Alibaba’s cloud services subsidiary and Shanghai’s Fudan University establish new intelligent computing platform for AI initiatives

Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing services subsidiary and Shanghai’s Fudan University have jointly launched what they describe as the country’s largest cloud-based scientific research and intelligent computing platform for universities, deepening the business unit’s ties with major public institutions and boosting its support for new artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.

The new Computing for the Future at Fudan (CFFF) platform was designed to train large AI models, such as large language models (LLMs), for the purpose of scientific research, according to a statement published by Alibaba Cloud on Tuesday. Hangzhou-based parent Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

“In universities, professors may be able to afford cloud computing [services] with scientific research funds, but not every student can afford it,” said Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian at a ceremony held at the university’s campus. “I hope that everyone can use cloud computing to realise their scientific research ideals.”

China Telecom, the country’s largest fixed-line network operator and a major domestic cloud services provider, was also behind the development of the new computing platform. Earlier this month, China Telecom unveiled a plan to set up a huge computing centre in Shanghai to support the city’s AI industry.

The CFFF project, which Wang depicted as a dream come true after 15 years, reflects China’s big bet on generative AI as a strategic tool that would not only save a national economy saddled by debt and a sluggish post-coronavirus recovery, but also refuel the country’s bid to beat the US in their heated tech rivalry.

LLMs are deep-learning AI algorithms that can recognise, summarise, translate, predict and generate content using very large data sets. These represent the technology used to train AI chatbots like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT.