(Yicai) March 5 -- Executives from Chinese tech companies, including Xiaomi co-founder and Chief Executive Lei Jun, have brought suggestions and proposals on developing artificial intelligence to the so-called Two Sessions, China’s key annual policy meetings.

AI has become a key focus of development in China and elsewhere since ChaptGPT, developed by US firm OpenAI, burst onto the scene in November 2022. Following approval from Chinese regulators, Baidu and ByteDance made their AI chatbots available to the public last September. But China has a shortage of AI talent, which Lei’s proposals seek to address.

Lei, a member of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, yesterday suggested popularizing AI classes from the compulsory education stage, further pushing the introduction of AI-related majors at colleges and universities, and supporting big tech firms and institutions in nurturing AI talent.

Three proposals from Zhou Hongyi, chairman of cybersecurity firm 360 Security Technology and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s top political advisory body, focused on AI and security. 

According to his proposals, large language models with more than 100 billion parameters are unnecessary in some vertical fields, as those with over 10 billion parameters are sufficient. China should integrate LLMs with business processes and product functions and use them in vertical fields and industrial production, Zhou said. 

AI should not be seen as an aid but as an infrastructure and core capability that can underpin the economic and social transition, according to Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile Communications Group and a CPPCC National Committee member. China should speed up the transition to AI+ from +AI, he noted.

He Han, also a CPPCC National Committee member and deputy general manager of Chinese e-games and data firm Tianyu Digital Technology, proposed encouraging the building of platforms to match the supply and demand of LLM technology applications. He also stressed the importance of paying attention to cultivating talent in artificial general intelligence.

The Two Sessions started yesterday and run through March 11.

Editor: Futura Costaglione