To help accelerate the development of artificial intelligence technologies and ecosystems, the organizing committee of Big Data Expo, the world's first big data themed expo, launched a global AI competition on Jan 19.

The 2018 China International Big Data Fusion Innovation and Artificial Intelligence Global Competition is seeking innovative AI entries that integrate big data and the internet as well as useful applications in the real economy.

Big data plays a key role in AI in that it is the core technology used for data support. The development of AI is intertwined with big data, as big data provides the building blocks for AI to be able to successfully learn and improve.

The organizing committee said it hopes that leading AI enterprises from home and abroad can establish international AI platforms for exchanges and build an ecosystem for big data integration and innovation.

The competition is divided into six sub-contest areas, including China, the United States and Israel, and so far has attracted 1,116 projects from 15 countries and regions, more than 50 top experts and over 100 investors from all over the world in the field of AI.

After more than three months of selection, a total of 24 winning teams passed the semi-final competition from six sub-contest areas and joined the final on Friday in Guiyang, China's "digital valley".

With those resources acting as a bed rock for the competition, the thousands of entrants are expected to benefit from more established research on more than 20 innovative AI projects and an open innovation platform aimed at fostering economic and social development in the sector.

The competition is of great significance to Guizhou in its pursuit of becoming a hub of big data development, speeding its opening up as well its overall competitiveness.

"The rapid development of Guiyang in the field of AI has been recognized by a large number of entrepreneurs in the recent years," Zhang Ruocong, investment director of Sinowisdom investment company in Zhejiang province, said at the 2018 China International Big Data Fusion Innovation and Artificial Intelligence Global Competition's Hangzhou sub-contest.

Zhang added that, as investors, they will choose a better entrepreneurial environment and Guiyang has an obvious advantage in the development of AI.

"Some excellent AI projects were created under the help and policy support from the government, such as the facial recognition technology created under the cooperation with Sensingtech Corporation, and the cloud-based call center built with IT company iFlytek, which will attract more and more investors to Guiyang," he said.

In addition, Intel Corporation, Guiyang and the China AI industry innovation alliance will work together to build an open AI innovation platform and Guiyang will provide data from 10 fields to promote the faster development of enterprises. Many AI teams have expressed willingness to join in the platform before its official operation.

(China Daily 05/25/2018 page24)