Qufu, located in east China's Shandong Province, is the birthplace of Confucius (551 BC-479 BC), an ancient Chinese sage whose social and ethical philosophy steered Chinese society for over 2,000 years. People who believe in Confucius or Confucianism come here to trace the roots of traditional Chinese culture.

In this city, hundreds of domestic and foreign experts, scholars and entrepreneurs gathered from June 25-27 to discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI).

Guests at the World Internet Conference (WIC) Nishan Dialogue on Digital Civilization, the first thematic event held by the WIC as an international organization, discussed issues surrounding large language models, artificial generative intelligence (AGI), digital cooperation and how AGI empowers various industries.

A large language model is a type of AI program trained to understand and generate human-like text. OpenAI's ChatGPT relies on such a subsection of machine learning, which has already proven to be immensely useful.

The chatbot was estimated to have reached 100 million active users only two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application. It seemed the bot was reaching AGI, a form of AI that can create text and images, but it's not clear how to measure that yet.

Experts estimate that AGI will occur in 20 to 40 years, maybe 40 years later.

"However, we see a big surprise today," said Bart Selman, former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and professor at Cornell University.

The emergence of large language models and ChatGPT has broken through the barriers of language understanding; this is completely unexpected, he added.

Large language models have engendered much excitement about their potential to reshape a wide range of industries.

Once the digital economy driven by large language models is integrated with the real economy, it will bring about profound changes in economic and social development and industries, said Robin Li, Chinese online search giant Baidu's chairman and CEO.

Take automotive design as an example. Large language models can generate designs automatically, thus reducing research and development cycle time and cost, according to Li.

Large-scale models will not only be used to imitate human beings but also to help discover unknown areas and break through the limits that we have not yet broken through, Li said.

Zhou Hongyi, chairman of the internet security firm 360 Group, believes a large language model is like a "power plant," which can process big data that is difficult to use from "raw resources" into "electricity", thus empowering various industries.

From Zhou's perspective, large language models will be mainly used for governments, cities, industries and enterprises, so the models should be safe, reliable, controllable and easy to use.

A similar standard also applies to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, according to the company's chairman and CEO Zhang Yong, adding that AI should enhance people's well-being and help solve real problems.

China has issued a draft regulation over generative AI, which proposes requirements for users' privacy and business secrets.

While in Europe, EU lawmakers in June agreed on changes to draft AI rules, including a ban on generative AI systems and making disclosure of AI-generated content mandatory.

Walter Fumy, chairperson of CEN and CENELEC JTC 13 on Cybersecurity and Data Protection, shared how Europe built its AI systems with a risk-based approach and that these high-risk AI systems must undergo conformity assessments before being put on the EU market.

As to how to build a safe and trustworthy AI system, he suggested that network security must be achieved.

Digital cooperation

In a meeting held on Sunday, entrepreneurs from foreign enterprises urged the need to promote digital cooperation and technological innovation and formulate standardized ethics for bridging the digital divide, thus enabling technology to empower various industries.

John Hoffman, CEO of the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), said that mobile technology is a catalyst for the digital economy. He advocated for all stakeholders to act together to create a good policy and regulatory environment that support innovation and investment in the 5G era.

Hou Shengli, vice president of Cisco Greater China, believes that the "sharing economy," which promote the optimal use of resources and resource recycling, has opened up a new business model. An interconnected, secure, and intelligent data network can help support the sharing economy, Hou said.

China's digital economy reached 50.2 trillion yuan ($6.94 trillion) in 2022, and the number is expected to exceed 52 trillion yuan ($7.19 trillion) this year and double in the next 10 years, according to Jiang Tao, vice president of Intel Corporation, adding that the company is confident in the country's digital economy.

Jiang said the company has confidence in achieving better development in China and looks forward to working with its Chinese partners to achieve win-win cooperation.