The World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) concluded on Wednesday in Shanghai. During the three-day event, industry leaders, scholars as well as government officials gathered to discuss the technologies powering artificial intelligence (AI), its application and governance.
Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's artificial intelligence and research group, shared with CGTN what he thought about AI's development and its impact.
The concept of AI was first brought up in 1956, but what it means and what it is capable of has changed significantly over the past six decades. The remarkable progress made in the field of AI, according to Shum, was largely driven by the huge amount of data generated from Internet and Internet of Things (IoT), by the emergence of strong computer power and by the incredible breakthrough in new algorithms, in particular in deep learning and deep neural nets.
"I certainly believe that AI is disrupting practically every vertical industry, whether you are in transportation, healthcare, or agriculture," Shum said, citing examples of autonomous driving and the use of IoT sensors in agriculture to help farmers plant crops and decide what kind of pesticides to use.
The large amount of data that the Chinese population generates is widely accepted as a unique advantage that China has in AI development.
Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's AI and research group, speaks to CGTN during an interview. /CGTN Photo
In answer to the question of "how important China is for tech companies such as MS, both in terms of developing new technologies and market demand," Shum agreed that China is in many ways leading, be it communication tools or e-commerce, and that it's critical for multinationals to look at the Chinese market and excel here.
He also added that in the future data would not only be generated by consumers but also more and more by devices, and that is not something unique to China.
However, like every new technology, AI is a double-edged sword. Concerns of job loss, privacy infringement and inequality in terms of digital access, in Shum's opinion, are all legitimate.
"Inside Microsoft we also formed an AI ethics committee. Just because we can build some technologies doesn't mean we should apply them. So we would hope in the near future before we ship any kind of product or service, we would go through the ethics board review.”
(Top image: Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's AI and research group, speaks at the summit forum of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference. /WAIC Photo)