AI technology to drive Guangzhou's development

Artificial Intelligence (AI) became the hot topic at the Canton Tower Science and Technology Conference 2017 held in Guangzhou city, South China's Guangdong province on Oct 12, with experts and entrepreneurs from home and abroad sharing ideas on the development of AI technology in various fields such as medical treatment and sports in China.

Piero Scaruffi, founder of the Silicon Valley Institute of Artificial Intelligence made a keynote speech on AI development in China, suggesting that the Chinese enterprises should focus on solving practical problems in future research and seize the opportunities in commercial applications, such as the technology of image recognition in the medical field to diagnose skin cancer.

Zhang Jianwei, professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of Hamburg, said that Guangzhou has a strong industrial base ranging from state-owned enterprises to private enterprises, which could facilitate the city in developing AI in the fields of IT, manufacturing, medical treatment and education.

China could think about applying AI in infrastructure innovation to conveniently achieve its goal on building more than 200 airports and Guangdong-Hong Kong- Macao Greater Bay Area economy, said Joe Weinman, father of the "cloud economics" of the United States interested in infrastructure construction.

Weinman believed that Guangzhou shouldn't restrain itself to only the local market. Inspired by Huawei's remote diagnostic solutions, a leading Chinese communication technology company, he suggested that Guangzhou should use medical telepresence remote sensing in underdeveloped areas and diagnose diseases by sending back data, just like exporting technological products to different places.

Peter Marx, vice-president of advanced digital division of General Electric said the city could fix its problems through integrating data, for example, they should look at how Uber Technologies Inc and Didi Chuxing, the car-hailing companies succeed in making traffic networks.

Marx also emphasized that human willingness is extremely critical in accepting artificial intelligence and seeking changes.