Global Tech 17, an AI-themed technology conference, was held in Beijing on Thursday, bringing together home-grown technology giants such as Alibaba and Huawei and multinationals like Microsoft and Samsung to discuss how artificial intelligence will shape future life.
Global Tech 17, an AI-themed technology conference,isheld in Beijing Thursday.[Photo/China.org.cn]
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Dr. Zhou Li said the most important direction of AI is in the ability of conversation and understanding human emotions, and that is the biggest difference between AI and current human-machine interaction.
"When it comes to 'smiles,' there are many different kinds of expressions such as grinning, and even bitter smiling," he explained.
"We hope that through calculating human feelings, we can explore more uncharted areas and needs, unleashing the imagination of the AI industry and anticipating the earlier arrival of the era of intelligent life," he added.
Speaking of the AI trend in the future of the smart city, Alibaba Vice President Hua Xiansheng commented that the "city brain" has become just as much an infrastructure facility as electricity, and it can't be accomplished only by human beings; there is an extremely large value placed on AI to deeply analyze the big data.
The management consultancy McKinsey & Company estimates that as many as 60 percent of today's professions could outsource almost a third of their workload to AI. The global market of AI is expected to grow at an annual average rate of 36 percent, reaching a value of US$3 trillion by 2025 from US$126 billion in 2015.
Qin Liang, a manager of Huawei Wireless Products Line, said the commercial application of 5G technologies will witness a boom in 2019.
In the transport area, for example, 5G technologies would be able to meet needs from such areas as driverless vehicles, while they would also be able to gather and process enough data to build the infrastructure of a smart city.
Professor Li Jinliang, a pioneer of China's mobile communications sector, also offered his ideas at the conference.
He said 5G technologies had solved the issue of ultra-fast transmission of data and laid the foundation for the construction of the internet of things.
Science-fiction author Hao Jingfang, the first Chinese woman to win a Hugo Award, offered a different perspective on how to apply AI to education.
"AI can promote education equality and give children in poverty-stricken families access to education," she said. However, she added that AI still faces challenges such as how to coordinate student activities, how to get them to express personal feelings, and how to stimulate innovation.
She advised future teachers to work harder to stimulate the interest of students in learning, encourage them to think and innovate, and organize them to cooperate.
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