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four years ago, The organizers created the International Artificial Intelligence City Challenge to stimulate the development of the city artificial intelligence Suitable for practical scenarios, such as counting the number of cars passing through an intersection or discovering an accident on a highway.
In the first few years, teams representing American companies or universities were among the best in the competition. Last year, Chinese companies won three of the four games.
Last week, the Chinese tech giant Alibaba with Baidu Sweep the AI City Challenge and defeat competitors from nearly 40 countries. Chinese companies or universities rank first and second in all five categories. Douyin The creator ByteDance won second place in a competition to identify vehicles in accidents or stalls from video sources on highways.
The results reflect the Chinese government’s investment in smart cities over the years. There are hundreds of cities in China with pilot projects, and it is estimated that China has half of the world’s smart cities.Pervasive use of edge computing, cameras and sensors 5G Wireless connectivity is expected to accelerate the use of smart cities and surveillance technologies.
The technology demonstrated in these competitions is useful for city planners, but it can also facilitate intrusive surveillance. Counting the number of cars on the road helps municipal engineers understand the resources needed to support roads and bridges, but tracking vehicles through multiple real-time camera sources is a powerful form of surveillance. One of the competitions of the AI City Challenge requires participants to identify the cars in the video; for the first time this year, it is described in Mandarin, such as “a blue jeep driving straight on a winding road behind a red pickup truck”.
This competition comes at a time when technological nationalism and tensions between the United States and the United States have increased. China, And the growing attention to the power of artificial intelligence. In 2019, the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace called China “the main driver of global artificial intelligence surveillance.” The organization stated that China and the United States are the two major exporters of the technology. Last month, the Biden administration expanded the blacklist initiated by the Trump administration to nearly 60 Chinese companies that are prohibited from accepting investment from American financiers.Also in recent weeks, the U.S. Senate passed Competition and Innovation Law, Providing billions of dollars in investment in chips, artificial intelligence, and supply chain reliability. It also called for investment in smart cities, including expanding smart city partnerships with Southeast Asian countries (excluding China).
China’s dominance in the smart city challenge may be marked by an asterisk. John Garofolo, a US government official who participated in the game, said that he noticed that the number of US teams has decreased this year. The organizers stated that they will not track participants by country.
Stan Caldwell is the executive director of Mobility21, a project of Carnegie Mellon University to assist in the development of smart cities in Pittsburgh.Caldwell laments Chinese investment double As the United States’ share of GDP in R&D, he called it the key to maintaining competitiveness in emerging technologies.
He said that American artificial intelligence researchers can also compete for government funding, such as the National Science Foundation’s Citizen Innovation Challenge or the Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge. A report released last month found that a $50 million DOT grant was provided to Columbus, Ohio. Never fully delivered Commitment to building a smart city of the future.
“We want technology to develop because we want to improve safety, efficiency and sustainability. But selfishly, we also want this technology to develop here and improve our economy,” Caldwell said.
Spokespersons for Alibaba and Baidu declined to comment, but the progress of the smart city challenge has helped drive the two companies’ commercial products. Alibaba’s urban brain tracked more than 1,000 traffic lights in the company’s hometown of Hangzhou, a city with a population of 10 million.A pilot project found that the urban brain Reduce congestion And help clear the way for emergency rescuers.
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