The 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference opened this morning (July 6) at the Shanghai World Expo Center. With the theme of "Intelligent Connected World, Generating the Future", this year's conference discussed the trends and laws of artificial intelligence development, the opportunities and challenges faced, and worked together to create a better intelligent world. Chen Jining, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech, presided over by Gong Zheng, Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Mayor of Shanghai.
Dong Yunhu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, attended the meeting. Xu Xiaolan, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and Christian Becier, Chairman of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, delivered speeches at the opening ceremony.
Chen Jining said in his speech that seizing the development opportunities of a new generation of artificial intelligence and accelerating the construction of a world-class industrial cluster is a major strategic task entrusted to Shanghai by the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core. We have thoroughly implemented the important instructions of President Xi Jinping, always regarded the development of artificial intelligence as a priority strategic choice, and continuously strengthened innovation sources, application demonstrations, system supply and talent gathering. Shanghai's artificial intelligence industry and talents are beginning to take shape, innovation and application are more active, and a cross-border integration, open and integrated ecosystem is gradually taking shape.
Chen Jining said that looking at the world, human society has entered the era of big science with intensive and active innovation. The rapid progress of artificial intelligence represented by large models is promoting a new round of scientific and technological revolution and accelerated evolution of industrial transformation. On the new journey, Shanghai should strive to promote high-quality development, create high-quality life, and achieve high-efficiency governance, and it is more necessary than ever to give full play to the "head geese effect" of artificial intelligence to empower all industries and the "multiplier effect" of driving development. We will promote the healthy development of artificial intelligence with greater efforts and strive to build a more internationally influential artificial intelligence "Shanghai Highland". Adhere to the combination of long-term and agility, establish a long-term vision, maintain strategic concentration, focus on laying the foundation and benefiting the long-term strategic tasks, continuously improve the agility of action, establish a decision-making mechanism that adapts to technological and industrial changes, and optimize the key points and development direction in a timely manner. Adhere to the unity of breakthrough key technologies and building an open ecosystem, mobilize the strength of the whole city, gather resources from all parties, increase support, encourage various forms of algorithm innovation, chip research and development, computing power improvement and corpus construction, open more application scenarios through more effective policy guidance, promote collaborative interaction among innovation subjects, strengthen the cultivation of enterprise innovation ecology, and create competitive industrial clusters. Adhere to better integrated development and governance, openness and security, uphold the concept of science and technology for good, promote the improvement of artificial intelligence standard system, safety standards, and ethical norms, so that artificial intelligence can better benefit mankind.
Xu Xiaolan said that the new generation of artificial intelligence represented by deep learning and the general artificial intelligence represented by large models continue to make technological breakthroughs, which will become the root technology of the intelligent industry and the infrastructure of the intelligent economy. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology takes the integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy as the main line to promote the mainland artificial intelligence industry to seize new opportunities, cope with new challenges and achieve new results. Shanghai is a highland for the innovation and development of the mainland's artificial intelligence industry, and it is hoped that all parties will use the World Artificial Intelligence Conference as a platform to jointly promote the healthy development of artificial intelligence and jointly open a new chapter in the development of the intelligent industry.
Vice Minister of Education Chen Jie, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Zhong Zhihua, Shu Wei, Full-time Vice Chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, Zou Jingyong, Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Chen Maobo, Financial Secretary of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Gloria Carvalho, Vice Minister of Science and Technology of Venezuela, and Shanghai Municipal Leaders Wu Qing, Zhu Zhisong, Zhang Wei, Li Zheng, Liu Duo and Xiao Guiyu attended the meeting.
At the opening ceremony, the results of the 2023 Outstanding Artificial Intelligence Leader Award were released, and a number of major innovative achievements made their debut.
In the speech and dialogue session, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Tang Xiaoou, professor of Hong Kong Chinese University, Ken Hu, rotating chairman of Huawei, Yang Likun, winner of the Turing Award, Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon, Shen Xiangyang, foreign academician of the National Academy of Engineering, Saif Rahman, chairman and CEO of IEEE, Hou Yang, senior vice president of Microsoft, Xu Li, co-founder and CEO of SenseTime, academician Yao Zhizhi, president of Shanghai Zhizhi Research Institute, Yuan Yang, Assistant Professor of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Studies of Tsinghua University, Yang Zhilin, founder of Moonshot AI, and Pan Xingang, first author of DragGAN, shared their future prospects for general artificial intelligence based on their respective innovative research and industrial practices, and talked about their views and ideas on embodied intelligent development, underlying technology breakthroughs, infrastructure construction, scientific and technological open cooperation, scene application, ecological construction, industrial empowerment, governance security, etc.
At the opening ceremony, the China Large Model Corpus Data Alliance, the Big Model Testing and Validation and Collaborative Innovation Center, the Shanghai China Mobile Digital Transformation Industry Fund, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization Global Industrial and Manufacturing Artificial Intelligence Alliance and the Development Center of Excellence were also launched.
Before the opening ceremony, Chen Jining, Gong Zheng and leaders of relevant ministries and commissions of the state came to the World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center to visit the Chinese Industry Innovation Achievements Exhibition and the theme exhibition of "Towards General Artificial Intelligence", listen to the introduction of the integration and development of artificial intelligence-enabled industries, understand the research and development of cutting-edge technologies such as intelligent chips, large models, and humanoid robots and the application of scene demonstrations, and inspect the latest application of artificial intelligence technology and the development progress of general large models at booths such as CITIC Group, Ant Group, and Tencent Group.
The 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai from July 6 to July 8. In addition to the opening and closing ceremonies, the conference will also hold 2 plenary sessions on scientific and technological innovation and industrial development, 10 thematic forums and a number of ecological forums, organize 50,000 square meters of special exhibitions, and create more than 20 buyer matching meetings.
More than 1,400 guests from domestic and foreign leading scholars in the field of artificial intelligence, well-known entrepreneurs, and representatives of international organizations attended the conference, including 4 Turing Award winners, 1 Nobel Prize winner, more than 80 academicians at home and abroad, and more than 50 leading talents at home and abroad.
(Photo by Chen Zhengbao)