AI signals dawn of new industrial era
Generative artificial intelligence tools set to drive modernization of traditional sectors, experts say
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize various industries, and its meteoric rise will spearhead a new technological and industrial revolution, experts said.
The fast-growing generative AI technology will be increasingly applied to a wider range of sectors this year to empower such a transformation and upgrade traditional industries, they added.
Their comments come as major Chinese technology firms ramp up efforts to launch their own AI-powered large language models (LLMs), which could turn into potential rivals of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot from the US-based AI research company OpenAI that has taken the world by storm and triggered a new generative AI wave after it debuted in late 2022.
Generative AI refers to computer algorithms trained with huge amounts of data capable of generating content such as images, text, audio, and video. It is the key technology underpinning ChatGPT.
As AI potentially becomes the driving force behind innovation, companies must adapt and invest in AI to stay competitive, the experts said.
The rapid growth in AI spending, the transformation of IT services, and the convergence of AI solutions are just a few of the significant changes foreseen in the technology landscape, they added.
Meanwhile, industry insiders said the commercial use of AI chatbots has raised concerns about how to regulate generative AI.
They called for ensuring responsible use of the technology and promoting its healthy advancement, given the emergence of a new set of problems around issues such as ethics, privacy leakage, and data security.
According to global market research firm International Data Corp, worldwide spending on AI solutions will grow to more than $500 billion in 2027, and most enterprises will experience a notable shift in the weight of technology investments toward AI implementation and adoption of AIenhanced products and services.
It said in a report that China’s spending on AI will likely hit $38 billion in 2027, and account for about 9 percent of the global market, with a compound annual growth rate of about 25 percent from 2023 to 2027.
Kitty Fok, managing director of IDC China, said Chinese companies respond faster to AI deployments compared to their foreign counterparts.
AI technology is driving digital transformation across industries, including manufacturing, transportation, energy, healthcare, and retail, Fok noted.
“We are currently in a transitional stage in the application of generative AI,” said Zhou Zhengang, vice-president of IDC China.
Zhou estimates that generative AI will speed up its integration with a wider range of sectors and evolve into a productivity tool this year. Meanwhile, an increasing number of industry-specific LLMs will emerge.
LLMs are AI models fed with huge amounts of text data for use in a variety of tasks, ranging from natural language processing to machine translation.
AI chatbots such as ChatGPT leverage machine learning algorithms and show strong capabilities in mimicking humanlike responses and assisting people with tasks such as writing essays and scripts, making business proposals, and even checking program bugs, which they do within seconds.
A slew of Chinese tech giants — including Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc, JD, Tencent Holdings, and iFlytek Co — have accelerated steps to launch ChatGPT-like products and bolster the large-scale commercial application of LLMs.
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Alibaba Group, recently unveiled its open-source 72 billion-parameter version of its AI-powered LLM, Tongyi Qianwen.
The LLM, called Qwen-72B, achieved better performance than GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in some authoritative LLM evaluation rankings, with enhanced capabilities in understanding English and Chinese, mathematics reasoning, and coding.
“Building up an open-source ecosystem is critical to promoting the technological advancement and application of LLMs in China,” said Zhou Jingren, chief technology officer of Alibaba Cloud.
Open-source LLMs will help enterprises simplify the process of model training and deployment, lower thresholds for the application of LLMs, and establish their own customized AI models at a faster pace, he said.
Alibaba Cloud has also released a series of industry-specific models to boost productivity across various activities, such as customer support, legal counseling, healthcare, finance, and document management.
Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu, said: “Generative AI and large language models hold immense transformative power in numerous industries, presenting a significant market opportunity for us. To stay ahead of the game, we keep upgrading our models to generate more creative responses while improving training throughput and lowering inference costs.”
The company launched the latest version of its LLM, Ernie 4.0, in October, saying its capabilities are on par with those of OpenAI’s most advanced GPT-4 model.
Li said Baidu is working hard to build Ernie-powered applications and solutions for different industries and scenarios, and empower more enterprises to create industry-specific AI models and applications.
Chinese e-commerce giant JD has unveiled its LLM, ChatRhino, which can be used in a wide range of fields, including retail, logistics, finance, and health, as the company aims to bolster digital transformation and upgrade various industries by using AI.
Xu Ran, CEO of JD, said the company has accumulated huge amounts of data and knowledge from extensive industrial scenarios, and will strengthen cooperation with industry partners to promote technological innovation.
Among other tech giants, Tencent rolled out its foundation LLM, Hunyuan, in September.
The LLM supports a wide array of functions spanning the creation of images, copy writing, text recognition, and customer service. Businesses can access Hunyuan via Tencent’s public cloud platform and fine-tune it to specific needs, the company said.
Global consultancy Accenture said in a report that Chinese enterprises are at a crucial juncture of breakthroughs in AI, as generative AI and other rapidly evolving technologies usher in a future for business where the physical and digital worlds are inextricably linked.
According to the report, 91 percent of the business executives surveyed in the country agreed that AI foundation models will play an important role in their organizations’ strategies over the next three to five years.
“As generative AI will have farreaching impact, business leaders must act immediately and scale up investments in data, talent, and customized AI models to meet the unique needs of enterprises,” said Yu Yi, technology lead for Accenture Greater China.
Most Chinese executives agreed that generative AI will spark significant creativity and innovation and usher in a new era of enterprise intelligence, Yu said.
Pan Helin, co-director of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center at Zhejiang University’s International Business School, said LLMs have significant potential for applications in a wide range of sectors like culture, healthcare, and education, but their real value comes from the consumer market, and the ultimate goal of LLMs in industrial applications is to benefit the general public.
The commercial use of the revolutionary AI chatbot, meanwhile, has triggered concern, and some controversy, as to how to promote the healthy development of generative AI.
Chinese authorities issued in August a 24-point guideline for managing generative AI services. The measures support the use of the technology in various fields to produce positive and high-quality content, and encourage independent innovation of basic technologies, including generative AI algorithms, frameworks, chips, and software platforms.
A group of Chinese companies and research institutions have opened their AI-powered LLMs to the public after receiving approval from the authorities on Aug 31.
“Making LLMs available to the public will boost iterations and upgrades, and promote technological advances as well as their large-scale commercial use,” said Lu Yanxia, research director at IDC China.
Lu said Chinese tech companies’ continual advancements in AI models will further promote the popularization of LLMs among the public, and bring about fresh business opportunities for AI server hosting firms, and cloud computing and chip companies.
Global consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said generative AI will replace human beings in doing a large number of repetitive, simple, and basic tasks, thus reducing costs and improving operational efficiency.
Although AI brings new development opportunities, challenges abound as data security is a top priority, and more efforts are needed to ensure that the technology is used safely and responsibly.
“It is important for banks to establish a responsible AI system and ensure fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, and security in the application of generative AI,” said Sun Wei, partner of BCG and core leader of the firm’s financial institutions practice.
She also called for greater efforts to formulate a code of conduct for employees who use generative AI tools, guide them to reasonably judge and use the content created by machines, and establish management mechanisms regarding risk control and liability affirmation.