Technology giants Alibaba and Baidu won the AI City Challenge, beating competitors from 38 countries. Chinese firms or universities took first and second places in all five categories, writes Wired.
ByteDance, the creator of TikTok, took second place in the competition for detecting car accidents or stalled vehicles on highways.
According to American official John Garofalo, who participated in the contest, the number of US teams this year was much smaller. Organisers said they do not track participants by country.
Stan Caldwell, executive director of Mobility21 (which develops the smart-city platform in Pittsburgh), noted that China invests in research and development relative to GDP at about twice the level of the United States. In his words, this is a key factor in preserving competitiveness.
“We are committed to developing technologies to improve safety, efficiency and resilience. But we selfishly want the technology to develop here and to improve our economy,” Caldwell said.
Representatives from Alibaba and Baidu declined to comment. The successes in solving smart-city problems may contribute to the development of commercial offerings by both companies, say experts.
Alibaba’s City Brain tracks more than 1000 traffic lights in Hangzhou, a city of 10 million people. The pilot program showed the platform reduced crowding of people and helped free lanes for emergency services.
Nvidia founded AI City Challenge in 2017 to spur AI development for real-world scenarios, notably counting vehicles crossing intersections or detecting accidents on highways. In the early years prize-winning teams were from the United States, but already in 2020 Chinese companies won three of the four contests.
Earlier this June, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence unveiled the WuDao 2.0 language model, which is ten times larger than OpenAI’s GPT-3.
In March, China unveiled a five-year plan to accelerate the development of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Previously, the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence published a report with recommendations for business and government on preserving the country’s technological dominance, including vis-à-vis China. In the document the PRC was named the main challenge to U.S. technological supremacy, which threatens economic and military power for the first time since the end of World War II.
In 2020, China also surged to the lead in the number of AI-related scientific publications.
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