2024 China College Students AI Innovation Competition Kicks Off

The 2024 "China College Students Computer Competition - AI Innovation Competition" (C4-AI Competition) has officially launched. This competition has been included in the "National College Discipline Competition Rankings" for consecutive years and is one of the "national competitions" for universities. This year's competition features PaddlePaddle deep learning platform and Wenxin large model as the primary development tools, while also supporting participants to choose PaddleX zero-code model pipeline for small model training and deployment, encouraging college students to develop AI large model products.

The C4-AI Competition is hosted by the National Higher Education Computer Education Research Association, co-organized by Zhejiang University and Baidu, and面向 global university students across all majors. It encourages students to identify industry and sector needs, develop AI creative applications to address real-world problems, and use AI and creativity to create more possibilities for the world. The C4-AI Competition has been included in the China Higher Education Society's "National College Discipline Competition Rankings" for consecutive years, becoming one of the "national competitions" for universities.

Since the C4-AI Competition was founded in 2018, over 20,000 domestic and international participants have joined, receiving over 10,000 creative works covering more than ten fields including health, transportation, agriculture, industry, and aerospace.

In 2023, the competition attracted 3,688 teams from 463 universities, with participants creating nearly 800 creative AI applications based on Baidu's PaddlePaddle deep learning platform and Wenxin large model. These included AI robots that can chat with elderly people living alone and detect falls, holographic drawing boards that can generate bedtime stories with just a few strokes to help autistic children open up, AR devices that simulate surgical procedures, and gloves controlled by brain signals.

This year's C4-AI Competition focuses on large models, emphasizing not just algorithms but also the practical application and deployment of AI creative projects. It encourages participants to directly use model technology to develop their own projects and even produce large model product applications. The competition has changed from the previous format of parallel "Creative Group" and "Empowerment Group" to a single "PaddlePaddle Wenxin Group" track.

This year's C4-AI Competition will open an AI large model creative training camp, offering different levels of training content during the preliminary and semi-final stages. The camp emphasizes practical skills and interaction, and is open to competition participants and key partner institutions to better guide and incubate promising AI creative projects.

Participants in the preliminary training camp will gain: 1) Comprehensive analysis of AI and large model technology; 2) Principles and implementation of generative AI and general large language models; 3) Interpretation of large model technology applications and product cases; 4) Analysis and practice of intelligent agents and plugins; 5) Practical operation of PaddlePaddle and Wenxin large model development tools and platforms.

The deadline for preliminary registration and material submission is August 15. More competition information can be obtained by joining the official QQ group (599725656) or visiting the official website of the "China College Students Computer Competition - AI Innovation Competition" (C4-AI) at http://aicontest.baidu.com/.