Recently, the "Data Element ×" Three-Year Action Plan (2024-2026) (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan") was officially released. The Action Plan was jointly issued by the National Data Administration, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a total of 17 departments, and this is the first document jointly issued by the National Data Bureau and relevant departments since its inauguration more than two months ago. The document lasted only 20 days from soliciting opinions from the public on December 15, 2023, to the relevant media briefing held on the 29th of that month, and then to being issued and implemented on January 4, 2024, which can be described as fast and efficient.
The Action Plan puts forward an eye-catching expression - "data element ×", vigorously deploys and implements the "data element ×" action and lists 12 key areas to be promoted, requiring full use of China's massive data resources, rich application scenarios and other advantages, leading the flow of technology, talents, and materials with data flow, so as to achieve knowledge diffusion and value multiplication, give birth to new industries and new models, and provide strong support for promoting high-quality development and promoting Chinese-style modernization. The Action Plan clearly puts forward the overall goal of the application of data elements by the end of 2026, including creating more than 300 typical application scenarios with strong demonstration, high visibility and wide driving force, and the average annual growth rate of the data industry will exceed 20%.
Realize the multiplication of scientific and technological innovation efficiency
Science and technology are the primary productive forces, the concentrated embodiment and main symbol of advanced productive forces, and innovation is the primary driving force for leading development and the key factor for promoting the development of productive forces. In the Action Plan, "scientific and technological innovation" is listed as one of the 12 key areas for the application of "data element ×". It can be seen that data elements are entrusted with the important mission of doubling the efficiency of scientific and technological innovation and promoting the faster development of social productivity.
The Action Plan clearly proposes to "data-driven" scientific and technological innovation, requiring "fully relying on various databases and knowledge bases, promoting interdisciplinary and cross-field collaborative innovation, data-driven discovery of new laws, creating new knowledge, and accelerating the paradigm change of scientific research".
According to Wang Jian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the multiplication of the efficiency of scientific and technological innovation with "data element ×" is highly consistent with the characteristics of "data-driven innovation" in today's era. Wang Jian calls the traditional innovation model formed in the 20th century "electrification-driven innovation". It is under the strong impetus of electrification, scientific and technological inventions related to lasers, the Internet, computers, etc., which continue to emerge, shaping people's production and lifestyle and social outlook, and it can be said that the 20th century is the century of electrification driving scientific and technological innovation. In the 21st century, scientists represented by James Gray, an American data science expert and Turing Award winner, have proposed "data-intensive scientific discoveries", highlighting the great value of data to scientific and technological innovation.
In this regard, Wang Jian explained that scientists can put forward new hypotheses based on relevant data, and verify the hypotheses with the help of high-performance computing technology and artificial intelligence technology, so as to obtain new scientific discoveries.
Similar to Wang Jian's above views, E Weinan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the Beijing Institute of Scientific Intelligence, believes that in the current era of big data, the scientific research environment has changed from relying on traditional infrastructure such as libraries and electron microscopes to new infrastructure represented by big data and artificial intelligence.
Jin Li, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Fudan University, said that the traditional scientific research paradigm has undergone four stages of evolution: from the "experimental paradigm" to describe natural phenomena through experiments, to the "theoretical paradigm" to study through models or induction, to the "computing paradigm" that applies computer simulation to solve disciplinary problems, and then to the "data paradigm" that studies the internal relationship of things through big data analysis. Today, with the continuous growth of data resources and the increasing complexity of scientific problems that need to be solved, the fifth paradigm of scientific research has come into being, which is based on the "data paradigm", the introduction of intelligent technology, emphasizing the integration of human decision-making mechanism and data analysis, effectively combining data science and computational intelligence, and using AI technology to learn, simulate, predict and optimize various phenomena and laws of nature and human society to solve various scientific research problems, so as to promote scientific discovery and innovation, which is scientific research" AI for Science.
Since the end of 2022, generative AI models represented by ChatGPT have shone brightly. The "AI-driven paradigm" of scientific research urgently needs the support of an artificial intelligence model similar to ChatGPT. To this end, the Action Plan proposes to build an artificial intelligence large model to serve China's scientific and technological innovation and make relevant deployments, requiring "scientific data to support the development of large models, in-depth mining of various scientific data and scientific and technological literature, through fine-grained knowledge extraction and multi-source knowledge fusion, to build a scientific knowledge resource base, to build a high-quality corpus and basic scientific data sets, and to support the development and training of artificial intelligence large models".
Jin Li has an optimistic outlook on the prospect of the "artificial intelligence-driven paradigm" of scientific research, believing that this paradigm is a powerful tool to achieve original innovation in science and technology, for example, with the support of big data, artificial intelligence can efficiently and accurately predict protein structures in the field of life sciences. Coincidentally, at a recent forum, Liu Liehong, director of the National Data Bureau, also gave this example in his speech. He said that for a long time, how to accurately and quickly determine the three-dimensional spatial structure of proteins has been a difficult problem, and artificial intelligence algorithm models based on massive and multivariate biological data can predict protein structures with high confidence that previously took decades to obtain in a few days or even minutes, subverting the research paradigm in the field of life sciences.
The Action Plan points out two major application directions of scientific data: one is to focus on scientific research itself, use scientific data to help cutting-edge research, provide high-quality scientific data resources and knowledge services for basic disciplines, and drive scientific innovation and discovery;
Widely empower thousands of industries
From the Action Plan, people naturally think of "Internet +" and the "Guiding Opinions on Actively Promoting the "Internet +" Action, which was issued and implemented in July 2015. Although more than eight years have passed since the two documents, there are still many things that can be compared. Both of them use "Internet +" and "data element ×" as keywords respectively, and both introduce mathematical symbols, giving people a very intuitive feeling. At the same time, both label the measures deployed as "actions" and elaborate on the areas of focus for the implementation of "actions". The former listed 11 fields such as "entrepreneurship and innovation", "collaborative manufacturing" and "modern agriculture", while the latter listed 12 fields such as "scientific and technological innovation", "intelligent manufacturing" and "smart agriculture".
×In this regard, Shen Zhulin, deputy director of the National Data Bureau, said that the transition from the former to the latter can be summarized in three ways: First, the transformation from connection to collaboration. "Internet+" emphasizes connectivity, that is, all walks of life embrace the Internet to achieve interconnection based on data generation and transmission, while "data element ×" emphasizes data collaboration and global optimization based on effective data application. The second is the transformation from use to reuse. "Internet+" emphasizes the use of Internet technology in thousands of industries, while "data element ×" emphasizes value creation based on data reuse between industries to expand new space for economic growth. The third is the transformation from superposition to integration. "Internet+" emphasizes improving efficiency through data aggregation, while "Data Element ×" emphasizes the integration of multiple sources and types of data to drive innovation and cultivate new drivers of economic growth.
Ouyang Rihui, vice president of the China Internet Economy Research Institute at the Central University of Finance and Economics, is one of the drafters of the Action Plan. He recently wrote an article to explain the relationship between "Internet +" and "data element ×", pointing out that the Internet and data are the unity of digital technology, the former is "an iceberg exposed to the surface", and the latter is "the main body hidden under the water", the implementation of many years of "Internet +" action has laid a solid foundation for the "data element ×" action, "data element ×" is the upgrade and sublimation of "Internet +", both are essentially the deep integration of digital technology and economic society, two-way empowerment.
Looking at the 12 key areas of "data element ×" listed in the Action Plan, they basically cover all industries and key subdivisions of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, involving thousands of industries. For example, in the field of industrial manufacturing, the Action Plan requires that industrial manufacturing enterprises be supported to integrate design, simulation, and experimental verification data, cultivate a new model of data-driven product research and development, and enhance the innovation ability of enterprises. For example, in the field of modern agriculture, the Action Plan proposes to support the integration and use of data from remote sensing, meteorology, soil, agricultural operations, disasters, crop diseases and pests, animal diseases, and markets, accelerate the creation of digital and intelligent scenarios for agricultural production supported by data and models, and realize smart agricultural operations such as precision planting, precision breeding, and precision fishing.
Interpret the new quality of productivity
Data is the information or carrier of information obtained by collecting, recording, measuring, statistical, and describing, which can be in the form of numbers, words, images, sounds, etc. With the development of network technology and the penetration of various industries, the achievements of digital technology innovation are deeply integrated with various fields of economy and society, and data in different fields are produced, recorded, transmitted, stored and consumed, and the scale of data is growing rapidly at the speed of Moore's law. The full mining and effective use of data can optimize the allocation and efficiency of resource allocation and use, which has a wide impact on value creation and productivity development.
Ouyang Rihui said that in the era of digital economy, the importance of data is self-evident, but data is not used as a factor of production from the beginning, but has gone through a process.
In December 2017, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized "building a digital economy with data as the key element" at the second collective study of the Political Bureau of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In October 2019, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) clarified seven factors of production: labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, management, and data. This is the first time that the status of data as a factor of production has been formally clarified. Since then, the central government has made a series of major deployments such as reforming and accelerating the cultivation of the data element market and giving better play to the role of data elements, and the Action Plan is the latest measure to implement these deployments.
It is worth noting that the Action Plan regards the cultivation and development of new quality productivity as one of the important goals of the implementation of the "Data Element ×" action. In this regard, Du Chuanzhong, a professor at the Institute of Economic and Social Development of Nankai University, pointed out that there are many driving forces for the cultivation of new quality productivity, among which data elements, as the basic strategic resources and key production factors of the country, combined with computing power, will be derived into a strong data productivity and become an important part of new quality productivity. Du Chuanzhong specifically mentioned generative AI models like ChatGPT, he believes that AI models are supported by intelligent computing power, and continue to iterate through deep learning algorithms and trillions of data training, so as to form new qualitative productivity. In addition, with the support of artificial intelligence technology, a large number of robots with deep learning and autonomous learning capabilities have been launched, which can further deepen the division of labor and optimize the labor supply structure, so as to form a new quality of productivity.
The industrial-grade fluid simulation model "Oriental Yufeng" helps China's C919 large passenger aircraft soar into the blue sky as soon as possible. The picture shows that on December 9, 2023, the third C919 large passenger aircraft received by China Eastern Airlines took off from Shanghai Pudong International Airport. Xinhua News Agency
China's first industrial-grade fluid simulation model "Dongfang Yufeng" is considered to be a typical representative of new quality productivity. In September 2022, the large model was jointly released by COMAC and relevant parties, and with the support of related fluid simulation suites, the simulation capability of complex flows was effectively improved, and the simulation time was shortened to 1/24 of the original. At the same time, the model can accurately predict the drastic changes in the flow field, and the average error of the flow field is reduced to 1/10,000, reaching the industrial standard. It is with the help of the large model "Oriental Yufeng" that China's C919 large passenger aircraft can shorten the research and development cycle and soar into the blue sky as soon as possible.
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition Reporter: Zhang Baoshu Image source: Picture Worm Creative The cover picture and accompanying pictures of this article are from the copyright gallery and are not authorized to be reprinted