Chinese AI companies gather in Shanghai

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Chinese tech companies ranging from industry giants to ambitious startups gathered to showcase their latest innovations and express strong support for the country’s AI sector despite US sanctions.

Notable launches include SenseTime’s new product, SenseNova 5.5, an advanced extended language model (LLM) positioned as a competitor to OpenAI’s GPT-4, particularly in areas such as mathematical reasoning. SenseTime, which previously focused on facial recognition technology, has pivoted to generative AI following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.

The event saw the exhibition of over 150 AI-related products and solutions. While the conference was mainly dedicated to Chinese companies, it also welcomed some foreign participants, such as Tesla and Qualcomm. This year, WAIC served as an important platform for the launch of new AI products, highlighting the resilience and innovation within China’s tech industry.

Robin Li, CEO of Chinese search engine giant Baidu, urged the AI ​​industry to shift its focus from producing LLMs, which involve massive computing power and AI chips, to prioritizing the application of AI. At the conference, Li said, “Without applications, having only fundamental models, whether open source or closed source, is useless.”

Despite the obstacles posed by U.S. sanctions that hamper access to advanced chips, executives at the conference expressed confidence in the continued growth of China’s AI sector. Zhang Ping’an, head of Huawei’s cloud computing unit, stressed that the idea that a shortage of advanced AI chips would hamper China’s leadership in the field should be “abandoned.” Zhang called for increased innovation in areas such as cloud computing to overcome these challenges.

Liu Qingfeng, chairman of artificial intelligence company Iflytek, supported this view by stressing the importance of developing its own LLMs to compete with global standards. Liu pointed out that many LLMs developed by China, including those of Iflytek, have managed to match the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4. He stressed the need for China to independently develop and control AI models to continuously narrow the gap with its international counterparts.