“Long before Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Chinese navigator Zheng He traveled through the south and westward maritime routes in the Indian Ocean and established relations with more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
― Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order
In May 2017, AlphaGO defeated Ke Jie. This was one of the most noticed news in the world of AI research. AlphaGo is an AI based game, developed by the DeepMind, based on the ancient Go game of China. Go game is considered as an abstract strategic board game between two players with approximately 2.1x 10170 moves. Game was conceived as a game of strategy in China about 2500 years ago and is considered as more complex than Chess.
The defeat of a professional player, using human intelligence and problem solving skill to a AI enabled antagonist showcases the accuracy and acuteness of the artificial brain over the natural intelligence.
The entire game was deeply observed by the Chinese Go players and followers as well as Government officials. The defeat of Ke Jie was taken very seriously by the policy makers in China because it was strong challenge for them by their “American Counter Part”. The heat of Silicon Valley tech in-corporations was also forcibly experienced by the world technology bazar.
What was Chinese Government‘s Reaction towards AlphaGO game defeat? The following summarises the repercussions and initiatives taken by the Chinese Government within a few months of the event.
- Less than two months the Chinese Government issued an ambitious plan to develop and build AI capabilities.
- It called for greater funding, policy support and strong nation-wide coordination for AI Development.
- It set clear benchmarks for progress by 2025.
- It projected that by 2030 China would become the centre of global innovation in AI and its application.
- By 2017 Chinese venture-capital investors had already responded to the call and invested in start-ups. The investment was more than 48% of all AI venture funding globally, surpassing the USA for the first time.
- The State Council of China published its doctrine “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Plan” during July 2017. It was a public disclosure of AI Policy adopted by the Chinese government to enhance the AI Industry with investments up to US $ 150 Billion in the time frame of 2030.
- According to PricewaterhouseCoopers articulations, the Global Economy is going to add US$15 Trillion through the AI Industry within next 10 years. It is forecasted that the exclusive market share by the Chinese AI economy would be US $ 7 Trillion up to 2030.
The Construction of AI City: The new Game Plan of Beijing
The huge Venture-Capital Ecosystem, AI-Start-up Gladiators, High-Risk taking entrepreneur working together with the Chinese Government, Industrialist and Academic Institutions prepared a tripod based on mutual understanding and support to each other to create new innovative AI based ecosystem in country. The Xiongoan City is the new definition of the future AI based urbanization, conceived by the Chinese policy makers to establish their knowledge supremacy and to win the AI technology race of the future.
City Xiongoan is an SEZ (Special Economic Zone) conceptualized for AI. It is the first AI-City of the world. The AI-City is a dream project of President Xi Jinping and was announced by the President during spring 2017. The geographical location of Xiongoan is 100 km southwest from Beijing. The entire project is administratively controlled by the Secretariat of Hebei province whose mandate was to create a low-carbon, intelligent and global future techno city with 70% green areas and the entire city must be in harmony of nature.
For the successful construction of the AI City, local Hebei Administration signed an agreement with Baidu Inc Dec 2017. Baidu is a Chinese Global Tech-Giant, famous for its Internet business and innovative AI products. After Google was blocked by the Chinese Government, Baidu was the next choice of the internet users of China. Presently more that 90% searches in China are ascribed to Baidu. Beside the searching business, Baidu is also involved in developing AI products and has proved themselves as one of the major Global AI giants. Baidu is giving tough competition in the domain of ML (Machine Learning), Deep Learning and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to their Western counter parts.
The intersection between Baidu and Hebei for the urban project Xiongoan was based on following domain support by Baidu:-
- Structured knowledge support in AI
- Big-Data
- Cloud Technology Support
- Unmanned Vehicles
- Smart City (Transport, Public Services, Education, Environment)
- Smart Traffic
The Xiongoan city master plan is emebedded in a the concept of providing a strong ecological-protection with mega green development supported with high-definition engineering. Planners want to achieve balanced urban development encapsulated with improved public services based on advanced algorithms. Planners focused on optimum water management and other environmental issues of the future city. The effective environmental engineering of the city by the deployment of cognitive computing is one of the major determination of Chinese Policy makers.
The future AI city project was executed in a phased manner with a resilient approach. Under first phase the Xiongoan administration marked 100 Square kilometer for the development. In the initial stage policy makers also signed a strategic agreement with Alibaba for the joint development of city’s ‘brain’ based on AI. The entire city is based on Cloud Infrastructure to provide enormous seamless computing power and resources to habitants. Unique integration of IoT (Internet of Things) with the design of city could provide momentum for the smart handling of consumption, production, transportation and other supply chain activities of the city .
The concept of such AI powered cities present the possibility of future cities based on “Go-Green” which are far ahead than the smart cities being planned today in India. Xiongoan example should be studied by planners entrusted with designing cities of the future.
Reference
- https://www.chinadaily.com.cn
- https://isdp.eu/publication/xiongan-a-new-model-of-digital-chinese-urbanism/
- https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/AI_Superpowers/KdVHDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ai+superpowers+china+silicon+valley+and+the+new+world+order&printsec=frontcover
- https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/3027415/president-xis-dream-city-xiongan-pushes-ahead-smart-city
- https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/a-brave-new-world-xis-xiongan/
About the author: Prof. Amit Das is alumni of BHU with 18 years of teaching experience in higher education and research. Presently heading the Centre for AI & Machine Learning, The ICFAI University Dehradun. His area of research is AI, Cognitive Computing and Nature based Computing. Prof. Das also takes interest to deploy such technologies in the field of Defence, National Security & Digital Diplomacy. He is constant China Watcher for Strategic AI & Technological warfare.
This is a brilliantly articulated post on a very strategic initiative of China that is worth emulating by rest of the world particularly by us. Thanks so much Amit for bring it to us in a simple language that we can follow.