More than 600 universities and 13,000 teams joined in this contest, why is this AI innovation contest sweeping the world?

At present, global technology innovation high competition is increasingly fierce, and artificial intelligence is an important engine for a new round of scientific and technological reform, which will have become the future core competitiveness.

In March 2021, “The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Outline for the Long-Range Objective Through the Year 2035 of the People’s Republic of China” was officially released. There are six times references to “Artificial Intelligence”, and “Cutting-edge foundational theory breakthroughs, research and development of dedicated chips, deep learning framework and other open-source algorithm platform construction, learning reasoning and decision-making, image graphics, voice and video, natural language recognition processing and other areas of innovation” as a new generation of artificial intelligence in the field of key directions.

After a decade of high-speed growth, AI technology has penetrated into all aspects of the industry, including Intelligent Transportation System, Intelligent Logistics System, Intelligent Energy System, Wise Information Technology of Medical and other fields will also take advantage of digital industrialization, and usher in rapid development in the next stage. China’s AI industry is expected to exceed 450 billion yuan by 2025, becoming the world’s largest AI market in the future.

In order to further the application and innovation of AI technology, promote the academic exchanges and personnel training in the field of AI, and create a talent exchange platform and industrial ecosphere for AI, Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence and the People’s Government of Yuhang District, Hangzhou launched the first Global AI Innovation Contest, and received active participation and support from the leading enterprises such as Alibaba Cloud, OPPO. Alibaba Cloud Tianchi provided a platform and integration support for the contest as the official platform of this competition.

Being launched earlier this year, the Global AI Innovation Contest has attracted 13,923 teams from 21 countries and regions, including 15,050 competitors from 528 local universities and 136 overseas universities, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, University of Michigan, Purdue University and Nanyang Technological University, with over 30% of the participating teams from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as well as the overseas.

The contest has started at the beginning of this year. At present, the preliminary stage has ended, and will start the rematch on April 15th, and the finals will be held in the same period of Hangzhou at the end of May.

Why is this contest getting so much attention from the AI academia and the industry? On April 10th, at the 10th Anniversary of Wu Wenjun AI Science & Technology Award and China AI Industry's Annual Meeting (CAIIAM 2020), Dai Qionghai, the Chairman of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence highlighted the “2021 most noteworthy AI innovation contest”.

Academician Dai Qionghai: Basing on the International Vision, Looking for the Masters.

Wu Wenjun AI Science & Technology Award is sponsored by Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, which is named after Mr. Wu Wenjun, the people’s scientist, pioneer and leader of Chinese intelligent scientific research, winner of the first State Preeminent Science and Technology Award and Honorary President of the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. The award was officially launched in 2011 with the approval of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China.

To date, Wu Wenjun AI Science & Technology Award has successfully held ten review and commendation activities, with high reputation and influence in our country’s intelligent science and technology area, is known as “The Highest Award of China Intelligent Science & Technology” and “The Crown Jewels of artificial intelligence”.

This is the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and it is also the 40th year of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. At the 10th Anniversary of Wu Wenjun AI Science & Technology Award and China AI Industry’s Annual Meeting (CAIIAM 2020), Academician Dai Qionghai said: “Artificial intelligence is regarded as a national strategic scientific and technological force in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, as well as important strengthening field and a key construction direction of new infrastructure. Thus, we must take ideological innovation, technological innovation and industrial implementation as our own responsibility, and write academic research and paper achievements into the motherland.”

Academician Dai mentioned that there is no separation between the cultivation of AI talents and the construction of industrial ecosystem. The ability and vision of technical talents directly determine the intelligent transformation in its depth and height. As a national academy in the field of AI and an academic community covering the national production, learning and research, Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI) has achieved positive results on the level this year.

Global AI innovation contest provides 1.5 million prizes to look for the masters and it is open to the whole world based on international perspective. It has set up three tracks including medical imaging report abnormal detection, PANDA large scene multi-object detection and tracking, and Xiaobu assistant dialogue short text semantic matching, which focus on the application and innovation of cutting-edge technology and promotes academic exchanges, talent training, technological development and cross-industry application and integration in the field of AI.

“AI Youth Talk”: How to Brave the Wind and Waves in the AI Era?

In his speech, Academician Dai also emphasizes AI Youth Talk, which is a series of activities organized by contest organizer to increase the awareness of young developers on AI. Well-known young scholars would be invited in these activities to discuss hot topics in theoretical research and application practices, which further expands the impact of the contest and social attention.

The “AI Youth Talk” activities are mainly divided into 4 phases. Based on contest themes, a number of guests are invited to conduct technological interpretations and round-table discussion on NLP, CV and current competition.

The theme of the first AI Youth Talk is “Interpretation of the Global AI Innovation Contest Semi-final Platform”. Two technical experts, Chen Mosha, senior algorithm expert, and Sheng Lele, technical expert, from Alibaba Cloud Tianchi platform will do two exciting theme reports sharing about “AI Cornerstone Construction: Data Set” and “Tianchi Competition Platform TCC Technology Decryption”, the present guests will also share the relevant topics of “Tianchi Seniors’ Growth Sharing and Business Thinking” in the discussion session.

The topic of the second AI Youth Talk is “How to Pick the NLP Pearl in the AI Crown”. Two experts in the field of natural language processing are invited, who are Huang Minlie, associate professor and doctoral supervisor of the Development Computer Science of Tsinghua University, and Zhang Yue, a tenured associate professor of West Lake University. The topics of the two experts are” Next Generation Dialogue System” and “Thinking about the Challenges of Open Domain Dialogue”, and they will have a roundtable discussion on “The Matter of Letting Machines Speak Human Languages”.

The theme of the third AI Youth Talk is “Computer Vision in the Next Five Years”. Two young scholars in the field of computer vision will be invited, who are Ji Rongrong, a professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Xiamen University, and Lin Weiyao, a professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Electronics and Information, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Two experts made technology sharing and roundtable discussion. The themes shared by the two scholars are “Compression and Acceleration of Neural Networks” and “Comprehension and Compression of Visual Objects”.

The theme of the fourth issue of AI Youth Talk is “Roundtable Dialogue: AI Youth Riding the Wind and Waves”. Wu Fei, a distinguished professor and doctoral tutor of Zhejiang University, and Jia Yangqing, vice president of Alibaba Group, were invited. Based on their own AI research and industry experience, the two guests will provide young students and developers with some suggestions for learning AI and personal development around the current trends in AI technology and industry development.

The next decade of AI has officially begun, and new storms have emerged. How can we stand still? If you want to rush forward in the big river of AI, remember to listen to the young experts and brave the wind and the waves in the AI era.

The first live streaming of “AI Youth Talk” will officially open at 19:30 on April 19, Beijing time. Welcome to watch.

Contest Official Website: https://gaiic.tianchi.aliyun.com/