Corporate Visit - Exploring the First Public Company of “Decision-making AI”: 4Paradigm

    The corporate visit event, organized by the Business School Branch of the Alumni Association of the Central University of Finance and Economics and organized by the Finance Club of the Business School of the Central University of Finance and Economics, was held on the morning of April 13. In this spring season full of blossoms, alumni visited the first public company of "Decision-making AI” - 4Paradigm (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 4Paradigm).

I

Profile of Visited Enterprise

Founded in September 2014, 4Paradigm is a pioneer and leader in enterprise-level artificial intelligence. 4Paradigm offers platform-centric AI solutions and has developed end-to-end enterprise AI products using its core technologies. It is dedicated to addressing the efficiency, cost, and value challenges faced by enterprises during their intelligent transformation, and to enhancing the decision-making capabilities of enterprises. Such solutions have been extensively applied in various fields such as finance, retail, manufacturing, energy and power, telecommunications, and healthcare. 4Paradigm ranks first in the Chinese market for platform-centric decision-making enterprise AI.

II

Visit to Exhibition Hall

The exhibition hall of 4Paradigm, which incorporates various modern elements, exudes a strong sense of the future and technology. The responsible person showcased multiple real-world applications of AI in the commercial society. For instance, in the "4Paradigm + Finance" application, under the open banking service system, it has achieved the intelligence and personalization of the customer service system. The smart bank has achieved advanced capabilities such as precise marketing, anti-fraud, and intelligent anti-money laundering. The high-dimensional model, combined with self-learning, constructs a complete online data flow loop, which in turn enriches the operation rules. The "4Paradigm + New Retail" application aids retail enterprises in constructing a customer-centric service strategy, comprehensively enhancing the intelligence level of the enterprise and achieving intelligent operations, smart supply chains, and intelligent customer service. The "4Paradigm + Healthcare” application can perform one-stop intelligent detection and chronic disease risk assessment, truly predicting chronic disease risks, simulating pandemic scenarios, predicting newborn weight, and analyzing post-operative survival rates. AI has transitioned from an abstract concept to a practical reality that permeates everyone's daily life.

III

Topic Sharing

Following the visit, Chen Hongpeng, the Solution Consulting Expert from 4Paradigm, conducted a topic sharing session. As a leading enterprise in "Decision-making AI," 4Paradigm's dynamic team has created numerous industry miracles and turned into a cornerstone in the industry. “During the initial phase of digital transformation, enterprises concentrate on accumulating operation data. Afterwards, they start to explore how to drive business growth using data, resulting in the emergence of various innovative applications. Over the past two years, some enterprises have started to reflect on the fact that their digital investments have not brought about fundamental changes in their businesses."

In the course of assisting enterprises with their digital transformation, 4Paradigm discovered that most enterprises lack the capability to effectively leverage their accumulated digital capabilities to improve their core competitiveness. There is often a substantial discrepancy between strategic objectives and grassroots indicators in the management process. To address the aforementioned challenges and assist enterprises in fully leveraging the true value unleashed by digital transformation, 4Paradigm has proposed a new model called "Penetrating Management." Computers are incorporated into enterprise management to translate the enterprise's strategic objectives into a language that computers can recognize, and then to adjust the traditional organizational structure of the enterprise by dividing it into multiple experimental groups that facilitate the realization of strategic objectives. The strategic objectives of an enterprise are the most critical development indicators for the enterprise, also referred to as the "North Star" indicators of the enterprise. Each experimental group works towards the North Star indicators, which can enhance the targeting and accuracy of their efforts, accumulating the power of quantitative change to qualitative change.

Following this, "Mysterious Big Shot” - Deputy General Manager of Beijing Telecom Computing Power Center, Ji Ye, shared the related content of "AI Energy Source" computing power deployment with everyone. In February 2024, OpenAI officially released its first text-to-video model, "Sora." Following its advancements in text and images, OpenAI achieved remarkable progress in the video domain. This progress is inseparable from the support of massive computing power. According to the latest paper, this is equivalent to running 14,739 H100 GPUs for a month, which would cost approximately $440 million, which is a figure that most ordinary enterprises cannot afford. Following this, General Manager Ji provided an in-depth yet accessible analysis of the computing power requirements for different users in large model applications. In line with the policies frequently issued by Beijing, the digital base has begun to continuously empower AI enterprises. As a leader in computing power infrastructure, General Manager Ji shared the 1+N+M computing power layout of China Telecom, including one intelligent computing cloud, N urban intelligent computing clusters, and M industry intelligent computing clusters, providing an integrated "planning-construction-maintenance-optimization" service. To address the "bottleneck" issue, we will comprehensively promote the adaptation of domestic Ascend, Cambricon, and Kunlun chips. From the underlying chips to the upper-level applications, we will provide software and hardware options based on needs, ensuring the balance of quality, efficiency, and cost in terms of computing power, computing network, and computing infrastructure. This helps truly realize the tiered computing power resources, efficient computing power network, model security, and the integration of multiple elements, thereby fulfilling the true "central enterprise responsibility" of China Telecom.

IV

Roundtable Discussion

To this end, we invited Ji Ye, Deputy General Manager of Beijing Telecom Computing Power Center, Chen Hongpeng, Solution Consulting Expert of 4Paradigm, and Xi Libao, President of the Alumni Association of MBA at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and Chairman of Blanstar Technology, to participate in a roundtable discussion titled "The Future is Here." They had an in-depth exchange on issues of concern to the alumni.

Time flies when we are having fun, and we hope that each event we organize will bring a broader perspective and more diverse viewpoints to the alumni of the Central University of Finance and Economics. Each event also strengthens the connections between everyone.

        An outstanding platform brings together excellent individuals, who create distinguished happiness. We welcome everyone to keep following the activities of the Finance Club. In the future, we will actively organize more varied online and offline activities, and we look forward to your presence at each event!