Chinese confident about AI

Wei Jia
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, May 24, 2017
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From applications that are already a part of many people's everyday lives, such as Siri, smart TVs and Google translation, to more futuristic incarnations like self-driving cars and robots at the beck and call of their human masters, artificial intelligence, or AI, is shaping up to be a revolutionary force likened to the steam engine and electricity.

A fleet of Baidu self-driving cars during a road test in November, 2011 [Photo/VCG]

A fleet of Baidu self-driving cars during a road test in November, 2011 [Photo/VCG]



Partly fueled by apocalyptic movies like Terminator, however, are the concerns over the rise of machines. Even Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, once compared developing AI to "summoning the demon."

That fear is not dominant among Chinese people.

In The Age of Artificial Intelligence: Impact and Implications published on May 22 by Jinri Toutiao, China's top news and information mobile application that uses AI technology to offer personalized content, the index of Chinese confidence about AI is 83 out of 100, which means an optimistic and rational attitude to the next big thing in technology.

When asked whether they support the development of AI, 51.3% answered in the affirmative, 28.68% chose "supportive with reservations," while 15.77% said the pace should be slowed and more investments made in preparation for AI gone out of humans' control. A mere 2.4% staunchly opposed AI.

As for their biggest fear over the advent of AI, more than half cited social crisis caused by AI becoming its own master.

Still, people are eager to see AI in the driver's seat; the report shows that Chinese view self-driving cars being developed by Google as the hottest AI product. Baidu, China's leading search engine, is also betting on autonomous driving. Ramping up its challenge to Google and Tesla, Baidu opened up its driverless car technology for auto makers to use in April.

By 2020, the company expects to have polished technology that allows its self-drive cars to navigate highways and open city roads. Baidu is actually the top name on the most watched AI company list for Chinese speakers in the report, followed by such tech giants as Google, Alibaba, Xiaomi and Huawei.

According to the report, automobiles are only the third most promising industry for AI application, the first and second places going to finance and digital sectors. On the more immediate survey of the AI-related topic you care most about, "Which jobs would be taken over by AI" understandably took the top place.

According to a survey by AI Era, an AI-focused think tank, there were about 200 AI startups in China as of September 2016. Most of them were formed after 2010 and 70% of those companies engaged in research in visual and voice recognition, with some of the breakthroughs in facial recognition technology made by Chinese companies.

The momentum of AI growth in China is boosted by the government's ambition. The Chinese government has identified AI as a field of strategic importance and in the country's latest five-year plan (2016-2020), intelligent manufacturing and robots are among the key innovation projects.

With a bright future of AI in China all but certain, it's necessary to take the confidence in the technology with a pinch of salt and address the real concern over the wider ramifications of the technology as is reflected in the Toutiao report. The rapid automation of factories and warehouses, for example, has rendered large numbers of employees redundant. How to blunt the impact of AI applications for the vulnerable, both on the factory floor and beyond, should be pushed higher up on every tech-driven government's agenda.

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