Entrepreneurs share insights into AI

Entrepreneurs from various industries shared their insights into artificial intelligence at the Futureturing Summit held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing on Saturday.

Zhang Chen, CTO of China's e-commerce giant JD.com, said in his speech at the summit AI technologies have considerably increased the company's efficiency and flexibility.

"We have developed AI technologies in every aspect, from user experience to marketing to supply chain to drone delivery, autonomous warehousing and autonomous trucks," Zhang said.

Earlier in November, JD.com's financial arm JD Finance launched an enterprise-level cloud services platform to use AI technologies, such as face recognition and graph calculation, to enhance work efficiency for financial institutions.

In April, the company established JD Logistics, aiming to use AI, big data and automation to redefine the potential of e-commerce logistics.

Jing Kun, general manager of DuerOS, an AI department of domestic internet giant Baidu Inc, said at the summit natural language-based human-machine interaction devices will be popular in the future.

Citing data from market research firm IDC, he said 52 percent of vehicles will be able to conduct a driver-car dialogue by 2020.

Baidu, aiming at transforming approaches to human-machine interaction, launched its Project Prometheus featuring its natural language processing intelligent system DuerOS, similar to Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, at Silicon Valley on Nov 9.

China's AI industry has been growing at a tremendous speed. The number of AI companies has increased from 57 in 2007 to 592 by June 2017, more than tenfold over the past 10 years, according to a report released by Tencent Research Institute.

The Chinese government has positioned AI as a national strategic priority and a core drive for industrial transformation. Mentioned in President Xi Jinping's report to the 19th National Congress, AI is part of the plan to promote integration with the real economy.

In its New Generation AI Development Plan, the State Council, the country's Cabinet, has declared an ambitious goal of becoming a world leader in AI innovation with a market size of over one trillion yuan ($151 billion) by 2030.

In addition, policies such as Made in China 2025 and the Three-year Guidance for Internet Plus AI plan are all top-down initiatives aiming to take the nation's AI technology forward.

The summit was co-hosted by AI-focused Futureturing and Caishi Media.

Hu Xinyi contributed to the story.