China has created local AI champions such as Tencent, Baidu, Sensetime, Face++ and Cambricon, said Ludovic Bodin, a French entrepreneur who plans to set up a one-billion-dollar fund to finance AI joint ventures between France and China.
He also seeks to directly invest in firms either in France or China, particularly in areas of health care, transportation and environment.
"Artificial intelligence was a big priority when French President Emmanuel Macron visited China in January. China has critical competitive advantage in AI. Its largest datasets, policy push and education reform are key advantages. While France harbors top-ranked talent in AI, and aims to boost the sector and lead European development in AI," Bodin said.
The ambitions are shared by Chian's domestic players, as Liu Qiangdong, founder of e-commerce giant JD.com, announced at the congress that the company would renovate 800 logistics centers in China with AI technologies in the next five years.
"We look to establish an intelligent system covering storage, delivery vehicles, distribution stations and customers. In the future, courier boys will become white-collars who sit in office and monitor machines that do the jobs for them," Liu said.
Meanwhile, iFlytek said its machine translation capabilities by 2019 were expected to match a college graduate majoring in English.
"The latest machine can translate Chinese to 33 other languages. It also works well for different Chinese dialects," said Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFlytek.
By 2030, AI is expected to generate 16 trillion U.S. dollars for the world economy, said Indrajit Banerjee, director of the knowledge societies division of the Communication and Information Sector in UNESCO.
"Chinese companies are very active in developing AI technology and application. They have achieved phenomenal progress in a very short span of time. Their contribution to AI will be tremendous," he said.
TALENT FOR THE FUTURE
To boost the development of intelligent technologies, experts and entrepreneurs agree that it is critical for countries to nurture more talent.
"China has advantages in the speed of AI development and its wide application, but its weak points are the depth of basic research and originality," Wan said.
"Demand of AI talent is extremely high now, and that happens to be our weak point as well. Talent is a key element in developing the industry," he said.
Gong Ke, executive president of CINGAIDS, said about one-fourth of AI technologies used in China came from abroad. "Software and hardware are developed by firms such as Nvidia and IBM. I hope Chinese companies will also be suppliers in the future," he said.
"The evolution of new technology is unstoppable. Innovation is going faster and faster. If education cannot keep up, we will not have the next generation AI ready for the new skills that are needed. AI started at the top universities and now it has to go down," he said.
In April, AI coursebooks were introduced to the curriculum in 40 high schools in China.
Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, also directed attention to AI education.
"Humans will never win if they compete with machines on who recites books fast and gets calculations right. We should focus more on kindergarten and elementary education, and raise our kids to be responsible and visionary beings," he said. "The age of AI will come, and it is important that we get prepared."
