Being a "mentor" to AI? This new profession is becoming popular in Changsha
2024-08-10
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Changsha Evening News Omnimedia Reporter Chen Xingyuan Intern Zhang Qianyi
Open the map software and enter the address to navigate; call the mobile assistant and the voice conversation can answer questions; the automatic driving is on the road and it can brake even when it encounters pedestrians... How does AI achieve these powerful functions? Behind it is the contribution of the emerging profession of "data labeler".
As a pioneer city in the development of the national digital economy, Changsha has actively seized the opportunities of artificial intelligence development in recent years. In May this year, it became one of the first national data labeling bases in the country. Taking this opportunity, Changsha held the first "Star City Cup" Artificial Intelligence Trainer Skills Competition in July this year, opening two core tracks: autonomous driving artificial intelligence trainer and data labeler. The latter has five sub-tracks including culture, geographic information, medical care, government affairs, and finance. The competition attracted more than 100 masters to compete on the same stage, and finally the contestants from 10 units including Spectrum Blue Technology and Digital Tianma won the prize.
Through the list of winners of this competition, the reporter was delighted to see that Changsha is gathering the efforts of enterprises, industrial parks, and government departments to jointly build a digital talent cultivation ecosystem, and a large number of AI "mentors" have sprung up in Changsha.
Making AI smarter and empowering thousands of industries
Chen Jun sat at his workstation, his fingertips jumping between the keyboard and the mouse, his eyes shuttling between two screens, one showing the image to be annotated, the other showing the classification labels. Crossroads, subway exits, pedestrian walkways... He quickly locked onto the target and typed in the label, and every click of the mouse was an accurate annotation.
"This is my daily job - labeling images so that AI can learn the most accurate information." As the champion of the geographic information track, Chen Jun from Spectrum Technology told reporters that data labeling is an indispensable part of training large models. Especially when dealing with complex scenes, the professional judgment of data labelers is particularly important. "In the competition, when faced with a photo of a village, we have to label the water surface that does not belong to the farmland, which has very high requirements for accuracy and completeness."
Autonomous driving, medical diagnosis, express logistics... Chen Jun said that their business scope has been expanding in recent years, and data labeling is becoming a "must-have" for thousands of industries.
Dai Ruilong, who comes from the banking and insurance industry, feels the same way. At Digital Tianma, he is mainly responsible for training the financial steward "Zhi Xiaobao" in Alipay, controlling the quality of the labeled data, and feeding it back to the algorithm team for program writing. "It is to help AI learn and grow, making it more humane and smarter," he explained.
"Although I only entered the industry at the end of last year, my experience in the financial industry enables me to understand questions more quickly when answering questions." Dai Ruilong said that the "moat" built by professional knowledge helped him get a good result of second place in the financial track.
Enterprise cultivation, opening up a growth channel for newcomers
Chen Jun, who graduated only four or five years ago, and Dai Ruilong, 27, noticed that there were many young faces among the winners of this year's competition. Why are these young people so outstanding?
"Let professionals do professional things." Many data labeling companies said that they are eager to recruit professional talents and are willing to carefully cultivate young people.
"We are a 'transit station for college talents', and we welcome students from disciplines such as Chinese, mathematics, and computer science!" PULAN Technology currently has nearly 1,000 related practitioners. Chairman Cai Li told reporters that talent is the foundation of the development of this industry. Relying on Changsha's educational resources, they accept a large number of college graduates every year, with the most accepting nearly 200 in a year.
"Talent accumulation is one of our core advantages. Currently, few companies can achieve such a human resource scale and density." Luo Zhihao, head of Digital Tianma's labeling business, introduced that they have established more than 20 labeling bases across the country. The labeling service center in Changsha needs to uniformly check the data delivered by the bases, so the demand for professional talents is very high.
In terms of talent cultivation, Digital Tianma has arranged a round-the-clock training system including new employee training, advanced training, knowledge classes, etc., and has set up a mentoring system, and also issued a business skills improvement guide for each employee. "Young people's thinking, way of dealing with things, and ability to withstand pressure will be better." Luo Zhihao said that among the current age range of the Changsha team, more than 60% are between 20 and 25 years old.
As a leader in the field of large video models, Wondershare Technology launched the Wondershare "Sky Curtain" audio and video multimedia large model in January this year, and many R&D work has been carried out around it. According to Yida, the head of market business, the data required for R&D includes video text pairs, audio text pairs, image text pairs, etc. This type of multimodal data has been significantly enhanced in terms of annotation difficulty and data volume. For this purpose, the company has established a special algorithm team and data production management platform, and also built a special manual data annotation team to enable large model development from multiple levels. Wondershare Technology also pays great attention to the growth of its employees. The company has planned a clear career development route for talents, the promotion channel is completely open, and talent certification can be processed at any time.
The government takes the lead and relies on the park to carry out education
From point to surface, beads are strung into a chain. As leading enterprises continue to exert their strength, digital industrial parks are also emerging in Changsha, helping to accelerate and upgrade the training of digital talents through human-machine collaborative education.
As the host of this competition, Hunan Digital Application Technology Co., Ltd. on the banks of the Liuyang River provided all-round services to the contestants: opening cloud accounts online to help with remote preparation for the competition; conducting pre-competition training offline to ensure the best performance. "As an important part of the Hunan 5G Application Ecological Industrial Park to promote the integration of digital and real industries and the cultivation of industrial talents, we work closely with universities and industry associations to continuously deliver high-quality talents to the digital field." General Manager Wu Liang said that he hopes to promote the college's self-developed technology platform through this competition and further carry out diversified digital talent training.
The Changsha Xianghu Administration Bureau plays an important role in the construction of the Hunan 5G Application Ecological Industrial Park and Industrial College, including setting up a party and mass service center, holding talent salons, providing comprehensive financial services and "one-stop" legal protection, etc. "We will cultivate digital talents as the core driving force for the development of the park." Shi Lei, secretary of the Party Committee and director of the Changsha Xianghu Administration Bureau, introduced that the park has now built a one-stop life service system for digital talents and won the honor of "Science and Technology Talent Innovation Building" in Furong District. With the launch of the second phase of the 5G Application Industrial Park project, they are looking forward to more talents in the digital field to join them in the posture of "building a nest to attract phoenixes".
"Data labelers and other digital talents will become an important force in promoting the development of the industry." Zhou Juanping, Party Secretary and Director of Changsha Municipal Data Bureau, pointed out that this competition is an important part of Changsha's construction of a national data labeling base. In the future, Changsha will continue to promote the way of promoting industry through competitions, forming a virtuous cycle of industry and talents, and injecting "fresh water from the source" into the high-quality development of Changsha's digital industry.
