AI Challenger 2017, a world-leading open dataset and programming competition for global artificial intelligence (AI) talents, concluded in Beijing on Dec 21.

Announced on Aug 14, the competition lasted for 130 days, attracting over 10,000 AI talents from 65 countries. Participants this year were given access to three databases in five unique competition tracks -- a human skeleton keypoints dataset, a Chinese language image caption dataset, and an English-Chinese machine translation dataset.

The awards ceremony of AI Challenger 2017 is held in Beijing on Dec 21. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The event, under the guidance of the Zhongguancun Science Park administrative committee, was organized by Sinovation Ventures, Sogou, and Toutiao, all headquartered in Beijing with respective expertise in venture capital, online searches, and media technology.

Li Kaifu, president and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, said that the AI Challenger is an excellent platform that connects talents, AI and data and he welcomed more companies to join it to promote the sustainable development of China's AI industry.

"In next three years, I hope AI Challenger will eliminate the gap between top youth talents in China and America. Excellent players in the competition will become the leaders of the AI industry in China and perhaps in the world," Li added.

The awards ceremony of AI Challenger 2017 is held in Beijing on Dec 21. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The winners of each competition track receive a total award of over two million yuan ($304,000). They also get opportunities to work in or receive investment from the three organizing companies.

Zhang Yiming, founder of Toutiao, said that AI Challenger, although at a young stage, provides the strongest data backup for participants. He hoped it will drive integration of technology education and industrial innovation.

AI Challenger released over 300,000 image-based as well as over 10 million language-based data entries to talents working on new technologies that will help AI applications "see" and "read" our world better.

The competition was co-organized by Sinovation Ventures, Sogou, and Toutiao. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The competition empowers worldwide AI researchers, scientists, and developers to make advances without being constrained by lack of data resources or hardware.

Launched for the first time this fall, AI Challenger was designed to operate long term, and will expand in terms of categories, partnerships, and community engagement in the years to come.