New changes in artificial intelligence: edge computing + 5G, the market will move from IoT to AIoT

In 2018, the market size of China's artificial intelligence industry continued to maintain steady growth, with the overall market size reaching 38.38 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.6%. With the active layout of major Internet giants and artificial intelligence innovation unicorns in the artificial intelligence ecosystem, artificial intelligence has evolved towards platformization and productization. At the same time, the construction of artificial intelligence platforms has promoted the cross-extension of artificial intelligence technology to related industries. The author believes that in the next three years, China's artificial intelligence-related policies will be deeply optimized, and local governments will play a more detailed and targeted role in guiding and supporting the development of local artificial intelligence. The development of edge computing and 5G technology will also bring new changes to the artificial intelligence industry, and the market will move from IoT to AIoT.

The global artificial intelligence market continues to grow rapidly

At present, the global artificial intelligence market is still showing an accelerated growth trend, and major manufacturers are focusing on taking the lead in laying out the artificial intelligence industry ecosystem. As artificial intelligence technology enters a relatively mature stage, the sales volume of smart terminal products has steadily increased, promoting the development of the artificial intelligence market. In 2018, the global artificial intelligence market size reached 263.67 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.7%.

The enhancement of machine learning, deep learning and other algorithmic capabilities has greatly promoted the continuous breakthroughs in computer vision, voice and other technologies, and Chinese technology-led start-up companies continue to emerge. In 2018, China's artificial intelligence market was not significantly affected by the downward pressure on the economy and continued to grow rapidly. The overall market size reached 38.38 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.6%.

From the perspective of industry structure

From the data, the Internet is still the industry market with the largest revenue share, and in 2018, this share reached 19.1%. In 2018, the application market of the security industry continued the trend of last year and continued to occupy the focus of industry attention. However, compared with the hot AI concept in 2017, the security industry in 2018 focused on the implementation of AI applications and was more pragmatic. Its growth rate was generally higher than the market average, and its share was comparable to that of finance.

As the application of artificial intelligence in the market deepens, the demand for the integration of traditional industries with artificial intelligence applications continues to heat up. It is expected that the scale of China's artificial intelligence market will continue to grow at a rate of about 30% in the next three years, reaching 81.87 billion yuan by 2021.

In the next three years, the industry structure of the artificial intelligence market will remain basically unchanged, and artificial intelligence technology will still have a high market share in the Internet, finance and security fields. It is estimated that by 2021, the market size of artificial intelligence in the Internet industry will reach 16.11 billion yuan, accounting for 19.68%, the market application scale in the financial field will reach 15.566 billion yuan, accounting for 19.01%, and the market size of smart security will reach 123.61, accounting for 15.10%.

Three major drivers drive development

The Government Work Report in March 2018 pointed out that in 2018, we should develop and expand new momentum, expand and strengthen emerging industrial clusters, implement big data development actions, strengthen the research and development and application of new generation artificial intelligence, promote "Internet +" in many fields such as medical care, elderly care, education, culture, sports, etc., develop intelligent industries, and expand intelligent life. In November 2018, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Work Plan for the Unveiling of Key Tasks for Innovation in the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Industry" to implement the requirements of the "New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" and the "Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Industry (2018-2020)" to accelerate the innovation and development of my country's new generation of artificial intelligence industry.

At the same time, all parts of the country have begun to actively focus on the deployment of artificial intelligence industry. By the end of 2018, 20 provinces including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jilin, and Guizhou have introduced special policies for artificial intelligence, which have guaranteed the rapid development of China's artificial intelligence industry in terms of funding, taxation, and technological innovation. In the future, all parts of the country will introduce more artificial intelligence-related policies based on reality and corporate needs.

With the development of artificial intelligence technology and the improvement of public awareness of artificial intelligence products, more and more companies are exploring the use of artificial intelligence technology to empower their industries. The application of artificial intelligence has moved from traditional low-user contact applications such as smart manufacturing, smart security, and smart medical care to product applications such as face-scanning payment, face-scanning for public transportation, AI translation, unmanned stores, and smart voice speakers.

Internet giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com have all invested in the research and development and application of artificial intelligence. Many technology giants have begun to compete in the artificial intelligence ecosystem, using artificial intelligence to integrate and optimize the traditional industry ecosystem at the strategic level.

At present, the industry intelligence improvement led by "AI+" is in its early stages, and the application of artificial intelligence in the industry still has great room for in-depth exploration. In fields such as finance and medical care, the application of artificial intelligence will bring changes to traditional industries. In the manufacturing industry, a large amount of high-quality resource data has not been fully utilized, and the industry's demand for intelligence will continue to remain high in the next few years.

"AIoT" refers to the integration of artificial intelligence technology and the Internet of Things in practice. 2019 is regarded as the first year of the 5G era. 5G technology and edge computing technology will greatly promote the development of the Internet of Things, and a large amount of data will be generated with the popularization of the edge side. In the 5G era, the demand for artificial intelligence will increase significantly. As the brain of IoT, artificial intelligence will have more applications in group intelligence and big data intelligent analysis.

The development of edge computing is synergistically promoted with the development of the Internet of Things. By improving the edge computing power and combining it with artificial intelligence algorithms, the use scenarios and application value of the edge are increased. In the future, with the popularization of 5G and the widespread application of IoT devices, more edge-side adaptive artificial intelligence algorithms will be proposed, and the combination of AI and IoT will be closer.

Major changes in the AI ​​market

Artificial intelligence chips are the core of the new round of artificial intelligence industry development. The development of artificial intelligence is gradually moving towards the application layer and the edge side, which puts higher requirements on the computing power of intelligent hardware. Smartphones, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), VR devices, voice interaction devices, robots and other fields have great demand for artificial intelligence chips. At the strategic level, China pays more attention to the research and development of independent core technologies. China wants to break the current situation of being restricted by others in the chip field.

At present, China's artificial intelligence chip companies are growing rapidly. Chinese artificial intelligence innovation companies such as Horizon Robotics, Horizon Robotics, and Cambricon have attracted much attention. The rapid growth of China's artificial intelligence industry is also driving the development of artificial intelligence chips.

At present, technology giants have begun to focus on the layout of the artificial intelligence industry ecosystem. As the largest public artificial intelligence system in the country, Alibaba Cloud ET City Brain carries the task of analyzing the overall situation of cities across the country; Tencent is actively deploying and building a national medical imaging artificial intelligence open platform in the field of smart medical care; iFlytek Open Platform is iFlytek's artificial intelligence open platform with voice interaction as the core; Baidu has launched an artificial intelligence ecosystem that integrates the conversational artificial intelligence system DuerOS, the intelligent driving technology platform Apollo, and the Baidu Intelligent Cloud Platform driven by AI, Big Data (big data), and Cloud Computing (cloud computing).

Artificial intelligence will have deeper and wider applications in finance, tourism, transportation, retail, media and entertainment. Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Sinovation Ventures and Dean of the AI ​​Institute, once said that artificial intelligence will eventually become a platform, and building an AI "toolbox" will create more business value. In the future, people will be able to use AI platforms to quickly and easily enjoy the technological dividends brought by AI.