SASAC Urges Central Enterprises to Accelerate AI Industry Layout
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According to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) on February 21, the "AI Empowerment and Industrial Renewal" thematic promotion conference for central enterprises on artificial intelligence was recently held. Zhang Yuqiao, Party Secretary and Director of SASAC, proposed to promote better development and greater role of central enterprises in the field of artificial intelligence.
The meeting clarified that central enterprises should integrate the development of artificial intelligence into their overall work planning, deepen industrial renewal, accelerate the layout and development of the AI industry, concentrate main resources in the most needed and advantageous areas, speed up the construction of a number of intelligent computing power centers, and carry out AI+ special actions.
Carrying out AI+ Special Actions
Accelerating the development of artificial intelligence is an inevitable requirement for state-owned central enterprises to fulfill their functional missions, seize strategic opportunities, cultivate new productive forces, and promote high-quality development. At the meeting, 10 central enterprises signed a letter of initiative, expressing their willingness to actively open AI application scenarios to society.
"Central enterprises should actively embrace the profound changes brought by artificial intelligence and place greater emphasis on accelerating the development of next-generation AI," the meeting proposed. It is necessary to continuously strengthen innovation strategies, application demonstrations, and talent aggregation, focus on building AI industrial clusters, leverage the advantages of large demand scale, complete industrial support, and numerous application scenarios, take the lead in seizing AI empowerment of traditional industries, and accelerate the construction of a data-driven, human-machine collaborative, cross-border integrated, and co-created and shared intelligent economic form.
The meeting required that central enterprises should integrate the development of artificial intelligence into their overall work planning, deepen industrial renewal, and accelerate the layout and development of the AI industry. It is necessary to consolidate the foundation of development, concentrate main resources in the most needed and advantageous areas, speed up the construction of a number of intelligent computing power centers, further deepen open cooperation, and better leverage the role of cross-central enterprise collaborative innovation platforms. Carry out AI+ special actions, strengthen demand traction, accelerate empowerment in key industries, build a number of high-quality multi-modal industrial datasets, and create a large model-enabled industrial ecosystem from infrastructure, algorithm tools, intelligent platforms to solutions.
Promoting Intelligent Transformation and Upgrading
Since 2023, SASAC has accelerated the promotion of AI development among central enterprises. At the "Smart State Assets, Digital Central Enterprises" lecture held by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) in August 2023, Zhang Yuzhuo, Party Secretary and Director of SASAC, stated that the future will leverage application scenarios and data advantages with a more open mindset and pragmatic measures to accelerate the application of AI in industrial scenarios, promote digital and intelligent transformation of industrial enterprises, and collaborate with upstream and downstream industry chains and enterprises of all sizes and ownership types to build an industrial ecosystem.
At a press conference held by the State Council Information Office in January this year, Zhuang Shuxin, Secretary-General and Spokesperson of SASAC, mentioned that the next steps include planning and promoting a series of major projects, selecting the "Hundred Projects" for strategic emerging industries, building clusters of strategic emerging industries, and implementing special actions such as "AI+".
"The development of central SOEs in the AI field can enhance national competitiveness, grasp technological discourse power and initiative. Their abundant resources can inject vitality into the industry. At the same time, with the development of AI technology, central SOEs themselves can achieve transformation and upgrading, improving competitiveness," said Pan Helin, a researcher at the United Business School of Zhejiang University.
M&A cases are expected to increase.
The layout of central SOEs in the AI field is further accelerating.
On January 30, the inauguration ceremony of China Unicom's AI Innovation Center was held in Beijing. It is reported that China Unicom regards AI as an important strategic direction, accelerating the layout of AI emerging industries to achieve "assisting networks with intelligence, strengthening computing with intelligence, integrating data with intelligence, empowering applications with intelligence, and securing safety with intelligence."
"The company values the layout and investment in the AI field, providing end-to-end intelligent computing solutions with leading software and hardware digital intelligence capabilities," ZTE Corporation recently introduced on the investor interaction platform. The company's intelligent computing infrastructure, AI software platform, large models, and applications meet the needs of different scenarios, helping enterprises with digital and intelligent transformation. At the same time, the company will continue to closely monitor the integration of AI large models into the smart hardware field.
In addition, SDIC Intelligence stated on the investor interaction platform on February 21 that the company continues to pay attention to the development of related technologies and will launch products with multimodal AI capabilities according to market demand. “Central enterprises may increase investments in the artificial intelligence field, including conducting mergers and acquisitions related to AI to acquire key technologies, market share, and talent. This aligns with the global trend of enterprises boosting investments in artificial intelligence,” said Zhou Lisha, Research Director at the China Institute for Modern State-Owned Enterprise Research at Tsinghua University.