AI is the Global Mobile Internet Conference's focus

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The attention at this year's Global Mobile Internet Conference, which is underway in Beijing, is on artificial intelligence covering areas such as robotics and mobile networks.

AI Genesis is the theme, a clear indication that this is a hot investment area.

As for China, it has overtaken the US in AI startup funding with a focus on facial recognition and chips.

Baidu, arguably the leader of AI investment in China, spent 585 million US dollars in R&D in the fourth quarter of 2017, the bulk of which went to artificial intelligence.

Baidu says it has got one AI system and a smart car but is still in the cash burning phase of AI investment, which leads to a low commercialization rate.

Many companies are looking at specific scenarios for AI application, hoping to create revenue streams at an early stage. Gartner, a famous American research and advisory firm, has predicted that AI will contribute to a third of global economic growth in 2021.

VCG Photo

Take Neural Machine Translation, AI technology that gives you native speaker level translation. It 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.

The Technical Director of Luna Department of Youdao, Lin Huijia, said that their company has provided an AI platform for developers. .

“Developers can use our platform to build their own applications, using our AI abilities.” said Lin.

This year is likely to see explosive growth in 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 need to significantly improve their profitability to justify the investment.

The future depends on whether China can make reliable and profitable chips to complete the ecosystem for artificial intelligence.