China Aims to Get the Jump on AI Standardization
China has just released its “Artificial Intelligence Standardization White Paper.” The 98-page document was edited by the China Electronics Standardization Institute under the guidance of the National Standardization Management Committee Second Ministry of Industry (国家标准化管理委员会工业二部). Some 30 research institutes, education institutes, and AI companies contributed to the paper, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Toutiao.
Concurrently, China also announced the formation of the National Artificial Intelligence Standardization Group and Expert Advisory Group, which will oversee planning and deployment of the nation’s AI development. Prior to the 19th National Congress of the Party, the Chinese government had laid out its blueprint for further AI integration with the economy, following up with an intensive review on “Standardization of AI Helps Industry Development” and a “Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the Development of New Generation of AI Industry.”
The new “AI Standardization White Paper” stresses the importance of establishing standards for the rapid development of AI: “At present while China’s deployment of AI-related products and services is expanding, there is also the issue of a lack of standards. AI is reaching into many areas, and while some subfields are standardized, their dispersed standards do not form systemic standards.”
The paper begins: “AI is a prospering new industry. Standardization is at an early stage. China is at the same starting line as all other countries and there is an opportunity now for rapid breakthrough. With fast action plans, China can either seize the commanding heights of innovation standardization, or else miss the opportunity. There is an urgent need to seize opportunities, accelerate research on AI deployment in industry, and systematically review and establish a unified and comprehensive set of standardization.”
The document comprises six subsections expounding on AI history, key technologies, industry trends, ethical issues; pinpointing international and domestic AI standards, and detailing standard frameworks and their components.
The paper’s appended Standardization Schedule categorizes 200 technologies pertaining to the field of AI.
The paper also cites ten real-world AI commercial application cases:
- Alibaba city brain for traffic optimization in transportation
- Tencent AI in clinical medical imaging diagnosis
- iFlytek voice assessment in English listening and speaking entry exams
- Huawei supply chain optimization in manufacturing
- Baidu machine translation
- iBot human-computer interaction for customer service
- Kaize Technology crowd identification in public security
- iQiyi video recommendation and recommendation for content marketing
- Sensetime large-scale face recognition and OCR identification
- Haier industry internet of things in manufacturing
Interested readers can download the paper here: http://www.cesi.ac.cn/images/editor/20180118/20180118090346205.pdf
Journalist: Meghan Han | Editor: Michael Sarazen
