China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Domestic, US firms win big at tech awards
Leading tech giants from China and the United States figured among the winners of top awards at the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.
It was the second year that the World Leading Internet Scientific and Technological Achievement awards had been presented.
This year, Alibaba Group, Baidu, Huawei Technologies and Mobike Technology shared the honors with Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.
Technologies such as the internet of things or IoT, supercomputing, artificial intelligence and virtual reality featured prominently in the selections of the judges.
Few companies have had such a dramatic impact on the physical landscape of China and other cities around the world as Mobike Technology, with millions of consumers now renting its shared bicygeneration cles every day.
Wang Xiaofeng, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Beijing-based company, said he was sitting in his office with colleagues three years ago and wondered what the solution was to air pollution and traffic jams.
“We noticed also that the usage of bicycles had declined and wondered whether this could be reversed. We came up with a solution that combined smartphone technology with GPS tracking systems.”
Mobike launched in Shanghai in April 2016. Now, it has 8 million bikes in across the world.
Huawei Technologies won its award for its next-generation mobile communications 3GPP 5G pre-commercial system. It will launch a smartphone to support the technology in 2019 when its chip will be also launched.
“With the 5G technology, users will be able to download a 6-gigabyte file in less than two seconds,” said Xu Zhijun, rotating CEO of the company.
Alibaba Group won the award for ET Brain, its next- 200 cities technology.
Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba, said developments in the internet field over the next 10 years could transform all sectors.
“They could be as significant as were the moon landings in a similar period of development,” he said.
Baidu won its award for its new digital assistant DuerOS, which will take on Apple’s Siri and other competitors.
Its digital assistant responds vocally to whatever question is asked of it, even on an emotional level.
Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, said at a news conference after the awards ceremony that people should not be concerned about artificial intelligence destroying jobs.
“Artificial intelligence is only a computer system. It does not have human consciousness or sense,” he said. cloud computing
List of the 14 world-leading internet scientific and technological achievements:
Huawei 3GPP 5G pre-commercial system, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, China Arm security architecture, Arm Ltd, US
Microsoft Xiaoice -- emotion computing-based artificial intelligence; Microsoft Corp, Hong Kong
BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, China Satellite Navigation Office, China
Qualcomm achieves world’s first announced 5G data connection on a 5G modem chipset for mobile devices, Qualcomm Incorporated, US
The major application results based on Sunway TaihuLight Supercomputing System, National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China
The first photonics quantum computer beating early classical computers, the CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, China
A big data-based new-generation mobile journey platform, Beijing Didi Infinity Technology and Development Co Ltd, China ET Brain, Alibaba Group, China AWS GreenGrass, Amazon Web Service, US
Tesla integrated energy solutions, Tesla Inc, US
Mobile dockless smart bikeshare, Mobike Technology Co Ltd, China
DuerOS, Beijing Baidu Netcom Science Technology Co, China AR kit, Apple Inc, US