This year’s winners of the Super AI Leader Award (SAIL Award) were announced at World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2019, with tech leaders Huawei, iFlytek, Watrix and Alibaba topping the list.
Launched on June 25 , the SAIL Award was introduced to acknowledge and reward exceptional breakthroughs made by the trailblazers in the realm of AI, machine learning and data science. Judged on their design, service, innovation and originality, the winners of the SAIL Award represent ingenious and creative AI game changers setting new benchmarks for the industry.
Regarded in China’s tech circles as the country’s Oscars in the world of AI, the SAIL Award is the highest mark of recognition by WAIC, and, in a bid to accelerate the transformation of the tech ecosystem in Shanghai, is part of an effort to connect industries and research facilities to innovation in and applications of artificial intelligence. The award also serves to attract global think tanks and tech giants to establish innovation centers in the city and expand the pool of talented and creative people in the global tech hub that is home to many leading entrepreneurs and innovators.
The awards for the four categories were selected based on their contributions and achievements in specific areas:
Superior Award (social welfare): Huawei’s Kirin 980 and 810 7nm chips
Applicative Award (social efficiency): iFlytek’s next-gen translation technology
Innovative Award (leading technology): Watrix’s long-range gait recognition technology
Leading Award (groundbreaking theory): Alibaba’s smart identification computing platform based on mega-scale graph neural networks
The award nominations were evaluated by experts within the AI community that formed the judging committee consisting of academics from both the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, industry leaders, scholars from leading universities and global research institutions.
Top-tier AI-related innovations covering cutting-edge research, innovative technologies and influential AI applications emerged as winners after nearly 700 projects were reviewed, with 10% of the participating projects originating from Germany, the US, the UK, Israel, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. With priority set on social benefits, two thirds of the submissions focused on AI applications spanning the finance, transportation, healthcare and education sectors, alongside one third that were technological solutions for chips, algorithms and AI platforms.
