SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese technology companies, from industrial giants to ambitious startups, converged at the World AI Conference in Shanghai this week to showcase their latest innovations and express strong support for the country’s artificial intelligence sector, even as it faces US sanctions.
More than 150 AI-related products and solutions are being showcased at the conference, with a small number of foreign companies such as Tesla and Qualcomm joining the predominantly Chinese lineup, according to the event organizer.
The conference also served as a launch pad for some companies to showcase their latest AI products.
A notable example is SenseTime, which previously focused on facial recognition technology but recently shifted its attention to generative AI following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.
On Friday, the company unveiled its SenseNova 5.5, its most advanced large language model (LLM), which is being touted as a rival to OpenAI’s GPT-4o in areas like mathematical reasoning.
Despite challenges posed by US sanctions limiting access to advanced chips, many executives at the conference expressed confidence that Chinese companies will continue to thrive in the AI sector.
Zhang Ping’an, an executive in charge of Huawei’s cloud computing unit, told a forum that the idea that a shortage of the most advanced artificial intelligence chips will harm China’s goal of being a leader in AI needs to be “abandoned.”
“No one will deny that we are facing limited computing power in China,” Zhang said. “If we believe that not having the most advanced AI chips means we will be unable to lead in AI, then we need to abandon this view.”
To address the lack of access to cutting-edge chips, Zhang called for more innovation in areas such as cloud computing.
This was echoed by Liu Qingfeng, president of AI company Iflytek, which, like Huawei, has been placed on a sanctions list that prohibits it from purchasing advanced chips from US companies.
On the WeChat account of China’s state news service, Liu said in an interview that many of the LLMs developed by Chinese companies, including Iflytek, have managed to rival OpenAI’s GPT-4.
“We must have our own LLMs that are independently developed and controlled by China, capable of benchmarking against the highest global standards and continually narrowing the gap,” he said.
Some executives, including the CEO of Chinese search engine giant Baidu, Robin Li, have urged the AI industry to shift its focus away from developing LLMs, which require enormous amounts of computing power and AI chips, and instead , prioritize the adoption of AI. .
“Without applications, having only fundamental models, whether open source or closed source, is useless,” Li said at the conference.
(Reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Anil D’Silva)
