AI needs to get back to fundamentals

Artificial intelligence (AI) is steadily embedding itself in daily life.

When I arrived at Wuzhen, East China’s Zhejiang Province, in earlier December for attending the 4th World Internet Conference, I noticed that facial recognition, an AI-powered technology, was being used at the entrance of the conference hall.

As each attendee stood in front of a camera at the entrance, their personal information appeared automatically on a screen and the system gave them approval to enter the hall.

Today, this technology is also widely used in airports and railway stations in the country.

For instance, when travelers stand in front of a camera at the entry checkpoint of a railway station in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, their identity and ticket information is uploaded automatically into the station’s system. The use of facial recognition can finally shorten the time it takes people to pass through such gates.

Though I am part of the digital generation that has grown up in a world surrounded by technology and the Internet, I am still impressed by how AI-powered image and speech recognition technologies can be used in a wide range of industries including manufacturing, finance, education and healthcare.

At Wuzhen conference, I was also amazed by some Chinese technology firms, which have come up with more innovative consumer products this year such as smart home speakers, smart driving assistance systems and smart companion robots.

Some attendees to the conference also hailed this progress, and believe that China is one of the frontrunners in AI application.

China maintains growth momentum in the AI sector for several reasons.

It is the most populous nation, so it generates a large volume of data every day. Technology startups are attracted by this abundant resource, which could help them build training models for different algorithms.

I have interviewed several scientists specializing in computer science. Some had already set up research teams in the US, but they decided to return to China for this huge potential market.

There is no doubt that AI will remain a trendy topic for investors in the coming year.

Major players in China’s Internet sector unveiled their AI strategies, while foreign technology giants such as Google and Amazon have shown growing interest in the Chinese market by setting up AI labs or cloud services in the country.

While more technology companies are placing huge bets on AI, 2018 will be a year when the sector becomes more mature, and competition among those players will also be more intense, especially in core technologies.

In the coming year, the global race for AI chip dominance will further heat up, as the first companies to possess such chips will dominate AI processing.

Chinese AI chipmaker Cambricon offered the world’s first commercial chip for deep learning in November, claiming that it would have 30 percent of China’s high-performance AI chip market in three years. The ambitious plan will also rival other major chipmakers including Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia.

However, the industry has also seen bubbles emerging.

Some industry representatives have already called for a more rational AI market, where technologies aim to tackle issues that people face in real life instead of being used to lure capital into a “trendy” sector of the capital market.

Some AI-focused companies have high valuations, but they have to shift their focus from attracting investors to expanding applications in vertical segments, a situation that is more likely to support sustainable development.