On October 31, 2023, at the Hangzhou Yunqi Conference, Alibaba Cloud announced the upgrade of the entire AI cloud computing stack, releasing the large-scale model Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and 8 industry models with a parameter scale of 100 billion yuan, and launching the one-stop large-scale model application development platform Alibaba Cloud Bailian, accelerating the promotion of large-scale model development applications into the "zero threshold" era.
We want to create the most open cloud in the AI era, "said Cai Chongxin, Chairman of the Alibaba Group's Board of Directors, at the Yunqi Conference. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) big model technology, the era of intelligence is beginning, and AI will become a new type of productivity in various industries, and higher requirements for computing power are being put forward. From underlying computing power to AI platforms to model services, Alibaba has increased research and development investment to promote Alibaba Cloud's comprehensive technological upgrading and innovation.
Comprehensive upgrade of AI infrastructure
Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and Bailian Platform
The AI big model race is hot, while Alibaba Cloud focuses on building the cloud for the AI era and providing an AI computing power base for domestic big models.
At the Yunqi Conference, Alibaba Cloud announced that its newly upgraded artificial intelligence platform PAI can support clusters with scalable scales of up to 100000 cards, and the acceleration ratio of large-scale distributed training is as high as 96%, setting a new domestic record; In large model training tasks, it can save over 50% of computing resources and lead the world in performance.
The self-developed basic model Tongyi Qianwen has also been upgraded again. The newly released Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 with a parameter scale of hundreds of billions has significantly improved its performance, surpassing GPT-3.5 and Llama2 in 10 authoritative evaluations, accelerating its pursuit of GPT-4.
To promote the implementation of big models in various industries, Alibaba Cloud has simultaneously released eight industry models - Tongyi Tingwu, Tongyi Xiaomi, Tongyi Zhiwen, Tongyi Xingchen, Tongyi Lingcode, Tongyi Farui, Tongyi Renxin, Tongyi Dianjin, making it easier to integrate big models in industries and scenarios such as finance, healthcare, law, programming, and personalized creation.
In addition, Alibaba Cloud Bailian, a one-stop large-scale model application development platform, has made a new appearance. This platform greatly reduces the development threshold for large model applications. Developers can develop a large model application in 5 minutes and "refine" an enterprise exclusive model in a few hours, allowing them to focus more on application innovation.
Alibaba's Multi Business Application Scenario Trial Run AI
With its rich user scenarios, multiple businesses of Alibaba are innovating their business scenarios and service models based on AI big model technology, building a brand new imagination for the future.
Nailing is the first company in China to conduct on-site demonstrations based on AI large models. As of August, 17 product lines and 55 scenarios have been fully integrated into the large model, completing intelligent reengineering. Nailing is open to both ecological partners and customers for intelligent base AI PaaS, and will use large models to help the ecosystem redo the product.
This year's Double 11 marks the first large-scale application of e-commerce AI. Taobao has launched the AI assistant "Taobao Ask" to provide users with a new interactive experience and more accurate product recommendations. Since the launch of the internal test, the number of users using Taobao Ask has reached 5 million, and highly active users interact with Taobao Ask an average of 8 times a day. Before Double 11, Taobao also launched a new "big promotion mode". On the business side, Taobao Tmall has launched a series of AI tools, and Alibaba Mama has released the Infinite Edition of Wanxiang Platform, Alibaba Mama Bailing, and Wanxiang Laboratory to improve the efficiency of business operations.
China Financial Research Daily stated that considering that e-commerce scenarios are the key direction for AI to be implemented on the B-end, and Alibaba has the advantages of computing power, models, data, and scenarios, it has strong confidence in AI applications being implemented on Taobao and Tmall. China Merchants Securities stated that Taobao is expected to further expand its imagination in creating new scenarios, capabilities, and spaces in the future.
Alibaba International has launched AI Procurement Assistant for overseas buyers and OKKI AI for all foreign trade merchants, and will officially launch AI Business Assistant for Chinese foreign trade merchants on November 1st. According to internal testing data, AI business assistants can help foreign trade merchants increase their exposure by about 19%. Some merchants have reported that the number of orders increased by 20% during the internal testing period.
Zebra Zhixing has created the third generation automotive AI capability system, Banma Co Pilot, based on the Tongyi big model. It has core capabilities such as multi-source data, specialized services, behavior prediction, and customized scenarios, ushering in the era of "user-defined cars".
Alibaba Entertainment has incubated the first popular C-end AIGC product in China, the "Miao Duck Camera". The quark app is based on big model technology and upgrades product functionality experiences such as "quark network disk", "quark scanning king", "quark health", and "quark learning", further improving user work, learning, and life efficiency. After Tmall Genie connected to Tongyi Qianwen, multiple terminals upgraded their personalized characters, emotional resonance, and creative assistance capabilities, and also released multiple new AIGC terminal products.
Guotai Jun'an Research Daily believes that with the long-term drive of AI upgrading and the increasingly improved ecosystem, Alibaba is expected to enter a new stage of growth.
Building an open technology platform
Promote innovation in the AI big model industry
Alibaba is the only large technology enterprise in China that will open source its self-developed large model.
In April of this year, after the release of Tongyi Qianwen, Alibaba has successively opened up large model versions with parameter scales of 7 billion and 14 billion, for free commercial use throughout society. In November, we will also open source the 72 billion parameter model of Tongyi Qianwen, continuing to support global developers in model and application innovation. In August, Damo Academy opened 100 AI patents for free, becoming the largest patent opening action in China's artificial intelligence industry, allowing small and medium-sized enterprises to share the dividends of AI technology.
With the development of large model technology and applications, the demand for computing power in model reasoning has significantly increased, and cloud computing has become the computing power base for AI large models. It is reported that 80% of technology enterprises and over half of AI large model companies in China are currently running on Alibaba Cloud.
At last year's Yunqi Conference, Alibaba collaborated with the Open Source Development Committee of the China Computer Association to launch the AI model community "Magic Building". In just one year of its launch, the Magic Building community has gathered over 2300 AI models, attracting 2.8 million AI developers, and the download volume of AI models has exceeded 100 million.
Among them, the open source version of Tongyi Qianwen has been downloaded over a million times, and industry leaders such as Baichuan Intelligence, Zhipu AI, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and IDEA Research Institute have all made their core big models debut in the open source community of Mojia. Alibaba Cloud provides free GPU computing power for developers to "try out" the big model, which has exceeded 30 million hours so far.
Adhering to openness not only embodies Alibaba's "technology platform" genes, but also its pursuit of technological inclusiveness. Behind this lies Alibaba's long-term accumulation and investment in technological innovation.
According to data, Alibaba established the Data Science and Technology Research Institute in 2014 and created the first artificial intelligence platform PAI in China that year; The Dharma Institute established in 2017 continues to prioritize AI as a research direction; Initiate large-scale model research and development in 2019; In 2021, Alibaba successively released the first multimodal and language large model with over 10 billion parameters in China, and subsequently trained and implemented the world's first 10 trillion parameter AI model; In 2022, Alibaba launched the Tongyi Big Model series.
The EU's "Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" report shows that Alibaba's R&D investment has long ranked first among domestic internet technology enterprises. As of September 30, 2023, Alibaba Group has over 5000 AI patents.
Analysis has pointed out that the advantages of AI computing power base, rich business application scenarios, and open innovation ecosystem are shaping Alibaba's new growth flywheel in the AI era.