Editors' picks from ETO Scout: volume 4 (12/1-21/23)

Scout is ETO's discovery tool for Chinese-language news and commentary on technology issues. See the latest editors’ picks, browse the feed by topic, or sign up for customized e-mail alerts at https://scout.eto.tech. 🔭

• Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and Microsoft Research developed SciGuard, an AI tool that aims to prevent malicious use of scientific AI models. (36kr, 12/18/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2738
• China's Ministry of Education has implemented artificial intelligence (AI) in over 7,000 smart classrooms to evaluate teacher-student interaction in real time. (S&T Daily, 12/17/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2734
• China's open-source Qwen-72B model has topped Hugging Face's leaderboard, surpassing Meta's Llama2 as the highest-ranking pretrained model. (Leiphone, 12/14/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2735
• China's solar manufacturing industry is booming, with output of various PV-related products rising by between 61% and 90% year-on-year. (S&T Daily, 12/13/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2720
• Large AI models are being used in quality assurance in China's manufacturing industry but face notable limitations. (36kr, 12/11/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2716
• China's National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center officially announced its powerful new domestically-developed supercomputing system, "Tianhe Xingyi." (Zhidx, 12/06/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2695
• Nearly 60 data trading exchanges and businesses have joined the China's People's Data project, making it the largest data trading platform in China. (S&T Daily, 12/05/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2687
• The Chinese Academy of Sciences dedicated a new center for large-scale scientific experiments and equipment, with facilities including a rocket assembly plant and hypersonic wind tunnels. (S&T Daily, 12/04/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2686
• A massive new photovoltaic project in the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia combines 2 GW of solar power generation with environmental management techniques to mitigate desertification and erosion. (S&T Daily, 12/02/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2674
• Alibaba released new large language models, including one that handles audio and one that features 72 billion parameters and outperformed GPT-4 in several Chinese tasks. (36kr, 12/01/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2677
• Due to increasing competition from local firms, foreign pharmaceutical giants have been selling the Chinese marketing rights to their vaccines, effectively retreating from direct involvement in the Chinese market. (36kr, 12/01/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2675
• China's first batch of maritime unmanned helicopters will support water traffic control and maritime emergency response. (S&T Daily, 11/30/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2672
• State Power Investment Corporation's "Guohe-1" nuclear power project incorporates over 90% domestically produced inputs, exemplifying China's efforts toward supply chain independence in this critical domain. (S&T Daily, 11/30/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2671
• In a Chinese first, the Beijing Internet Court ruled that an AI-generated image qualified as an original work protected by copyright law. (36kr, 11/30/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2657
• Beijing's recent achievements in the LLM domain include hundreds of companies active in the field, a newly activated public cloud computing platform and release of a new Chinese-language training corpus to help reduce dependence on Western training data. (Zhidx, 11/29/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2654
• China's Loongson Technology launched independently developed CPU and printer controller chips with capabilities reportedly comparable to Intel and AMD products. (Zhidx, 11/28/23) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2648
• Chinese government geologists analyze the global graphite market and recommend measures to consolidate China's already dominant position in the industry. (CSET curation, 07/01/21) https://scout.eto.tech?id=2736