Ali AI-driven panorama is emerging: AI cloud computing is fully upgraded, and multi-service scenarios use large models.
On October 31st, 2023, at the Yunqi Conference in Hangzhou, Alibaba Cloud announced the full-stack upgrade of AI cloud computing, released the large-scale model Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and 8 industry models with a scale of 100 billion parameters, and launched the one-stop large-scale model application development platform Alibaba Cloud Bailian, accelerating the development and application of large-scale models into the "zero threshold" era.

(Cai Chongxin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Group)
"We want to build the most open cloud in the AI era." Cai Chongxin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Group, said at the Yunqi Conference that with the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) large-scale model technology, the intelligent era is beginning, AI will become a new type of productivity in all walks of life, and put forward higher requirements for computing power. From bottom computing power to AI platform to model service, Alibaba has increased investment in R&D to promote Alibaba Cloud to carry out comprehensive technological upgrading and innovation.
PAI, the first artificial intelligence platform in China, was built in 2014, and a complete AI computing power and technical system was laid out in advance. By September 2023, it was clear that "users first, AI driven" was the strategic focus. As one of the earliest enterprises in China to develop this generation of AI technology, Alibaba made remarkable progress in infrastructure and product application: as a "cloud in the AI era", Alibaba Cloud provided a computing base for AI big models, and more than half of AI big model companies in China ran in Alibaba Cloud. Ali’s e-commerce, foreign trade, corporate services, search, navigation, entertainment and other multi-business scenarios have tried to run the AI big model, improving product experience and operational efficiency, and jointly shaping a new growth engine for the future.
Three "king bombs": comprehensively upgrade AI infrastructure, Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and Bailian platform.
The AI model track is hot, while Alibaba Cloud focuses on making a good cloud in the AI era, providing the AI computing base for domestic models.

(Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group and Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group)
At the Yunqi Conference, Alibaba Cloud announced that the newly upgraded artificial intelligence platform PAI can support the scalable scale of clusters of up to 100,000 calories, and the acceleration rate of ultra-large-scale distributed training is as high as 96%, setting a new domestic record; In the large-scale model training task, it can save more than 50% computing power resources, and its performance is leading the world.
The self-developed basic model Tongyi Qianwen has also been upgraded again. The newly released Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, with a parameter scale of 100 billion, has significantly improved its performance, surpassing GPT-3.5 and Llama2 in 10 authoritative evaluations, and accelerating the catch-up with GPT-4. .
In order to promote the large-scale model to be put into practice in all walks of life, Alibaba Cloud has also released eight industrial models-Tongyi Listening and Understanding, Tongyi Xiaomi, Tongyi Zhiwen, Tongyi Xingchen, Tongyi Lingma, Tongyi Farui, Tongyi Renxin and Tongyi Dianjin, which make the large-scale model easier to be integrated in industries and scenes such as finance, medical care, law, programming and personalized creation.
In addition, Alibaba Cloud Bailian, a one-stop large-scale model application development platform, made a brand-new appearance. The platform greatly reduces the threshold for the development of large-scale model applications. Developers can develop a large-scale model application in five minutes and "refine" an enterprise-specific model in a few hours, allowing developers to focus more on application innovation.
Alibaba’s multi-service application scenario trial run AI
With rich user scenarios, Alibaba’s multiple businesses are innovating business scenarios and service models based on AI big model technology to build a new imagination for the future.

(Alibaba "AI Technology Tree")
Nail is the first company in China to conduct live demonstration based on AI big model. As of August, 17 product lines and 55 scenes have been fully connected to the big model to complete intelligent reengineering. Nail opens the intelligent base AIPaaS to ecological partners and customers at the same time, and will help the ecology to do the product again with a big model.
In double 11 this year, e-commerce AI ushered in its first large-scale application. Taobao launched the AI assistant "Taobao Ask" to provide users with a brand-new interactive experience and more accurate product recommendation. Since the launch of internal testing, the number of users of Taobao has reached 5 million, and highly active users interact with Taobao 8 times a day on average. Before double 11, Taobao also launched a new "big promotion model". On the business side, Taobao Tmall launched a series of AI tools, and Ali Mama released the unbounded version of Wanxiangtai, Ali Mama Bailing and Wanxiang Lab to improve the business efficiency.
The CICC Research Report said that considering that the e-commerce scenario is the key direction for AI to land on the B-side, and Ali has the advantages of computing power, model, data and scenario at the same time, it has strong confidence in the application of AI in Taobao Tmall. China Merchants Securities said that Taobao is expected to further explore the imagination in the future in terms of new scenes, new capabilities and new space creation.
Alibaba International Station has successively launched AI purchasing assistants for overseas buyers and OKKIAI for all foreign trade merchants, and will officially launch AI business assistants for foreign trade merchants in China on November 1st. According to the internal test data, AI business assistants can help foreign trade merchants to increase their exposure by about 19%. Some merchants said that the number of orders increased by 20% during the internal test.
Based on Tongyi big model, Zebra Zhixing has built the third-generation automotive AI capability system BanmaCo-Pilot, which has core capabilities such as multi-source data, special services, behavior prediction and customized scenarios, and opened the era of "user-defined cars".
Ali Entertainment hatched the first C-end AIGC product "Wonderful Duck Camera" in China. Based on the large-scale model technology, Quark APP upgrades the functional experience of products such as Quark Net Disk, Quark Scanning King, Quark Health and Quark Learning, and further improves the efficiency of users’ work, study and life. After the access of Tmall Elf to Tongyi Qianwen, a number of terminals upgraded their personality roles, emotional resonance and creative assistance, and also released a number of new AIGC terminals.
Guotai Junan Research Report believes that Ali is expected to enter a new stage of growth under the long-term drive of AI upgrade and the increasingly perfect ecosystem.
Building an open science and technology platform to promote the innovation of AI big model industry
Ali is the only large-scale scientific and technological enterprise in China that will open its own research model.
In April this year, after the release of Tongyi Qianwen, Ali successively opened up large-scale model versions of 7 billion and 14 billion parameters for free commercial use by the whole society. In November, 72 billion parametric models will be opened to the public and continue to support global developers to carry out model and application innovation. In August, Dharma Institute opened 100 AI patents for free, which became the largest patent opening action of artificial intelligence in China, allowing small and medium-sized enterprises to share the AI technology dividend.
With the development of large-scale model technology and application, the computing power demand of model reasoning has increased greatly, and cloud computing has become the computing power base of AI large model. According to reports, at present, 80% of science and technology enterprises and more than half of AI big model companies in China run on Alibaba Cloud.
At last year’s Yunqi Conference, Alibaba and the Open Source Development Committee of China Computer Association launched the AI model community "Magic Ride". Just one year after its launch, the Magic Ride Community has gathered more than 2,300 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 more than one million times, and industry leaders such as Baichuan Intelligent, Zhipu AI, Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and IDEA Research Institute have all launched their core models in the magic community. Alibaba Cloud provides free GPU computing power for developers to "taste" big models, which has exceeded 30 million hours so far.
Insist on opening up, both Ali’s "science and technology platform" gene and the pursuit of technological inclusiveness are behind Ali’s long-term accumulation and investment in technological innovation.
According to the data, in 2014, Alibaba established the Institute of Data Science and Technology, and built the first artificial intelligence platform PAI; in China that year; The Dharma Institute, established in 2017, continues to focus on AI; Start the research and development of large models in 2019; In 2021, Ali released the first multi-modal large model and language large model with over 10 billion parameters in China, and then trained and realized the world’s first AI model with 10 trillion parameters. In 2022, Ali launched the Tongyi big model series.
The report of the European Union’s Industrial R&D Investment Scorecard shows that Alibaba’s R&D investment ranks first among domestic Internet technology enterprises for a long time. By September 30, 2023, Alibaba Group had more than 5,000 AI patents.
Some analysts pointed out that the advantages of AI computing base, rich business application scenarios and open innovation ecology are shaping Alibaba’s new growth flywheel in the AI era.

(Alibaba AI technology development process)



























