innovation represented by OpenAI has transformed the trinity of action, model and information into general intelligence. "This big model inflection point will affect all the people in the service economy, blue-collar workers, because they are models, unless you have unique insights, you are engaged in the service big model today."
In the secondary market, sector index funds may be more likely to obtain the growth dividends of the segment than to bet on a company in a certain track alone.
As a technology that has brought tangible efficiency improvements to the industry and society, and is still rapidly popularizing and differentiating, AI has become an unstoppable macro trend, and its suspense comes from the specific development path. Astute investors are good at keeping up with trends, but they are often not good at grasping the implementation of specific products and services of a company. Therefore, rather than buying shares in individual companies, "investment trends" are a better choice, which can not only enjoy the opportunities of industrial growth, but also avoid the pressure of stock selection within the sector.
And Wind data also proves this: in the more than ten years from June 29, 2012 to February 3, 2023, the CSI Artificial Intelligence Thematic Index has an annualized return of more than 10%, an annualized volatility of 32%, and a Sharpe ratio of 0.46. At present, there are also 3 ETF products in the market tracking the CSI Artificial Intelligence Thematic Index.
An ETF that tracks the CSI AI Thematic Index
Will the AI industry continue to grow in the next decade?
In the short term, CITIC Securities Research Report pointed out that looking forward to the second half of 2023, the main line of investment in the technology industry is still "AI + digital economy", and in the longer term, AI is also an indispensable part, in 2021, Gartner released 12 important strategic technology trends in 2022, and generative AI is at the top of the strategy. According to the "China AI Digital Business Outlook 2021-2025", by 2025, the scale of China's generative AI technology application is expected to rise to 207 billion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of 84.1%.
At present, policies are also promoting the application and popularization of the AI industry. Localities represented by first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have issued relevant documents and support policies to promote the development of the artificial intelligence industry. Some institutions pointed out that the computer industry is entering a dual-drive period of technological innovation cycle and policy cycle, and the technology cycle has spawned AIGC technology breakthroughs represented by ChatGPT, expanding industry space, training large models to improve the demand for computing power base, and accelerating the landing of C-end and B-side applications combined with AI. The policy cycle promotes the digital economy, and top-level design and independent and controllable demand will continue to promote the information innovation cycle.
In the not-too-distant future, AI will affect more industries and more wealth.
Risk warning: The fund is risky and investment needs to be cautious. Not used as a basis for investment. The investment advisory institution does not guarantee that the above fund investment portfolio strategy will be profitable and the minimum return, nor does it make a capital protection commitment.