CityU Distinguished Lecture: How AI Will Transform the World

The CityU Distinguished Lecture named “How AI Will Transform the World” was organized by Off­ice of the Vice-President (Research and Technology) on 16^th Jul 2021.  This talk invited Dr Kai-Fu Lee as guest speaker to share his view on the age of AI and expectation in future. In the beginning, Prof. Michael Yang (Vice-President (Research & Technology)) gave a welcome speech and introduced the AI background of Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. 

Dr Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and President of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Firstly, he briefed the content of his talk included “What is AI”, “The Rise of AI in China” and “The Future of AI”.

AI is making rapid progress recently because of a greatest breakthrough of deep learning.  It is evolved from AI 1.0 (Discovery) to AI 2.0 (Implementation). Dr. Lee introduced four amazing attributes of deep learning as follows:

i)                    Optimization of objective function

ii)                  Improves with more data

iii)                Ability to do individualized optimization

iv)                Can integrate heterogeneous features

There are five premises of AI commercialization including Massive Data, AI Experts, Computation Power, Single Domain and Accurate, Objective Data Labelling. And Then Dr. Lee briefed the four waves of AI disrupting all sectors from Internet AI, Business AI, Perception AI and Autonomous AI since 2010.

In his book named “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order”, Dr. Lee stated AI is the next electricity and Data is the new oil, China is the new OPEC. Then China will co-lead AI with the US” in 2018.  He briefed some reasons that China rapidly rise to be an AI superpower in the following diagram.

After that Dr. Lee discussed the future of AI and introduced Six Mega Trends toward an AI/Tech Enabled Economy.

i)                    AI triggering smart and automated business intelligence innovations

Firstly, Dr. Lee said the natural language breakthrough happening that pre-trained plus fine-tuning could understand context and domain. Data-driven future smart business intelligence come from big data, smart AI engine to AI transformation.  Four levels of business intelligence was stated. 

ii)                    AI accelerating future transportation with smart cities and IoTs

Dr. Lee said Level 5 autonomous driving would happen phase-by-phase.  He demonstrated phase 1 and 2 in China such as Xiong-An city designed “integration among transportation, roads & cloud”.  Therefore, industry-changing and lifestyle-changing would happen in the future of transportation.

iii)                    AI + healthcare digitalization underway for public health & well-being

Digitaized healthcare provided data as AI foundation that “AI+Healthcare” revolution is under way.  Then Dr. Lee described the AI possibilities in Healthcare in coming 10 years including Medical Imaging, Drug Discovery, Multi-omics & Diagnostics AI, Personalized Treatment, and Robotic Surgery, etc.  He predicted AI breakthroughs with 20 years such as AI Drug Discovery, AI Pathology, Autonomous / Robotic Labs and Synthetic Biology.  He also mentioned that AI advanced longevity with big data.

iv)                    China “World Factory” is rapidly becoming automated & AI-powered

Then Dr. Lee briefed some factors AI-powered China “World Factory” rapidly because higher labor cost, higher adoption of industrial robots, and energy revolution through automation. 

v)                    Energy & agricultural driven by manufacturing, not natural resources

Clean energy revolution through Solar + Wind + Batteries would happen and energy creation would shift from natural resources to manufacturing productivity.

vi)                    Material, energy, production costs largely reduced – “age of plentitude”

Materials revolution was discussed including drug & therapy discovery, existing food reproduction, innovative food chain and sustainability. Dr. Lee expected “age of plentitude” ahead and removing hunger and poverty that energy, material, production became affordable.

Finally, Dr. Lee expected AI technology breakthrough would be happened by 2041.  Technology breakthrough that would take more than 20 years including Singularity, Dystopia (Robots take over; we become useless), Full Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) & We become Cyborgs, and True Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) (True Creativity, Self-Awareness, Love).

Lastly, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee introduced his new book named “AI 2041”.

Q&A

D. Lee replied why learn AI and he said it is not for job but it like to learn programming to train analytical thinking and how to learn in the rapid changing world.  This seminar is online and onsite together, many participants joined today.

Reference:

VPRT - https://www.cityu.edu.hk/vprt/

Poster - https://www.cityu.edu.hk/vprt/cityu-dls/lectures/20210716.htm

Sinovation Ventures - www.sinovationventures.com

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