Organized by Asia America Multi-technology Association Pearl River Delta (AAMA-PRD) and co-organized by Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks (HKSTP), the 5th AAMA Technology Talk artificial intelligence (AI) seminar wrapped up recently. The seminar aimed to analyze and forecast the development and prospects of AI and robotics technology in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. On the seminar, experts introduced the applications of AI technologies to business leaders.

Dr. Crystal Fok, Associate Director, MPE Cluster & Robotics Platform of HKSTP, and Dr. Chao He, Vice President of Wisers and Founder of Wisers AI Lab were invited as speakers of the seminar, delivering keynote speeches titled “AI and Robotics Technology in HKSTP” and “Wisdom, Application, Limits and Challenges in AI”, respectively.

The organizer AAMA, founded in 1979 in Silicon Valley, is a communication platform for Asians technology and business leaders. It set up the first overseas branch at the Langrun Garden of Peking University in 2004. After years of development, it has become an influencer in the sector thanks to its well-recognized mission and unique growth model.  A large number of specialists have joined AAMA as mentors and entrepreneur trainees. AAMA’s branch network have  extended across the world including Silicon Valley in the US, Seoul in South Korea, as well as Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and the Pearl River Delta in China.

Co-organizer of the event, Wisers, was founded in 1998. With over 20 years of experience in news intelligence service, Wisers has built a database of 85 billion pieces of news covering all Chinese media with the volume growing by more than 96 million every day. Its services have been expanded to cover intelligence and big data solutions for various vertical industries.  As of today, Wisers has developed data and artificial intelligence solutions for different application scenarios including public relations, digital marketing, brand management, market research, smart retail, financial risk control, intelligent investment research and intelligent policy.

The keynote speaker Dr. Chao He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an AI doctor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, a postdoctor at the University of Alberta in Canada and the University of Paisley in Britain, and Kellogg-HKUST EMBA of the Northwestern University in the US and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He has 20 years of experience in AI technical innovations and corporate R&D management. He has led excellent innovation in Chinese natural language processing at the Wisers AI Lab, whose automatic abstracting technology was awarded the first place in the International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing (NLPCC 2018).

Citing examples extensively, Dr. He introduced to the attending guests what AI is, how AI is "intelligent", how to make use of AI to explore business value, the current limitations of AI development, and the future development directions and opportunities.

With reference to the existing definitions, Dr. He, suggested in his speech that not only is AI the science and engineering for an “intelligent agent”, but it is also the foundation and the driver of “intelligent agent”. The “intelligent agent” goes through a learning process and builds its own decision-making system, through which it has a grip on the unknown environment, and its behavior and action to achieve its goals can affect the environment, he added. Professionals define AI as science and engineering while the general public views it as the ability to perform. Dr. He puts science to practical use and affirmed AI-enabled models’ empowering and supporting functions. He has also further explained the concept, mechanism and objectives of the “intelligent agent”.

By comparing the process of how children and the machine learn the characteristics of fruits, Dr. He explained how AI gains wisdom through machine learning, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of different machine learning methods including supervised/unsupervised and generative/discriminative. Dr. He unveiled the secrets behind various black technologies and introduced the latest developments of natural language processing and image recognition. At the seminar, Dr. He also discussed the applications of AI in marketing, consumer insight, advertising, credit review, smart investment and research, financial risk control, quantitative investment, intelligent transportation, self-driving, smart medical care and other fields.

Finally, Dr. He explained the concepts of narrow, general and super AI and discussed the limitations of AI technology, including deficiency in cross-field promotion, abstract thought, reasoning and common sense, and the resulting ethical and privacy issues. He also talked about the development and application of AI technologies, such as automated machine learning (Auto ML), Meta Learning, Federated Learning, the combination of AI, IoT and 5G and AI applications with high social value. He said that AI will play an increasingly important role in different fields, including improving productivity and creating new value.

However, under the current conditions and in the foreseeable future, AI will not and cannot replace human beings. Successful implementation of AI applications depends on how to achieve organic combination of AI and human workers and human-computer interaction in business processes.