China News Service, Hangzhou, October 12 (Bao Mengni) Recently, Zhejiang has been extremely busy surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). The finals of the World Artificial Intelligence Open Source Competition, the Zhejiang Station of the First Intelligent Robot Application Skills Exhibition, and the Fifth Global Digital Trade Expo were successively held in the province.
Currently, AI has become the strategic focus of development in various places. Among them, how to understand the three key propositions of basic capabilities, application implementation, and open cooperation have become the core issues that determine the geometry of competitive advantage. Zhejiang regards AI as the "most distinctive symbol and core support" for the construction of innovative Zhejiang, and clearly proposes to create a global artificial intelligence innovation and development highland. Through the above-mentioned competition, exhibition, and meeting, we can see the province’s path and confidence in answering the above three “questions” and “stuck positions” in the AI competition.
Answering the question of innovation: Why do "potential stocks" emerge?
At the World Open Source Artificial Intelligence Competition (GOAI) finals, 70 "potential stock" projects stood out from entries from 91 countries and regions around the world, focusing on current cutting-edge directions of AI innovation such as Agent infrastructure, industry applications, AI-empowered scientific research, and embodied intelligence, demonstrating the infinite possibilities of innovation.
Mazen Gilbert, a global open source partner of GOAI and executive director of the Intelligent AI Foundation, said that Zhejiang is gathering global AI innovation forces through competitions, industry and community platforms, providing more opportunities for developer exchanges, technology verification and the growth of young talents, and continuing to deepen its connection with the global open source ecosystem.
Hosting this event is a reflection of Zhejiang’s continued efforts to strengthen its basic capabilities in artificial intelligence.
Taking the model as the source innovation carrier of AI as an example, Tongyi Qianwen and DeepSeek produced in Zhejiang lead the innovation and development of global open source models. Currently, the province has 82 generative artificial intelligence services registered, ranking fourth in the country.
In order to maintain its leadership, Zhejiang has stepped up its efforts in recent years, focusing on computing power, data and other elements to provide innovators with rich support.
At the provincial level, the province strives for a national artificial intelligence voucher subsidy of 290 million yuan, accounting for nearly 50% of the total amount issued nationwide. It has also built a "Zheli Suan" computing power monitoring and dispatching platform to improve the comprehensive use efficiency of computing power through monitoring indicators such as electricity, and promote the inclusive sharing and efficient use of computing power resources.
At the city level, Hangzhou is working hard to create more than 20 high-quality data sets this year and next, striving to put the scale of intelligent computing into the market to reach 100EFlops, and cultivate more than 10 large vertical application models with major industry influence; Wenzhou has launched an intelligent data annotation platform, covering multi-modal, medical imaging, industrial visual annotation, and processing raw data into high-quality annotated data sets that can be directly used for large model training...
Looking at a longer timeline, Zhejiang has made it clear that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, Zhejiang will "coordinate the construction of basic projects for computing power data models", strengthen the research and development of large language models, multi-modal models, etc., support the development and application of vertical and industry models, and provide the market with a low-cost, easy-to-use model development environment, and support the development and deployment of a batch of effective industry models and special models in a market-oriented manner.
Answer the application question: How to move towards thousands of industries?
AI is not simply a cutting-edge technology concept. How to empower thousands of industries depends on whether technological dividends can be transformed into industrial competitiveness, governance efficiency and people's livelihood and well-being.
At the Zhejiang Station of the First Intelligent Robot Application Skills Exhibition held in Yuhang, Hangzhou, more than 300 robots demonstrated their respective skills. Among them, the performance of robots produced in Zhejiang is particularly eye-catching. They have demonstrated industry-leading application depth in manufacturing, medical care, emergency rescue and other fields.
The competition in embodied intelligence has shifted from “technical show-off” to “scenario repurchase”. In recent years, Zhejiang has been at the forefront of the country in the industrialization of AI technology. In addition to the above-mentioned activities, there are many such manifestations: at the country's first intelligent long-term care station in Shaoxing, robot nannies have officially "taken on duty"; in Hangzhou, the country's first traffic management robot squadron has achieved regular duty; at Ningbo Zhoushan Port, robot dogs flexibly travel between containers to accurately check box numbers and seals...
Yang Aixi, deputy director and professor of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center of Zhejiang University College of Engineering, said that application scenarios are one of Zhejiang’s first-mover advantages in the field of embodied intelligence. Relying on the foundation of the private economy, Zhejiang can provide a full spectrum of real scenarios from industry to home services for embodied intelligent robots.
In addition to the "innate advantages" of the private economy, the province's leading position also benefits from multi-dimensional comprehensive efforts in policy guidance, path opening, and scenario provision.
In terms of policy orientation, for example, the "Zhejiang Province's "15th Five-Year Plan" Digital Economy and Digital Infrastructure Plan" clearly proposes to promote artificial intelligence to empower science and technology, industrial development, and people's livelihood and welfare; the "Zhejiang Province Action Plan to Promote the Development of Artificial Intelligence Terminal Industry" proposes to support the large-scale application of multi-dimensional complex scenarios such as special environment operations, home intelligent services, industrial flexible manufacturing, and medical precision assistance.
In order to open up the path for robots to move from the laboratory to actual scenarios, Zhejiang has intensively laid out robot "testing grounds": the National Artificial Intelligence Application Pilot Base (Embodied Intelligence) has built a public technical service platform with computing power guarantee, data openness, model services, and scene verification as the core; the National Robot Testing and Assessment Center (Headquarters ) Zhejiang Testing Center has deployed professional test platforms for hearing, vision, EMC 10-meter anechoic chamber, MTBF and other professional test platforms to solve the key problems of "stable construction, accurate measurement and fair evaluation" of robots; Zhejiang Embodied Intelligent Data Operation Co., Ltd. was established as the main operator of provincial embodied intelligent data infrastructure and data products...
In terms of scenario supply, Zhejiang has released a list of "artificial intelligence +" scenarios in the field of state-owned enterprises, covering eight key areas such as transportation, manufacturing, services, and energy. Cities, districts and counties across the province have also released similar lists, making each city the "best testing ground" for AI.
Answering the open question: How to connect the world?
The development of artificial intelligence has never been a one-region effort. Only global collaboration and open sharing can continue to promote technological progress.
This year’s fifth Global Digital Trade Expo delivered a brilliant answer: the number of overseas pavilions exceeded the total number of previous years, and more than 12,000 international merchants participated in the exhibition; the China headquarters of the Arab Digital Economic Alliance settled in Hangzhou, and the Kenya (China) International Investment Cooperation Center settled in the “Belt and Road” China-Africa Cooperation Industrial Park...
Focusing on promoting the development of AI, Zhejiang is using the Global Digital Trade Fair as a bridge to continuously strengthen its linkage with the world. Datuk Indira Abu Bakar, Director-General of the Malaysian External Trade Development Council, said, "More than 2,500 Malaysian small, medium and micro enterprises have benefited from our cooperation with the Zhejiang e-commerce platform. We are also deepening this cooperation and exploring how to use artificial intelligence technology to better empower merchants."
Judging from the numbers, promoting open and shared AI has become a distinct development trend in Zhejiang. From January to August this year, the province’s digital trade import and export volume reached 662.06 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%.
Focusing on answering the question of AI openness, Zhejiang promotes the physical construction of artificial intelligence open source communities; supports Zhejiang Lab, Alibaba Cloud and other institutions to deeply participate in the formulation of international and domestic open source standards; supports artificial intelligence terminal companies to go overseas with their products, participate in key domestic and foreign exhibitions, and deeply integrate into the global industrial chain.
In the process of "linking" the world with AI, a large number of global enterprises in Zhejiang also play the role of "main force". For example, it delivers embodied intelligent robot solutions to energy and security scenarios in Europe and the Middle East; it exports localized AI computing services and large model solutions to Southeast Asia and other markets, providing underlying technical support for the digital transformation of traditional industries in many countries.
"With the joint efforts of the government and the market, Zhejiang has formed trade channels that are rooted domestically and reach the world, providing channels and customer access paths for AI companies to explore the global market." said Lan Jianping, deputy director of the Zhejiang Provincial Development Planning Institute.
Competitions, exhibitions, and conferences are just short-term events, reflecting Zhejiang’s systematic and sustained efforts around the three dimensions of AI innovation, application, and openness. With such provincial practices to continuously consolidate the foundation for AI development, the province is getting closer and closer to the goal of becoming a global artificial intelligence innovation and development highland.
