Jack Ma, the executive chairman of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, urged the world to seize the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, in a speech at The Computing Conference organized by Alibaba in Hangzhou on Thursday.
“Five major changes in the near future will fundamentally influence China, and the whole world,” said Ma at the conference.
Ma said that with the development of Internet, AI and big data, massive changes will occur in the retailing, manufacturing, and financial industries, in new technology, and in resources.
Talking about resources, Jack ma said that data will become key factor changing the way we use and explore new resources and energy.
The development of AI and big data will bring fundamental changes to the already internetized manufacturing and financing industries, and give birth to new technologies and resources, according to Ma.
Ma said that the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) demands that future manufacturing be more intelligent and customized, that more capital will be provided to the majority of small and medium enterprises in future financing, that more technologies will appear in mobile Internet and big data, and that data will also be an important resource in and of itself.
Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company in China. The company, especially with its online shopping platform Taobao, has brought enormous changes to traditional commerce and the retail industry in China.
But Ma foresees a new impact, even to Alibaba: that impact will be brought by new technologies, especially AI and big data.
“Personally, I think that some traditional businesses have failed because they did not get hold of Internet technologies, but Alibaba did. The coming era of new retailing will impact both traditional commerce and e-commerce,” said Ma.
Ma’s speech was translated into Chinese characters in real time using Alibaba Cloud’s AI technology, Alibaba Cloud ET. Alibaba Cloud ET works like Apple’s Siri, and recognized and translated most of Ma’s speech with speed and accuracy.
Ma said that new technologies, like those demonstrated in Alibaba Cloud ET, were nothing to fear: people should keep an open mind and use them to better serve themselves.
“Fear comes from ignorance of the future. But the future holds nothing dreadful, as long as you embrace it, and grasp it for yourself,” said Ma.
The Computing Conference was held by Alibaba’s cloud computing arm, Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud, founded in 2009, has lured over 2.3 million users up to now, according to data shown on its official website.
(Top photo from Xuexila.com)
