Standing on stage in the eastern China tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution,” Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).”
ASI, Wu said, “could produce a generation of ‘super scientists’ and ‘full-stack super engineers’”, who would “tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds”.
Wu also announced plans to invest 380bn yuan (£40bn) in AI infrastructure over the next three years, news that sent Alibaba stocks soaring to their highest in nearly four years.
Wu’s foray into the existential, techno-frontier rhetoric normally deployed by western tech CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman and DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis caught the attention of observers. “Wu’s ASI speech represents a breakthrough,” the tech writer Afra Wang wrote in her China AI newsletter, Concurrent. “Major Chinese companies are beginning to articulate their own grand visions that carry the flavour of future prophecy.”
AGI, a theoretical state of AI where a highly autonomous system is able to do a human’s job, has become the preoccupation of American tech companies such as OpenAI and DeepMind. Many see it as the next frontier of civilisation, and are in competition with each other, and China, to get there. In May, the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, told a US Senate committee on AI that the “race between the United States and China for international influence likely will be won by the fastest first mover”.
Many in Washington have internalised these fears. The US-China economic and scurity review commission has recommended that Congress “establish and fund a Manhattan Project-like program dedicated to racing to and acquiring an artificial general intelligence (AGI) capability”. The Manhattan Project was a second world war-era research operation to produce nuclear weapons.
In China, many saw Wu’s speech as articulating the vision of a bold, singular tech company, but not one that represented China’s overall AI industry.
“China certainly has research groups working towards AGI. But most AI companies are working towards better applications,” said Ya-Qin Zhang, the dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute for AI Industry Research and former president of the tech company Baidu.
A combination of limited computing power, a pragmatic approach to technology and a keen awareness of the present day potential of AI has steered China’s national AI policy towards real-life applications rather than frontier research.
In August, the Chinese government published its highly anticipated “AI+ strategy”. The policy document outlined how AI could turbocharge China’s development goals, such as by…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
