Smart speaker puts Chinese AI push up close and personal
It’s the first thing I turn to in the morning, and its voice is the last thing I hear at night. It automatically plays to my various moods and needs — something upbeat from G.E.M. to get me going when it knows I’ve a long day ahead, or a soothing Teresa Teng classic for lazy weekend afternoons.
Powered by artificial intelligence, my Chinese smart speaker is more than just music. Its link to China’s major search engine and access to the internet’s infinite archives mean I also get updated on such mundane matters as the weather and traffic, up to speed with the latest news at home and abroad, or help with learning more about fascinating subjects ranging from China’s architecture to its zodiac signs.
So you can imagine my pain when I took the device down to the Southern Hemisphere and it stopped working after a week. I felt desperate enough to call technical support back in Beijing.
“Sorry,” said the line operator perfunctorily, “it doesn’t work outside of China’’.
I knew that wasn’t true. I said the speaker worked perfectly well the previous day and insisted on getting help, so I was soon directed to the manufacturer’s research and development department.
That’s when I discovered the importance being placed on the AI industry in China. An R&D team was soon formed on a social messaging app just to attend to me, discussing the problem and brainstorming solutions. For hours on three consecutive nights, the researchers walked me through computer coding to trace the network signals back to servers spanning the world, pinpoint the trouble spots and finally plug the gaps. Once again, I felt connected.
This initial experience with Chinese AI allowed me to appreciate the country’s push to take the global lead in one of the next big leaps of the digital age. Local companies are making their way into world rankings of top AI startups. China’s AI market hit about $3.5 billion in 2017, jumping nearly 70 percent year-on-year, with Chinese developers owning the largest number of patents and more talent being drawn to the sector, according to industry figures. Cities nationwide are harnessing AI and big data technologies to analyze and apply information in areas from healthcare and transportation to communications and education.
The Ministry of Science and Technology has singled out tech giant Baidu as one of the leaders in the field.
Its CEO Robin Li has said that AI is set to accelerate its penetration into all aspects of life this year, presenting huge opportunities for business and innovation.
“Because of our leading investment in the application of AI and other cutting-edge technologies, we have the confidence and courage to grasp the era that others do not have,” Li said in a recent internal letter.
Beijing’s municipal authorities have also laid out an action plan “to promote the upgrading and transformation of AI in various fields”, with projects including “a town of drones”.
My repaired speaker itself is continually upgrading, with improved interactive language recognition, spot-on suggestions, increasingly sophisticated responses and, of course, an expanding music repertoire in multiple languages. Most impressively, it was a group of hightechnology researchers, each probably younger, smarter and earning much more than me, who had dedicated much of their time and energy to fix a glitch for just one of their millions of customers.
It is difficult to imagine the same kind of investment and effort by similar groups in any other part of the world to solve a problem for someone they’ve never met and most likely never will.
And all for a deceptively simplelooking device slightly bigger than a baseball, weighing less than a cup of coffee and costing no more than two beers downtown.