Standing at the crossroads of AI large-scale models: on-site visits to the 2023 Service Trade Fair

Original source: Industrialist

Author: Sihang

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI‌

After the end of summer, Beijing still retains a little bit of summer heat. From September 2 to 6, the China National Convention Center and Shougang Park had their own excitement. This year's Service Trade Fair (hereinafter referred to as "Service Trade Fair"), together with previous years, held exhibitions in the National Convention Center and Shougang Park in the form of "one meeting and two venues".

In the venue with a total scale of 155,000 square meters, it covers from national exhibitors to regional exhibitors, from smart hardware to digital solutions, from drone delivery to robot dogs, and other digital achievements are displayed in the National Convention Center . Another venue, Shougang Park, also presents nine thematic exhibitions including telecommunications, computer and information services, financial services, cultural tourism services, and education services.

The outside world can feel the excitement of the Service Trade Fair from a set of data: **The five-day conference has more than 2,400 exhibitors, including more than 500 of the world's top 500 companies and industry leaders. **

In such a grand exhibition, exhibitors from all over the world gather together. Some of the tourists who come here are companies looking for solutions that suit themselves;** the other part are pure tourists who want to experience the most advanced hard technology and get a glimpse of China's digitalization process. **

**From face-scanning recruitment machines aimed at the blue-collar market to large-scale life service data monitoring platforms displayed to government and enterprises, all of them show tourists that domestic digital services have penetrated into all aspects of personal life and business management. ** For example, Huawei uses the Pangu meteorological model to predict extreme weather; Meituan uses the life service industry data operation platform to present the whole picture of the life service industry in different cities.

A New Digital Narrative Throughout the World

Not far from the entrance of the National Convention Center, you can already feel a bit of exotic style. These unfamiliar faces may be exhibitors, service staff, or tourists. Entering the venue, the international atmosphere was even more intense. From Arab countries to European and American countries, the "circle of friends" of overseas exhibitors continued to expand. Even Paddington Bear from the UK came to liven up the atmosphere of the Service Trade Fair, attracting crowds of spectators.

Entering from the E4 exhibition hall of the National Convention Center, the first thing that catches the eye is the face-swiping payment machine launched by Alipay in August this year. Industrialists learned from on-site personnel that this machine is launched for the labor-intensive blue-collar market and is very friendly to some blue-collar workers who are unfamiliar with information technology. Candidates do not need to fill in their resumes, they only need to swipe their faces to complete the registration. This is a solution jointly launched by No. 1 Workplace and Alipay.

"At present, this machine has been promoted to Hangzhou West Railway Station and Jinhua, Zhejiang. Its main application scenarios include labor dispatch markets and local employment centers. The current purchase price of the enterprise is 3999, which is the price of the hardware machine; wait until the second year There is a software service fee of 2,000 yuan." The staff of No. 1 workplace introduced to the industrialist.

Face recognition job search machine jointly launched by No. 1 Workplace and Alipay

In addition, in Alipay's exhibition hall, in addition to this job-seeking machine, it also shows Alipay's digital layout and achievements in the service industry. Alipay's digital platform has empowered seven major life service scenarios, including transportation, cultural tourism attractions, and digital retail, from product technical capabilities to digital operation capabilities to the platform's "atomic capabilities." At present, Alipay has increased its product transaction volume by 49.2% by building industry solutions with 12,000 service providers.

Digital achievements of Alipay service industry

Companies that also showcased their urban digitalization achievements include Meituan and JD.com. Meituan’s card is Meituan’s government-enterprise communication and life service industry data operation platform. Local governments can see the data collected by Meituan on it, but they “just look at it and don’t use it”; JD Cloud’s card is smart city operation system that can detect data from public systems.

Meituan Government and Enterprise Communication

JD Cloud Smart City Operating System

In addition, for government office scenarios, JD Cloud has also developed a smart office platform. For example, the comprehensive office platform "Beijing Office" launched for Beijing.

Beijing Comprehensive Office Platform 2.0 "Beijing Office"

At the Service Trade Fair, in order to help small and medium-sized enterprises go overseas with high quality, Alibaba International Station unveiled a new card - full-link foreign trade AI products. Through this product, small, medium and micro enterprises can quickly complete processes such as product selection, procurement, sales, logistics, customs declaration, payment collection, foreign exchange settlement and tax refund. In the past, this was a complex business that only large companies could handle.

Alibaba International Station’s full-link foreign trade AI products

At this CIFTIS, Guizhou, the “birthplace of the big data industry”, is a particularly eye-catching presence. As one of the two guest provinces at the 2023 Service Trade Fair, Guizhou focused on four themes: digital trade, tourism and health care, national culture, and engineering construction, focusing on demonstrating new technologies and applications in information technology services, artificial intelligence, cloud services, etc. Scenes.

Among them, more than 20 companies including Huawei Cloud, Guizhou Baishan Cloud Technology, Cloud Guizhou, Manbang Logistics, and E-commerce Cloud were present.

The model of Pingtang Bridge in the Guizhou Provincial Exhibition Hall

Huawei Cloud and Guiyang Guian join hands

In terms of digital services, Internet companies such as JD.com, Meituan, and Alibaba are all vying to flex their muscles. **Behind digital services, another link that plays a key role is logistics. **

At the venue, you can see that China Logistics and Cainiao Logistics have demonstrated their supply chain layout and solutions for various industries. Taking Cainiao Logistics as an example, Cainiao is accelerating the construction of a world-leading smart logistics network. Through continuous investment in construction, Cainiao has established an end-to-end logistics network capability relying on international hubs, trunk lines, terminals, and customs services. In addition, Cainiao's fast delivery service not only covers domestic towns, but also builds overseas logistics lines, such as the Cainiao UK line.

Cainiao logistics business layout

After the metaverse, the big model becomes the protagonist

"I have worked in Shougang for 35 years, and I have a very deep affection for this place. Because my previous job was related to automation, I pay close attention to cutting-edge technology products. I just went to experience VR and the Metaverse, and walked around Dunhuang and Gulangyu Island . Technology has advanced too much." A retiree who once worked in Shougang Park told the industrialist when visiting the exhibition area.

The biggest difference between Shougang Park and the National Convention Center lies not in the number of exhibition halls or in the theme, but in the different groups of tourists. **Shougang Park has gathered more older generation workers who have worked here, and they all have deep feelings for this place. Every year, these people come to Shougang Park to experience the changes in technology. **

In addition to the Metaverse and VR exhibitions, this year’s Shougang Park has something new – large models.

First of all, in the exhibition hall of Going out to ask, the most eye-catching one is the AIGC art exhibition, which not only has generative photos, but also dialogue videos generated with AIGC. Going further inside, you can see the large-scale model product that I went out to ask for——Sequence Monkey. At the scene, the staff demonstrated to the audience the intelligent Q&A of the enterprise CoPilot and the AI writing ability of Wonderful Text.

Go out and ask AIGC Art Exhibition

Not far away from Gomowen, APUS, a global artificial intelligence company, also appeared in the field of vision. This is the first time APUS has appeared at the Service Trade Fair.

You can see the Tianyan large model (the AiLMe large model) in the APUS exhibition hall. Established in 2014, APUS has been serving enterprises at home and abroad. Therefore, APUS established a smart computing center in Singapore very early. In June this year, the large model of Tianyan officially landed in Zhengzhou, Henan, and generated industry solutions in various fields such as medical care, government affairs, and education. According to the on-site staff, APUS has cooperated with Henan Children's Hospital.

APUS Tianyan large model

In addition, the three major operators also appeared in the ICT exhibition hall one after another. China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile have demonstrated digital infrastructure, intelligent computing platforms, and computing power centers. Taking China Telecom as an example, China Telecom unveiled a large model of TeleChat independently developed. At the venue, the staff introduced the solution of the large model and the model pool to the audience.

China Telecom TeleChat large model

In addition to AI companies and operators, Zhipu AI and Yunlu Technology have also produced their own large-scale model products. **However, whether the new thing of large models will bring more practical value to the industry, or whether it will become a temporary trend like the Metaverse, only time will give the answer. **However, judging from the on-site effect, it is worth looking forward to.

Postscript

The five-day Service Trade Fair came to an end on the afternoon of the 6th, but maybe those retirees who have worked in Shougang Park for 30 to 40 years still cannot calm down for a long time. ** In the past ten years, digitalization has become a new yardstick for demonstrating the resilience of a country's economy. **

Behind the successful conclusion of the 2023 Service Trade Fair, a report card has to be mentioned. According to official data, "In 2022, my country's total service import and export volume will be nearly 6 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%, and the scale will hit a record high , ranking second in the world for 9 consecutive years.”

In the context of digitalization becoming a new opportunity in the service trade market, some new questions are still waiting for answers.

Although digital development helps small, medium and micro enterprises to complete some procedures that only large enterprises and large organizations could complete in the past, but if these digital technologies are truly used and penetrated into their industries, some problems will also be really hindered. in front of them.

The first is the issue of data quality. ** Any digital technology needs a high-quality data base as a support. **At present, not only the quality of the data is a problem, some data are also restricted by privacy and security and cannot be made public.

Second, the current digitalization has penetrated all aspects of life and management, but there are still weak links in some places, which requires dual guidance from the government and the market.

**The last big issue is the threat of cybersecurity. **This problem has existed since the beginning of the Internet era. Although it has been partially overcome today, the advent of big models has further exacerbated the challenges posed by network security.

I believe that as these problems are solved step by step in the future, there will be more and bigger narratives in my country’s digital development.