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Securities Times reporter Zhou Chunmei

Artificial intelligence (AI), as an important engine for developing new productivity and a strategic technology leading the future, has become a "battlefield" in urban competition.

Recently, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have all issued policy documents and development measures related to artificial intelligence. On July 26, Beijing issued the "Beijing Action Plan to Promote "Artificial Intelligence +" (2024-2025)", proposing to "take the lead in building an AI native city and promote the city to become an innovation source and application highland of artificial intelligence with global influence". On July 30, Shenzhen issued the "Shenzhen Action Plan to Accelerate the Creation of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer City", which proposed 22 measures from 6 aspects to promote the integration and innovation of artificial intelligence technology, application scenarios and business models. On the same day, Shanghai issued several opinions on further promoting the high-quality development of Shanghai's venture capital, which clearly mentioned the need to continue to increase support for the three leading industries of integrated circuits, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence.

In the new arena of artificial intelligence where many cities are competing, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have firmly taken the lead due to their advantages in industrial foundation, technological level and talent density.

"Beijing is doing things from 0 to 1, Shanghai is doing things from 1 to 10, and Shenzhen is doing things from 10 to 100." When talking about the differentiated positioning of the three cities in the field of artificial intelligence, an industry insider who has been deeply involved in the industry for many years analyzed that the three cities have their own characteristics in the layout of artificial intelligence, and should build artificial intelligence industry highland according to their respective resource endowments and industrial advantages and local conditions.

Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen remain in the first echelon

Walking into the Broad Data Shenzhen Qianhai Intelligent Computing Center, the reporter saw rows of neatly arranged server cabinets. Through these cabinets, massive amounts of data are stored, calculated, and transmitted, providing powerful computing power support for thousands of industries. Li Ya, vice president of Broad Data, told the Securities Times reporter that as a digital ecological infrastructure service provider, Broad Data can provide "move-in" computing power services for customers in different industries.

"Through computing power infrastructure, AI computing power can be made into a resource like water and electricity, and can be called flexibly and on demand," said Li Ya. According to reports, the overall planned capacity of Boda Data Shenzhen Qianhai Intelligent Computing Center is about 15,000 standard cabinets, and the first phase can support a computing power scale of 40,000P. It is a high-level intelligent computing center with the largest scale of construction and investment in Shenzhen.

Not only Shenzhen, but also Beijing and Shanghai are in a leading position in building computing infrastructure. Tang Jianguo, chief economist of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, recently introduced at a press conference that the total scale of Beijing's intelligent computing has exceeded 20,000P; Shanghai has vigorously promoted the "Computing Pujiang" plan and continued to promote the construction of computing infrastructure such as data centers, intelligent computing centers, and supercomputing centers. The SenseTime Artificial Intelligence Computing Center located in Lingang, Shanghai is one of the largest artificial intelligence computing centers in Asia.

Behind the construction of a powerful infrastructure is the continued growth in demand for computing power in the AI ​​industries of the three locations.

The reporter sorted out several think tank reports on the competitiveness of cities in the artificial intelligence industry released in the past two years and found that Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have firmly ranked in the top three in each report. They are recognized as the first echelon by various think tank institutions, forming a pattern of "Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen leading the way".

For example, the recently released "Research Report on the Ranking of China's Artificial Intelligence City Competitiveness" (hereinafter referred to as the "Research Report") comprehensively scores multiple indicators such as policy mechanisms, infrastructure, enterprise scale, patent achievements, and financing environment. Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai ranked in the top three with comprehensive indexes of 1.0000, 0.7449, and 0.6266, respectively; the "China City Artificial Intelligence Development Index Report (2022-2023)" systematically analyzes the artificial intelligence development index of each city from five dimensions: industry scale, industry vitality, technological innovation, capital support, and policy support. The results show that Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen ranked in the top three.

It is not difficult to find that the first-tier cities of the artificial intelligence industry are also the first-tier cities with the strongest economic strength in my country. Bu Anxun, president of the Nanjing Enterprise Digital Transformation Research Association, believes that the factors for cities to compete in the artificial intelligence industry are divided into "old three things" and "new three things". The "old three things" are people, money, and materials, and the "new three things" are computing power, data, and algorithms. Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are strong in the "old three things", which also lays a good foundation for building a strong computing power foundation, data center, and advanced algorithms.

Three cities

Obvious differentiation advantages

"Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as leaders in China's artificial intelligence industry, have strong policy support, a solid industrial foundation, a wide range of application scenarios and abundant talent pools," said Wang Peng, associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with a Securities Times reporter. Taking the industrial foundation as an example, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen all have rich artificial intelligence industry resources, gathering a large number of technology giants, universities, research institutes and innovative enterprises, forming a relatively complete industrial chain and innovation ecology.

Although they have common characteristics, the rankings of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are often different in different "lists". The reason is that the three cities have their own characteristics in the field of artificial intelligence industry, and their differentiated advantages are more obvious.

Beijing attaches great importance to basic research and development, has strong comprehensive strength, and has outstanding advantages in innovation ability and talent density. According to the "Research Report", Beijing has an absolute advantage in the number of AI insured personnel and R&D personnel. The number of AI R&D personnel has increased by an average of 26% in the past three years, ranking first; corresponding to the talent, Beijing ranks first in the number of effective AI invention patents and the number of AI patents cited.

It is understood that Beijing has 6 national key laboratories and 3 national engineering research centers in the field of artificial intelligence, forming a high-level scientific research base integrating basic research, talent training, high-level academic exchanges, etc. Strong R&D capabilities have enabled Beijing to maintain its leading innovation capabilities. It has the largest number of listed companies, high-tech enterprises and unicorn enterprises in the field of artificial intelligence, and is far ahead in the number of financing cases and financing amounts.

Compared with Beijing's emphasis on research and development, Shanghai has a strong AI infrastructure, with a number of leading domestic chip companies, focusing on scenario applications and ecosystem shaping. "Shanghai is an innovation center for artificial intelligence applications, and is relatively advanced in smart chip design and manufacturing capabilities, smart manufacturing application scenarios, etc." said Zhao Gang, president of Saizhi Industry Research Institute. Cao Qingfeng, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Finance and Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also believes that Shanghai is characterized by its rich AI application scenarios and has done a lot of exploration in the openness of public data.

For example, Shanghai has created a large-scale model innovation ecological community "Mosu Space", which has settled in enterprises covering entertainment, office, finance, education and other fields, and has become a scene test field and application incubator. In addition, "Mosu Space" can provide computing power scheduling services for settled enterprises, and rely on the open source data platform of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to provide large-scale, multi-modal, high-quality open data.

Shenzhen is good at industrialization and takes the lead in AI hardware by relying on its manufacturing advantages. According to the "Research Report", Shenzhen ranks first in terms of enterprise scale with an absolute advantage, and the number of AI-related enterprises and the number of enterprises in the basic layer, technology layer, and application layer are all ranked first in the country, making it the city with the highest "density" of AI. Zhao Gang believes that Shenzhen has leading companies such as Huawei and Tencent, and has comparative advantages in the fields of intelligent hardware such as intelligent connected vehicles and humanoid robots, forming an AI industry chain dominated by applications.

“From 0 to 100”

Developing artificial intelligence

Overall, Beijing is far ahead in basic innovation relying on its strong R&D advantages; Shanghai has strong advantages in computing power, data, etc.; Shenzhen has a strong market-oriented atmosphere and a developed manufacturing industry, and often performs well in rolling out technology to the market and rapidly industrializing it.

The three cities have their own strengths, and they can play their respective advantages at different stages of industrial development. The most typical example is that among the five startups with the highest valuations in the field of large models in China, Dark Side of the Moon, Zhipu AI, Baichuan Intelligence, and Zero One Everything are from Beijing, Minimax is from Shanghai, and none of them are from Shenzhen. This is mainly because large models focus on basic research and require high technical strength, which is what Beijing and Shanghai, which are rich in scientific and educational resources, are good at. Shenzhen, which has outstanding industrialization advantages, cannot show its skills in the early stages.

In the fierce competition to become the "AI City", all major cities have introduced relevant policies and measures, but in general they are similar and have not yet formed differentiation. High-quality and more targeted policies and measures are yet to be introduced. Cao Qingfeng said that each city should understand its own strengths and weaknesses, find the integration points with artificial intelligence based on existing industries, and avoid homogeneous competition.

Specifically speaking of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, Zhao Gang believes that the three cities should give full play to their respective advantages and build core competitiveness. Beijing should continue to strengthen basic research and original innovation, promote theoretical research in computer science, neuroscience, cognitive science, consciousness science, etc., carry out innovation and application of large language models and multimodal large models, and accelerate the innovation of full-stack artificial intelligence technology; Shanghai should give full play to its advantages in integrated circuits, increase the research and development of intelligent computing chips, overcome bottlenecks, and build an intelligent computing power highland; Shenzhen should build a complete artificial intelligence hardware manufacturing cluster, focus on the massive demand for embodied intelligent bodies such as smart cars, smart phones, smart robots, smart homes, drones, etc., develop and expand artificial intelligence hardware, and drive the application of large model technology in various fields.