AI should tackle real issues, not just competition: insiders

Expert warns of too much hype in sector

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies should tackle real issues and global attention should not just focus on China-U.S. competition in the sector, industry representatives said at a forum in Beijing on Sunday.

New AI technologies could have an impact on everyone, Wang Jian, chief technology officer at Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, told the Global Times in an interview at the EmTech forum, held by U.S. tech magazine MIT Technology Review in Beijing from Sunday to Monday.

China has been catching up with the U.S. in the race for AI supremacy, with major Chinese companies increasing their investment in research and development (R&D) in AI in the past few years. "China is winning the AI war against the U.S.," U.S. media outlet Newsweek said on January 15.

"It's not a question about China or the U.S., or applying technologies or not. It's about everyone, including young people, doing more valuable things," he said.

Alibaba will invest 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in R&D over the next three years, according to a post published on the company's website in October 2017. This investment includes the creation of the company's DAMO Academy to attract talent, build partnerships and open research laboratories in seven cities around the globe.

"DAMO is also a thing for the globe," Wang said, noting that it is partly about exploring, which does not necessarily mean focusing on specific areas.

This year, Alibaba is planning to implement its "City Brain" project into more real scenarios in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, which is where the company is headquartered. The project aims to tackle real issues of transportation, Wang said.

In terms of the commercialization of AI technologies, there is a concern about too much money being poured into the sector, and there is "too much hype," Tomaso Poggio, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, said during the forum.

"So the main risk is that expectations may be too high. If things don't work out as they should or as investors think they should, then there would be a backlash," Poggio noted.