At this year's Bund Conference, it became a hot topic that nobody discussed three years ago
Science fiction writer Chen Lifan considers himself an imaginative person, but at the Bund Conference held on the 8th, he admitted that "imagination is constantly declining in the face of reality."
In 2021, he co authored a book with artificial intelligence expert Li Kaifu, imagining the human world under the influence of technologies such as artificial intelligence in 20 years, hence the title "AI 2041". Now they find that this book is too conservative. Because just two years later today, many of the imagined scenes in books are already happening, "It may not take five years, at most ten years, they will all become reality."
Reality evolves at a speed beyond imagination, and this feeling is not only shared by Chen Lifan. At this year's Bund Conference, many scholars and industry insiders have found that the issues currently being discussed are significantly different from the previous Bund Conference three years ago.
For example, generative artificial intelligence is just a new phenomenon that will emerge at the end of 2022; For example, data security, although not a completely new topic, has gained new meaning due to the 2021 Data Security Law and the 2022 Data 20 Articles; For example, the word "digitalization" has been known since Negroponte published the popular "Digital Survival" in the 1990s, but a COVID-19 has accelerated the digitalization to change the world
And all these changes happened between the two Bund conferences. The change in focus of the 2023 Bund Conference is actually a change in technology and society.
The big model is fascinating
In the exhibition area of the Bund Conference, Ma Xinpan took the initiative to approach the audience passing by the booth and invited them to come in and try the company's financial model. Ma Xinpan's company is called Hengsheng Juyuan, which is a technology company that provides data services. They have just launched a large model product called Warren Q.
Ma Xinpan said, "The biggest feature of Warren Q is its ability to Chat. Chat is chat, and the inspiration should come from the famous generative artificial intelligence application ChatGPT.". Asking Warren Q questions related to finance, it can obtain information from databases and financial media, organize and output it, and even generate professional reports.
At the same Bund Conference, Ant Group released the Ant Financial Big Model. This large model can understand user language, help users extract the logic and viewpoints of research reports and financial information, financial engineering codes, and has passed professional test questions such as securities, insurance, licensed physician, and licensed pharmacist qualifications.
Just like the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held two months ago, big models and generative artificial intelligence are undoubtedly the main characters of this Bund Conference. It is regrettable that before the launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, this was still a non-existent topic.
Various industries are fascinated by artificial intelligence and big models, not just because of fashion. Chen Lifan said, "Although humans know that artificial intelligence may have a great impact on our society in the future and even change our destiny, there is still an uncontrollable impulse, a fatalistic pursuit, that keeps us moving towards that goal."
Digital technology accelerates the frenzy
Get tickets for the Bund Conference in the Alipay applet, then brush your face and enter. At present, no one feels anything unusual.
Many people still remember that at the first Bund Conference three years ago, the way to enter was still by scanning QR codes. In fact, facial recognition technology was already applied three years ago, but recognition is often not accurate enough. People jokingly say that artificial intelligence is occasionally not "intelligent enough".
Three years have passed, and the Bund Conference is confident that scanning QR codes will be replaced by facial recognition. Even wearing masks and hats, AI still recognizes everyone. In just three years, digitalization has been raging at a speed that exceeds public expectations, affecting and changing everyone.
There are many "black technologies" at every Bund Conference, and it is not easy to understand these lofty terms. For example, what is graph calculation? What is privacy computing? The experts on site have explained it many times, but let's take an example given by Hu Hongrui, the on-site silver hair propaganda team: "Privacy computing can be understood as an encryption technology, just like when we read" The Eternal Waves ". Telegraph operators use a set of numbers as passwords, corresponding to Chinese characters, to send secret telegrams. Privacy computing is the same principle, encrypting information, but the computational complexity is even greater."
The silver haired preaching group at the Bund Conference is from Shanghai Geriatric University, and they are seen as "marginalized people" in the digital age. Hu Hongrui believes that with the rapid development of digitalization, no one can be alone. "Going to the hospital for medical treatment allows remote registration, and when going out, one can call a taxi on their mobile phone. Life's clothing, food, housing, and transportation have been changed, and elderly people also need to learn new knowledge and technologies."
Today, digitalization changes the general public and empowers thousands of industries. Jiang Guofei, Senior Vice President of Ant Group, said in a speech, "The global economic development is currently facing structural and cyclical challenges. In this era full of uncertainty, we firmly believe that industrial digitization is currently the greatest deterministic opportunity."
Independent and controllable core technology
Three years ago, the US Department of Commerce included a group of Chinese technology companies in the list of export control entities, restricting these companies from purchasing components from the United States. Perhaps only then did Chinese companies truly realize that developing high-level technology requires self-reliance and self-improvement. At this year's Bund Conference, "independent research and development" and "independent controllability" have become high-frequency words of discussion among many people.
However, technological innovation is an "expensive" long-distance race, and investing in real money may not necessarily yield returns, and one may even have to move forward in the dark. Ding Kuiling, an academician of the CAS Member and president of Shanghai Jiaotong University, said in his speech at the main forum of the Bund Conference: "At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is at the historical node of achieving major breakthroughs. Science and technology has never had such a profound impact on the destiny and future of the country, nor has it ever had such a profound impact on the well-being of human life."
In the Bund Convention and Exhibition Area, Ant Group showcases its "technological expertise" and showcases its self-developed core technology achievements through a whole wall, including distributed databases, privacy computing, blockchain, graph computing, green computing, and more. Ant Chain Moss Senior Product Manager He Yuhao told reporters that in the current environment, many customers are more inclined to choose fully localized products, especially key data in finance, government and other fields that are not exported. "No one knows what 'backdoors' are left in the code of overseas technology companies, which is beyond our control."
The autonomous and controllable nature of privacy computing technology enables the exchange of data value rather than the exchange of data itself. Ant Group Chairman and CEO Jing Xiandong said, "I hope that one day in the future, the cost of encrypted computing will be the same as that of plaintext computing today, and the efficiency will be even higher than that of plaintext computing. That era will truly usher in the big explosion of the data age."
