Showcasing the promise of the new industrial revolution

At two international conferences in China this week, participants tackled big questions about how to make the most of emerging technologies for the benefit of humanity. Shanghai played host to the first World Artificial Intelligence Conference. China’s President Xi Jinping sent a message to the conference organizers, affirming China’s willingness to work with other countries on the development of artificial intelligence technology. This reflects China’s ongoing commitment to using technology to improve people’s lives and to promote global cooperation. The second conference, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions (more commonly called “Summer Davos”), also focused on the role of innovation in the development of the fourth industrial revolution. Delivering the plenary speech at the event, Premier Li Keqiang spoke of the fresh impetus the current boom in innovation has lent to global economic development. He spoke of firmly upholding the principle of economic globalization, and making development more inclusive, integrated, and innovative.

An intelligent robot is on display at the first World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on September 17, 2018. [Photo: VCG]

The world is seeing the start of a fourth industrial revolution, which is defined by advances in artificial intelligence, clean energy, robotics, quantum communication, virtual reality, and biotechnology. Artificial intelligence is especially important – although American scientists first proposed the concept of "artificial intelligence" in the late 1950s, advances in technology have recently allowed it to start profoundly changing people's lives at home and at work. 

At the conference in Shanghai, participants saw demonstrations of the potential of artificial intelligence in the fields of education, health, finance, retail, transportation, and service delivery. According to the “2018 World Blueprint for Artificial Intelligence Industry Development” report released at the conference, in the first half of this year, China had the second highest number of companies in the world working on artificial intelligence. They were represented at the conference by companies like Pony.ai and SenseTime. Riding the wave of the fourth industrial revolution, China has already made technological breakthroughs in the fields of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. And China is home to rapidly maturing online shopping, mobile payment, and shared economy enterprises.

A woman experiences a perceptual robot at the 2018 Summer Davos Forum in Tianjin on September 17, 2018. [Photo: VCG]

According to the report, artificial intelligence is still in the early stages of adoption, and only 4 percent of the companies surveyed for the report have invested in and deployed this technology. This means there’s a huge untapped potential for the spread of this technology, and for the boost it promises to give to global economic and social development. To realize this potential, countries must continue to collaborate on broadening economic globalization so that everyone can benefit from humanity’s innovations and industrial ingenuity. This will require strong intellectual property rights protections. Aware of the growing importance of these protections for fostering innovation, China has established a comprehensive legal framework for intellectual property protection, including special intellectual property courts. One measure of progress in this area is the growth in intellectual property license fee payments: since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the total fees paid by its enterprises have increased 14 fold.

The two events this week, focused as they were on how best to ensure that emerging technologies benefit humanity, is as clear a sign as any that the fourth industrial revolution has arrived. In the industrial revolutions of the past, participation often required access to substantial amounts of capital and resources. But the new industrial revolution is different, because the threshold to participation is relatively low. And is it continuing to fall thanks to the rapid growth of globally accessible technology development platforms, which are providing more equal opportunities for participation. As long as economic globalization continues to move forward, innovation can continue to thrive, and we can all hope for a better life in a more developed future.