AI Ignites Global Digital Trade Growth
Flying cars, humanoid robots capable of opening bottles with bare hands, mixed reality (MR) glasses for real-time translation... These innovative AI technologies that look to the future are presented by Chinese startups. At the third Global Digital Trade Expo (hereinafter referred to as "Digital Trade Expo") held in Hangzhou, a variety of cutting-edge technological achievements were premiered and showcased, vividly interpreting the application scenarios of frontier technologies in digital trade.
The wave of digitalization and intelligence is reshaping the international trade landscape at an unprecedented speed. Digital trade, as a new frontier in the development of international trade, a new battleground for global economic and trade rule competition, and a new engine for the development of new quality productive forces, is an important field in the development of the digital economy.
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With the continuous expansion of the global digital trade scale and the constant broadening of cooperation fields, frontier technologies such as AI large models and robots are deeply integrated. China's digital trade scale ranks third in the world, following the European Union and the United States.
On September 26, the "Global Digital Trade Development Report 2024," jointly compiled by the Digital Trade Expo Organizing Committee and the International Trade Center (ITC), showed that from 2021 to 2023, the global digital trade scale surged from about $6 trillion to over $7 trillion, with an average annual growth rate of 8.8%. The report pointed out that the development of artificial intelligence and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is the core driving force behind the surge in digital trade scale.
According to data from China's Ministry of Commerce, currently, China's digital trade is developing rapidly. In the first half of this year, the scale of China's services that can be digitally delivered for import and export reached 1.42 trillion yuan, with a growth of 3.7%, setting a historical record. At the same time, cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 1.22 trillion yuan, with a growth of 10.5%, also setting a historical record.
Startups have become the main force in the digital ecosystem.
In the process of transforming data elements into productive forces, Chinese scientific and technological innovation companies have become the main force.
At the exhibition site, several data application scenarios closely related to daily life have been implemented. For example, the "Digital Intelligence Green Wave" software exhibited by Daily Interaction has been applied in the traffic road management processes of more than 16 cities. Based on big data and intelligent algorithm modeling, through real-time analysis and optimized control of vehicle driving data, it has achieved an intelligent traffic control strategy where vehicles can pass through multiple signal intersections continuously with green lights when driving at green wave speed.
Staff at the Daily Interaction booth introduced to the First Financial Daily reporter that this innovation not only improves the efficiency of urban traffic but also reduces vehicle emissions and energy consumption. With the application of the Digital Intelligence Green Wave system, urban traffic management has become smarter, more efficient, and greener.
During the 2024 Global Digital Ecology Conference held at the Digital Trade Expo, industry experts and corporate managers focused on hot topics such as AI large models and embodied robots. Ji Chao, Chief Scientist of iFLYTEK Robotics, said that the intelligence emergence of cognitive large models has promoted the development of embodied intelligent robots, especially breakthroughs in the application of large models. He believes that the core of research in this field lies in how to integrate AI into the physical world, rather than being limited to the digital world.Zhang Zhizheng, a general partner at Galaxy Universal Partners, believes that large language models are an important milestone on the path to the reality of general artificial intelligence (AGI). "Large language models provide robots with the ability to understand and reason, not only reducing the barrier to entry for embodied intelligent robots but also greatly expanding their application scenarios."
He Baohong, the head of the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, stated that the rapid development of AI large models has driven significant growth in the computing power market, especially in the field of intelligent computing. He noted that the AI chip ecosystem, both domestic and international, is accelerating its evolution, with domestic GPUs rising rapidly. "AI network technology is becoming a new bottleneck, and it is necessary to break the existing closed network ecosystem." He also mentioned that competition between open-source and closed-source large models is intensifying, with the open-source ecosystem gradually emerging.
China's development of artificial intelligence based on open-source technology has already put pressure on American companies. Clément Delangue, CEO of the AI developer community HuggingFace, previously stated that when China's open-source technology becomes the gold standard, developers around the world will be able to develop on China's technology, and this trend is expected to become the norm.
According to Bain & Company's latest annual Global Technology Report released on September 25, the market, including artificial intelligence-related services and hardware, will grow at an annual rate of 40% to 55% based on last year's $185 billion. This means that by 2027, a market size of $780 billion to $990 billion will be created.
At the same time, China's artificial intelligence startups are increasing rapidly. However, despite the strong "fund-raising" capabilities of Chinese AI companies, the United States still accounts for nearly 80% of the global financing scale.