China has made real progress in AI. In 2015, China overtook the United States in the number of journal articles related to deep learning, according to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). Deep learning is a branch of AI that teaches machines to learn on their own.
Chinese companies are also catching up. The following three Chinese AI companies are expected to be leaders in their respective fields:
iFlytek
Forget Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa. In China, iFLYTEK’s voice assistant drives home appliances and business software. Headquartered in Anhui, iFLYTEK specializes in speech technology and has won several international competition awards in speech synthesis and translation between Chinese and other languages. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, iFLYTEK also beat Apple in Chinese speech recognition.
These achievements mean that machines may soon be taking over typing and simultaneous interpretation jobs in China. In the 1990s, these tools were far less accurate than human typing. Dialects, slang, and background noise affect the accuracy of the software. However, recent advances have enabled iFLYTEK to develop a cloud-based AI system that translates Chinese into more than a dozen languages, including English, German, and Uyghur. iFLYTEK claims that the accuracy rate of speech recognition is 97%.
iFLYTEK is also working with more than a dozen local governments, police stations and state-owned banks to develop AI-based management and customer service platforms, according to stock exchange filings. Xu Chen, a partner at Shanghai-based venture capital firm Gobi Ventures, said it was an almost impossible market for foreign companies to enter, as the local government was more willing to cooperate with domestic companies for security reasons.
“Iflytek’s focus on Chinese voice technology, coupled with the government’s propensity for protection, the company has a bright future,” Xu Chen said.
The potential market for fully autonomous vehicles in China is huge. According to the Boston Consulting Group, the global market for self-driving cars could be as high as $77 billion by 2035, with China expected to account for 30 percent of total sales. Chinese lawmakers are also pushing for a unified framework for relevant laws, driven by plans to transform the economy from investment and low-end manufacturing to a high-end economy.
China’s complex road conditions may give Baidu an advantage over companies such as Google and Uber. According to the World Health Organization, more than 260,000 people are killed in road accidents each year, so testing self-driving cars on such difficult road conditions could lead to better technology, said Wang Shengjin, a professor at Tsinghua University. .
“The traffic situation in foreign countries is much better than in China, so their self-driving cars don’t have to deal with these sporadic driving problems,” he said. “But in China, researchers have to face these problems from the start.”
