Companies and governments all over the world have come to realize that artificial intelligence (AI) is an important technical frontier, and many people are trying to drive innovation in this area, which is believed to be the right strategy, senior researcher at U.S. tech giant Google told a seminar on Thursday in Beijing.
While China has been encouraging investment in AI in order to catch up with the U.S., more and more Chinese tech companies have been emerging as major players in this field.
Google has enjoyed a long history of experience in developing fundamental AI technologies and deploying AI into its products and services, which people find useful, Greg Corrado, a senior AI research scientist working with Google, told the seminar held at the company's Beijing office.
Google has already been working with Chinese startups in helping them use AI technologies, for example, machine learning that is teaching computers how to learn without having to program rules. CastBox, a Chinese podcasting startup, is using TensorFlow - an open-source software library for dataflow programming - to make recommendations for users, he said.
The U.S. tech giant, which has encountered difficulties in the Chinese market due to the internet crackdown, announced in December 2017 that it will launch the AI China Center. This center joins other AI research centers that Google has all over the world, including in New York, Toronto, London and Zurich, according to the company's website.
Promoting diversity in research ideas and scientific approaches is part of Google's strategy, which will also help accelerate innovation, the scientist noted.
Although people are getting a better understanding of how they can use AI for pattern recognition-based tasks, some of the next challenges involve understanding how AI can work in concert with human intelligence and how to use AI to help make tasks easier, more accurate and more efficient, Corrado told the Global Times.
AI applications will be centered around the needs of humans and will be the trend for the next decade, he added.
