Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

The sledgehammer of the US entity list finally fell on Chinese AI companies.

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced that 28 entities, including eight Chinese companies, will be added to the list of export control entities, including a series of familiar AI companies, such as iFLYTEK, kuangshi, Shangtang and so on.

Compared with the outrage of onlookers when Huawei was added to the list, people already seemed much calmer, and neither the stock market nor the public's attention showed much abnormality. perhaps it is that we have long been accustomed to the "routine" that must be listed before negotiations in the United States. But another important reason is that these companies all say that their overseas business accounts for a small proportion, and they have filed for chips, operating systems, and so on, so the impact will not be great.

When we don't mess ourselves up, we can see more clearly the logic behind a series of American actions.

Why are unicorns of computer vision comparable to basic science and facilities?

On the list of entities in the United States, we can see such a series of names: before iFLYTEK, Kuangshi and Shang Tang, there were computing companies such as dawning of China Science and Technology, and before that, there were a series of companies related to Huawei. Before Huawei, we can also see a series of universities, supercomputing centers, physics / aerospace / aerodynamics and other research institutions.

It is not difficult to find that for China, the purpose of the US entity list is not to gain, but to limit development, or even to destroy existing achievements by breaking the chain of technical cooperation.

From this, it can be found that the United States has already felt the threat from China in this series of fields. This includes basic sciences such as physics, as well as infrastructure such as aviation, supercomputing and 5G, which points directly to future development. It is not difficult to understand that in the context of the great power game, the scientific research strength of both sides is like a hand on the card table, and how the card game affects the world order in the future. What's more, the United States has already realized the sense of crisis of backwardness on 5G, so it will naturally step in to limit it at this time.

By contrast, the selection of AI enterprises this time is quite interesting. Compared with the list of physics, aerospace, these AI companies specializing in computer vision algorithms seem to be too "light", and compared with scientific research institutions and universities, there are many unicorns that have come to the fore in recent years.

It is puzzling to be able to attract such a high degree of attention in the United States, especially in a series of technologies related to AI, such as voice, data, knowledge graph, and so on, why computer vision has become an "eyesore" in the United States?

Where does America's fear of Chinese computer vision come from?

First of all, we have to answer a question: does Chinese computer vision really pose a threat to the United States?

In the face of this question, we can give an affirmative answer from the following levels.

First of all, the innovative strength of Chinese companies in AI technology has been gradually revealed. Take face recognition, which is widely used in computer vision, as an example. According to the 2018 global face recognition algorithm test results of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), only two of the top 11 companies are from the United States, the rest are from China, Russia and Lithuania, of which Chinese companies also swept the top five. On CVPR last year, Apple and Google sponsored a binocular camera image analysis competition under different lighting conditions, and the winner was China University of Defense Science and Technology.

At the same time, China also provides a better soil for the development of computer vision. China not only has a good mobile Internet foundation, so that everyone can use mobile phones to use computer vision technology, the long-standing face collection policy also allows related technologies to enter more official fields. At the same time, China's support for academic research is also relatively greater. Between 2007 and 2017, the number of AI research papers participated in or supported by the Chinese government increased by 400%, but in the United States, the number of papers supported by companies is seven times that of the government.

The rest, there are many details. For example, the near-radical promotion of this technology by Chinese enterprises, as well as the close relationship between computer vision and key areas such as weapons of war and self-driving, as well as language areas with deep ethnic barriers, computer vision is more convenient to spread around the world.

Under such circumstances, it is almost inevitable for the United States to be vigilant and afraid of the development of computer vision in China.

An important step in Chinese computer Vision: breaking Cooperation and becoming a competitor

But before that, the computer vision industry between China and the United States was more of both competition and cooperation.

In the analysis and forecast of the global computer vision market behavior from 2017 to 2024 published by the research institution Science Examiner, Science Examiner listed Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm, Apple, Google and so on as the main participants in the global computer vision market. Science Examiner believes that in this market, chip developers and hardware builders are far more powerful than pure technology developers.

The point put forward by Science Examiner is that algorithmic capabilities can easily converge and become cheaper as a result, and that the key to future industry innovation lies in the improvement of hardware computing power and customized innovation in hardware and software, and the main profit points are likely to appear in hardware. Regardless of whether this view is objective or not and whether it is applicable to the situation in China, just looking at the rise path of Nvidia in recent years, we can find that the popularity of computer vision will certainly bring a huge boost to the chip industry. Similarly, the significance of the US entity list is to cut off the cooperative industrial chain to hinder development.

But the uncertainty is that after Huawei's outage, both China's investment in the chip industry and the vigilance of the company itself have been greatly increased. This is why, after this entity list incident, most enterprises just mention "be prepared" lightly. Just as the same trick cannot be used twice for Saint, it is believed that whether it is looking for a spare tire or otherwise bypassing restrictions to meet the supply of chips, most AI companies already have a response plan.

Especially for the field of computer vision, it is not known what impact the future application of 5G technology will have on chip design due to the mobile computing power of cloud / terminal. I am afraid it is not certain how long the United States can maintain its advantages in chip technology.

Of course, in any case, the inclusion of computer vision companies on the entity list is not positive news. In today's international situation, all we can do is to regard all crises as opportunities.

Although thousands of thousands of people work hard, they blow all the sand before they get to gold. Being seen as an opponent may be an important step towards success.

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