Global Mobile Internet Conference 2018: The theme AI Genesis tells exactly where we are in the area

World
Europe

03:21

The 2018 Global Mobile Internet Conference kicked off in Beijing. This year the attention shifts to artificial intelligence covering sectors such as robotics and mobile networks. Our Xia Cheng went to check out how companies are testing the new technology.

AI Genesis, that's the theme of this year's global mobile internet conference. And it tells exactly where we are in this hot investment area. Gartner says AI will contribute to a third of the global economic growth in 2021.

As for China, it has overtaken the US in AI startup funding with a focus on facial recognition and chips. Xpeng, or Xiaopeng, is one of the new breed of auto makers in China. It is backed by Alibaba and Foxconn. It is also working with a former Tesla expert on autonomous driving.

Baidu is here. It's arguably the leader of AI investment in China. It spent 585 million US dollars in R&D in the fourth quarter of 2017. The bulk of that went to artificial intelligence.

Baidu says it is still in the cash burning phase of AI investment. It has got one AI system and a smart car. But the commercialization rate is low.

Many companies are looking at specific scenarios for AI application, hoping to create revenue streams sooner.

Take Neural Machine Translation, an AI technology that gives you native speaker level translation, is now combined with Augmented Reality.

Youdao, a company under Chinese tech giant Netease, is promoting such a service in scenarios like shopping and sightseeing in foreign countries.

LIN HUIJIA TECHNICAL DIRECTOR OF LUNA DEPARTMENT, YOUDAO Besides Facial recognition, we also have voice recognition, or in shop talk, voice print recognition. It's like fingerprint for voice.

CARMEN ZHANG BRANDING & PR DIRECTOR The year 2018 is likely to see explosive growth of AI in China, taking advantage of the huge population to provide ample data and opportunities for companies to scale up.

Yet China is still working on chips that support the growth of AI. But chip startups here need to significantly improve their profitability to justify the investment.

But the future depends on whether China can make reliable and profitable chips to complete the ecosystem for artificial intelligence. XC, CGTN, Beijing.