Chinese AI lab challenges Google, OpenAI with a model of 1.75 trillion parameters- PingWest

In the race to build the underlying technologies that can power the next wave of AI revolution, a Chinese lab just toppled OpenAI, the venerated US-based research lab, in terms of who can train a gigantic deep learning model with the most training parameters--as for whether or not there is a race, at least ranking members of the lab believe so. The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, styled as BAAI and known in Chinese as 北京智源人工智能研究院, launched the latest version of Wudao 悟道, a pre-trained deep learning model that the lab dubbed as "China's first," and "the world's largest ever," with a whopping 1.75 trillion parameters. Unlike conventional deep learning models that are usually task-specific, Wudao is a multi-modal model trained to tackle both text and image, two dramatically different sets of problems. At BAAI's annual academic conference on Tuesday, the institution demonstrated Wudao performing tasks such as natural language processing, text generation, image recognition, image generation, etc. The model is capable of writing poems and couplets in the traditional Chinese styles, answer questions, write essays, generate alt text for images, and generate corresponding images from natural language description with a decent level of photorealism. It is even able to power "virtual idols", with the help of XiaoIce, a Chinese company spun off of Microsoft--so there can be voice support too, in addition to text and image.