Chinese artificial intelligence firm iFlytek on Thursday unveiled the latest version of its AI model, Spark 4.0, which the company benchmarked against OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo, saying it shows better performance than the US company’s most-advanced model in five aspects, despite lagging in terms of coding and multimodal abilities.

Why it matters: Trained exclusively on a home-grown computing platform that is co-built with telecom giant Huawei, Spark 4.0 can be seen as sending a signal that China’s AI industry has entered a new phase of self-sufficiency despite the US’s restrictions on the country’s access to the most advanced chips, according to iFlytek.

Details: The Hefei-based company finally fulfilled its commitment to upgrade its Spark model to the level of GPT-4 in the first half of 2024, eight months after the promise was made. At Thursday’s event, however, Chairman Liu Qingfeng acknowledged that the gap would “widen again”, possibly to more than a year, once GPT-5 is released, because of its larger parameter size, longer training time, and the increase in the amount of data used.

• “It is necessary to recognize the comprehensive gap between China and the US in the LLM in a scientific and rational way,” said Liu, “but also to have the confidence to catch up quickly to ensure there is no generation gap.”
• The company has seen over 400,000 overseas developers build products based on the Spark V3.5 model that was introduced in January, with 7.02 million developers having used it in total.
• In a key upgrade, the Spark app and its desktop version, both of which are by iFlytek’s model series, added a feature called “personal space” where foundation models are dedicated to generating individualized content that matches one’s personality. The mechanism operates on the premise that users can input their information on work, study, and life, or accumulate sufficient dialog records with AI bots for enhanced learning.

Context: While iFlytek said its Spark 4.0 model ranked number one in eight international mainstream test sets, rival Alibaba on the same day was also certified by the world-renowned open-source platform Hugging Face as topping the world’s open-source big model list for its Qwen-2, with Meta’s AI model ranked behind it in second.

Chair of iFlytek Liu Qingfeng told employees that the Chinese voice-recognition company has “resisted the extreme pressure from the US” and is entering “a new period of strategic opportunity,” at his firm’s annual general meeting. Speaking on Tuesday, Liu again benchmarked iFlytek’s upgraded Spark against GPT-4 Turbo, saying it expects to be as powerful as OpenAI’s most advanced model in the first half of 2024.

Why it matters: Liu’s confident tone throughout his speech is being seen as a sign that the company seems to have passed its dark days in the grip of US sanctions due to its “seizing of the strategic opportunity of large language models.”

Details: In his speech, Liu stated that the top goals for iFlytek in 2024 would be to be the fastest Chinese company to catch up with GPT-4, to “empower 10 million intelligent hardware terminals”, to produce “industry-leading applications taking the largest market share in six industries including education and finance”, and to “amass one million LLM developers to build an AI model ecosystem”.

• Liu’s address on Tuesday emphasized the importance of building “independent and controllable” home-grown AI foundation models, with the exec saying LLMs are a battlefield for gaining strategic advantage over the US.
• However, the company’s financial forecast offers a glimpse into the huge cost of achieving China’s ChatGPT alternative, with iFlytek’s net profit excluding extraordinary profit and loss expected to be down 71% to 81% to between RMB 80 million and RMB 120 million ($11.3 million to $16.9 million) in 2023 compared to the previous year iFlytek has claimed this is largely due to “firm investment” in core technology and industrial chain localization substitution.
• iFlytek also projected an up to 7% increase in revenue to RMB 20 billion for its financial year ending Dec. 31.
• iFlytek unveiled its Spark iteration model on Jan. 30, claiming it as the first such model to be built on the AI model training platform the company designed in cooperation with Huawei and which uses the Chinese telecom giant’s AI chips.

Context: The US government blacklisted A-share listed iFlytek in Oct. 2019, meaning China’s top artificial intelligence company was banned from buying critical components from US companies without US government approval.

Despite not being officially available in China, the AI chatbot service ChatGPT has dominated headlines in the country. This week, days after search engine giant Baidu announced it will launch its own ChatGPT-like service in March, at least five other major Chinese tech firms revealed plans to tool up with the powerful AI technology. 

Starting with Alibaba, the e-commerce giant Alibaba said it is developing its own AI chatbot. NetEase’s online learning unit Youdao said it will launch a similar AI service focused on the education industry, and JD, another e-commerce major, boasted that its rich experience in AI means it can soon incorporate these technologies into its services. 

Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can answer natural language questions with human-like responses. It is built on GPT-3, the third iteration of a language model trained on a large amount of data. 

The feverish popularity of ChatGPT has sent investors chasing related stocks on China’s stock market. The market is already experiencing a boost in so-called “ChatGPT concept stocks.” 

On Chinese social and search platforms, ChatGPT has also become the top search keyword. On Feb. 4, daily searches for “ChatGPT” on WeChat increased 515.7% to nearly 38 million, and the search volume kept growing rapidly in the following days,  seeing 2.5 times the number or 95 million searches only five days later. 

As advanced AI technology gains momentum to disrupt the status quo, Chinese tech companies are not the only ones racing to prove their ChatGPT-like abilities. Google introduced on Tuesday its AI chatbot Bard,  while ChatGPT’s main investor Microsoft launched a new version of its search engine Bing on Tuesday with ChatGPT built in. 

Baidu: Baidu said on Tuesday that it will launch its own AI chatbot tool called “ERNIE bot” or Wenxin Yiyan in Chinese. The bot will be built based on the company’s large language model ERNIE, which was launched in 2019. Some see Baidu’s service as the most likely one to come close to ChatGPT. 

NetEase: NetEase’s online education team Youdao said it has been working on applying AIGC (AI-generated content) technology to teaching scenarios such as AI oral English teaching and Chinese essay revision. The company expects to launch a relevant demo version of the product soon, which will mark the first landing of AIGC technology and a ChatGPT-like model in China’s online education scene.

iFlytek: Responding to investors’ questions, the company that specializes in speech recognition and natural language processing technologies said it has a solid accumulation of relevant AI technology. For example, in 2022, iFlytek won first place in the authoritative evaluation of several cognitive intelligence fields such as CommonsenseQA 2.0 and OpenBookQA. Meanwhile, iFlytek has developed a series of pre-training language models which include 40 general fields of cognitive intelligence.

Alibaba: The online retail major said on Wednesday that it’s conducting internal testing on a ChatGPT-like service, and the tool is likely to be used in combination with the group’s workplace communication and collaboration tool DingTalk.

JD: Beijing-based e-commerce platform JD said it sees ChatGPT as an “exciting and cutting-edge exploration,” adding it will incorporate the related methods and technology into its products, especially in customer service.

A consortium of Chinese technology companies has banded together to establish standards for developing facial recognition technology, as concerns grow with the technology’s increased ubiquity.

Why it matters: Facial recognition has become part of everyday life in China, with applications in sectors as far-ranging as public security to retail.

• Nevertheless, its use has sparked heated debate, with some arguing that the technology is being applied to scenarios for which it is unneeded.
• Earlier this month, a university professor from China’s eastern Zheijiang province filed a lawsuit against a wildlife park over being forced to use its facial recognition system to access the facility.

Details: The working group was established on Nov. 20 and is made up of companies including social media and gaming giant Tencent, Alibaba-affiliate Ant Financial, smartphone maker Xiaomi, voice recognition firm iFlytek, and surveillance equipment manufacturer Dahua Technology, among others.

• The group is led by Sensetime, the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) firm. The US placed the company on a trade blacklist last month over alleged complicity in human rights violations in China.
• The consortium’s aims are to standardize the research and development of facial recognition technologies, ensure safety in its use, and promote “healthier” development of the industry, according to a Sensetime statement.
• The group will also lead and participate in setting up international standards, the company said.
• The move comes following concerns over biometric data theft and a lack of accuracy in properly identifying individuals.
• Sensetime said data leaks come as a result of a lack of specifications for collection, storing, and processing facial data.

Context: Despite the convenience that facial recognition technologies bring, the fallout could be disastrous if facial data falls into the wrong hands.

• For example, a password can be changed if it is compromised while physical features cannot be easily modified if facial data is stolen.
• While a vast majority of commercial applications are opt-in, the Chinese government has increased its focus on using the technology in its vast surveillance apparatus.

Artificial intelligence (AI) company iFlytek’s first quarter revenue dropped by 25% from the end of last year, while research and development (R&D) spending rose and financial expenses ballooned.

iFlytek’s first-quarter revenue reached nearly RMB 2 billion (around $300 million), down from RMB 2.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, but up 40% year on year, according to its latest financial results, released this week.

At the same time, the company published its annual report, with 2018 revenue of RMB 8 billion, up 45% compared to 2017. Net profits for 2018 rose 25% year on year.

iFlytek said its financial expenses swelled by more than 400% during the quarter, mainly due to a decrease in interest income and an increase in interest expenses. Meanwhile, the company’s spending on R&D nearly doubled, reaching RMB 250 million.

Listed in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, iFlytek is one of China’s five “AI champions,” along with Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, and Sensetime. The company focuses on natural language processing, speech evaluation, speech recognition,  and claims to have more than 70% market share in China.

The development of AI is a top priority for Chinese authorities. The State Council, China’s cabinet, has laid out plans to become a world leader in the technology and create a domestic industry worth $150 billion by 2030.

iFlytek provides several consumer-facing services, including translation, but also offers its voice recognition platforms to Chinese healthcare and education providers, as well as to the country’s judiciary.

The company has been developing AI systems to assist in China’s courtrooms. iFlytek aims to help judges determine whether evidence could support a criminal sentence, and which laws and regulations can be used for judgment. In January, a court in Shanghai adopted the 206 System, created by iFlytek and Chinese judicial, public security, and procuratorial organs. The system can transcribe speech while identifying speakers, and accept voice commands.

However, iFlytek has not been immune to controversy. The company was accused by an interpreter at a conference in Shanghai last year of passing off his translation as one by the company’s AI. The incident went viral on Zhihu, China’s answer to question-and-answer platform Quora. Iflytek dismissed the claims.

The success of China’s commercial artificial intelligence and semiconductor markets will have a direct impact on the country’s geopolitical and military power, according to a new report.

The report, published on Feb. 6 by US think tank the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), said that the technologies could insulate China from economic or political pressure from the US while increasing the “technological capabilities available to China’s military and intelligence community.”

“… China’s success in commercial AI and semiconductor markets brings funding, talent, and economies of scale that both reduce China’s vulnerability from losing access to international markets,” the report said.

China has set ambitious goals for the development of AI and other hi-tech industries. The country plans to move to a high-value economy through its Made in China 2025 initiative by developing its autonomous and electric vehicle, semiconductor, robotics, and aerospace sectors. The State Council, China’s cabinet, has also laid out plans for the country to become a world leader in AI by 2030.

Infographic: How four tech giants dominate China’s AI endeavors

According to the CNAS report, China has already shrunk the gap between Chinese and international AI and semiconductor companies. It added that the country should hold a defensible technological position in AI over the next five years as long as there are no significant shifts in US policy aimed at increasing competition.

Civil-military integration is a cornerstone of China’s national AI strategy, wrote Gregory Allen, report author and adjunct senior fellow at CNAS’ Technology and National Security Program, highlighting the extent of the cooperation between the private sector and the country’s military.

Citing China’s National Intelligence Law, Allen said that China’s tech companies are legally required to cooperate with China’s military and state security organs, in effect, giving the military access to emerging technologies developed by the private sector.

In 2018, China’s central government named search giant Baidu, e-commerce company Alibaba, social media and messaging firm Tencent, voice recognition company iFlytek, and computer vision startup SenseTime the country’s “AI champions.” Citing Sensetime executives, Allen said that the position gives the five companies assurance that they will not be threatened by competition from state-owned enterprises.

“The price of Sensetime and the other AI Champions being allowed to dominate these technologies is the Champions’ extensive cooperation with China’s national security community,” Allen wrote.

Chinese AI champion iFlytek censors politically sensitive terms on its translation app-SCMP

What happened: Chinese artificial intelligence company iFlytek has removed political sensitive terms such as “Tiananmen” and “independence” from showing up as results in the Android version of its popular translation app. The results on iOS version of the iFlyTranslate app were not affected.

Why it’s important: The news comes amid the government’s broader campaign to clean up online contents. The campaign mainly targets at social media and livestreaming apps so far. Top services in these areas such as WeChat, Weibo and Douyin have been subject to strict content censorship. But iFlyteck is a rare case of translation tool app to launch self-censorship initiative given that there’s no government regulation on blocking politically sensitive phrases on translations services in China. The reasons behind the company’s voluntary move might be attributed to the fact that iFlytek’s digital translation service is used in many high-profile events in China. Also, the Shenzhen-listed company was under skepticism for receiving too much government fund. Report by the Changjiang Times claims iFlytek allegedly received RMB 6.53 billion ($950m) in government subsidies over the last five years.

Chinese AI firm iFlytek shuts down R&D center after scandal-Global Times

What happened: Chinese artificial intelligence company iFlytek Co has shut down operations at one of its research and development centers in East China’s Anhui Province after state media CCTV claimed that the location of the center violates nature reserve regulations.

Why it’s important: In order to achieve an industrial upgrade, China has been giving lots of support to high-tech startups. Obtaining the high-tech status can give companies financial benefits that include tax cuts and government investment as well as policy supports such as an advantage in getting land from the government for industrial parks or research centers. Some online articles claim that iFlytek takes advantage of the preferential policies in obtaining land. Instead of using the cheap land for its core business, IFlyTek is being accused of pursuing real estate development, which is a much easier way to monetize. The company rebuked the accusations shortly after the scandal. iFlytek senior vice president Jiang says “Not a penny of our revenue comes from real estate investment.” This news comes shortly after another scandal about iFlytek’s faking of AI translations results.

Editor’s note: A version of this piece by Jonathan Rechtman originally appeared on the World Economic Forum Agenda website. All opinions expressed are those of the author.

I’ve been a proud simultaneous interpreter for the better part of a decade, but I agree that it’s not the flashiest of jobs. We speak in hushed voices, tucked away in small booths in the corners of conference rooms, the polyglot wallflowers of the global economy.

Not a human, not yet a robot

iFlytek Accused of Giving Its AI Program Credit for Translations Done by Humans– Caixin Global

What happened: iFlytek, one of China’s top AI company known for voice recognition and translation services, has been accused of claiming to have used its language software for simultaneous translation at a conference while a great part of the work is done by a human interpreter. An interpreter working at the event told local media that iFlytek misled the audience to believe that the speech transcriptions were done by the company’s translation software, while in fact, it’s just reading the transcripts done by a human interpreter. The company rebuked the claim later, emphasizing that they are adopting an “human-machine coupling” approach.

Why it’s important: Translation is one of the most popular areas where AI technology is being applied. It is reasonable for iFlytek to combine people with machines to provide better services given the technology is still in a preliminary stage and there’s a lot of technical problems to solve. But what angered the local media is the way iFlytek promotes its product. The company has been relatively inexplicitly about human factors in their services, and most of their promotions are on the high accuracy rates of the service.

iFlytek, a leading Chinese voice recognition technology company and Huawei, China’s hope for the 5G age, have signed a cooperation agreement in Shenzhen. The collaboration will focus on 4 major sectors: public cloud service, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, smart ends, and office IT.

The cooperation hopes to grab each other’s industrial advantages in both AI component ecosystem and smart device manufacturing business. The partnership will enable iFlytek and Huawei to leverage collaborative strengths in B2B and B2C markets. The most immediate development: AI voice technology’s use and improvement in Huawei phones.

Read more: iFlytek’s journey from the bottom to the top of China’s voice AI industry

Huawei’s move is likely to lead to commercial advantages that may put the company in a more powerful leading position in world smartphone business. Huawei is also cooperating with BOE, China’s leading semiconductor display and sensor developer and manufacturer. The partnership with BOE aims to launch the world’s first smartphone equipped with a foldable screen in November 2018—a schedule even earlier than behemoths Samsung and Apple.

The deal, however, was obvious to keen market observers: On May 23, Yu Chengdong (also known as Richard Yu), CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said on his Weibo account that Huawei’s new Honor model scheduled to release on June 6, 2018, is carrying some “very surprising technology (很吓人的技术).” Local media noticed that iFlytek also confirmed in a short CCTV interview video that company contributed to the “very surprising technology” in voice recognition and commercial use sectors.

Earlier this month, during Google I/O 2018 conference, DeepMind’s Wavenet technology showcased 6 machine-produced human voices. Google Duplex deceived humans on the other side of the phone. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Samsung’s Bixby, are all aggressively entering the game. Chinese smartphone makers—though owning massive data and diverse use cases—are still behind.

2017 was an auspicious year for Chinese AI firm iFlytek. In June, MIT Technology Review ranked the Chinese AI company as the 6th smartest company in the world, just behind Google’s parent company Alphabet and also the highest ranked Chinese company on the list. In November, the Chinese government announced plans (in Chinese) to build national AI platforms in partnership with four companies. iFlytek was tasked with the national voice AI platform. The three other companies chosen were Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.

But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for iFlytek. Founded in 1999, the company almost changed tracks to go into real estate after experiencing failed products, low revenues and difficulties in securing funding early on.

“In 2000, we had a meeting that is now famous in our company. At the meeting, someone suggested we go into real estate,” iFlytek co-founder Liu Qingfeng said during a segment of WeTalkTV (in Chinese). “But we made a choice that we would still make today. We said: ‘If you’re not behind voice recognition and speech synthesis technology, please leave’.”

Pioneers in Voice

Liu Qingfeng and iFlytek’s five other co-founders met at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, Anhui province. In the 90s, they were students working on speech recognition and synthesis technology (now categorized as natural language processing) at the human-machine speech communication lab. Liu led a team that won first place at a state-run high-tech competition in 1998. This caught the attention of Kai-fu Lee, now one of the most high profile investors in Chinese technology firms.

“In 1999, when I worked for Microsoft Research China, I tried to hire a top doctoral student from USTC, Mr. Liu Qingfeng, to work on speech recognition,” Lee wrote in a LinkedIn post that featured iFlytek in 2012. “But he was determined to start his own company. Starting a company in 1999 in China was no easy task, but Liu was determined, and started iFlytek, a speech recognition company.”

iFlytek’s first product was consumer-facing PC software called Changyan 2000 (畅言 or changyan means “speak freely” in English). It allowed users to give voice commands to the PC and also provided an input method that recognized handwritten script. The software package was priced at RMB 2,000–a significant amount of money even now–and advertised in over a dozen provinces in China.

It didn’t sell.

“Commercialization was very challenging for us. At the end of the year, there wasn’t even enough money to pay the staff,” Liu said in an interview with MoneyWeek (in Chinese) in 2008. Almost all of the team came from technical backgrounds and had little marketing experience. The other reasons that Changyan 2000 failed included software piracy and high operating expenses associated with the after-sale care of the software. Perhaps the biggest reason was that the consumer market was just not ready for speech recognition tech at the time.

Shift to Enterprise

After learning from their failures, iFlytek decided to go the B2B route. An initial contract to provide speech recognition and synthesis tech to Huawei’s internal platforms took some blood, sweat, and tears for the team to complete. But it worked out and turned into a long-term relationship. Other large clients followed, which included ZTE and Lenovo. Soon anything to do with voice tech, such as call centers, voice navigation, and telecommunications services in China, all used iFlytek technology. In 2002, iFlytek started to develop AI chips for voice recognition, which are inserted into home appliances and toys.

“iFlytek did it the hard way – they built the best technologies for speech recognition, found early adopters, and created a market that would otherwise be non-existent,” Kai-fu Lee wrote in his LinkedIn post.

In 2004, iFlytek began to turn a profit. From 2005 to 2007, the company maintained a compounded net profit growth of 135%. In 2008, Liu Qingfeng rang the opening bell at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. iFlytek became the first company founded by university students and the first natural language processing company in China to IPO. However, Liu knew that the best time for voice technology was still to come.

“iFlytek probably has to toil for another two to three years,” Liu said in an interview with Yicai (in Chinese) at the time of the IPO in 2008.

All in AI

Fast forward to 2018, iFlytek has grown to a company with almost 10,000 employees and its AI technology is all around us in China, especially speech recognition and synthesis. Amap’s popular voice guide modeled by popular Taiwanese model Lin Chi-Ling’s is generated by iFlytek tech. If you come across a robot in an airport or hotel, that robot is most likely hearing your requests and replying to you thanks to iFlytek. An estimated 500 million people use iFlytek’s voice input method instead of typing on smartphones and computers.

“iFlytek now serves over 60% of the speech recognition and synthesis market in China,” iFlytek AIUI open platform supervisor Ding Rui told TechNode. For robotics, iFlytek estimated that over 80% of service-type robots uses iFlytek’s natural language processing technology. “Basically any robotics or AI hardware firm in China will consider our speech technology first.”

They have good reason to do so. The AI company’s technology has won numerous international competitions, including 8 times at the English text to speech Blizzard Challenge, the Google-hosted speech recognition CHiME Challenge in 2016 and the Winograd Schema Challenge, also in 2016.

Here’s a taste of iFlytek’s speech synthesis technology from this “rare footage” of US President Donald Trump speaking fluent Chinese (if you can’t see the Youtube video above, click here and start watching from 0:15).

Maintaining their Market-leading Position

While iFlytek is currently the market leader in voice AI technology, this position is increasingly contested as the AI race heats up. Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent ranked lower than iFlytek on the MIT Technology Review’s list of the world’s smartest companies, but they are catching up fast in the natural language processing arena. Smaller players such as Sogou have also entered the race.

The AI company is staying on top of the competition by expanding into all areas to which AI can be applied. In education, iFlytek’s oral examination assessment technology has helped to assess over 1.7 million students sitting high school English oral exams in over 10 provinces. In the medical field, iFlytek is pushing transcription services to take down doctors’ notes and AI diagnostic medical imaging. In courts, iFlytek technology not only helps transcribe court proceedings but the company has also worked with the People’s Court to develop Project 206 (in Chinese), an AI system that streamlines the evidence collection process and provides suggestions for judges when assessing a case.

“This platform can determine within a second if the evidence collected for this case is complete or not,” iFlytek VP Jiang Tao said at a recent presentation in Tianjin. “What’s the most similar prior case to the current one? Then it’ll provide 3 suggestions to the judge based on statutes cited in the prior case, such as what is the crime, the length of the sentencing and the amount of the fine.”

iFlytek is also working with partners to provide its speech recognition technology for consumer devices such as Dingdong, Chinese e-commerce platform JD’s version of the Amazon Echo. A startups platform was launched in late 2017 to build an ecosystem of partners that are innovating AI applications. Shenzhen robotics firm Ubtech was one of the star companies to have come out of iFlytek startup ecosystem. Over 25,7000 developers use the iFlytek Open Platform to generate a myriad products and services based on its natural language processing technology.

If iFlytek had gone into real estate, they probably also would have made a ton of money right now. But this is a company whose heart is firmly in AI.

“In 1999, when we first started the company, we believed that in the future, every machine, every device, every toy, every car, would be able to ‘hear’ and ‘speak’ like humans do,” iFlytek VP Jiang Tao said at a recent event in Tianjin. “Later, we’ve extended that goal, [to let] every machine ‘hear,’ ‘speak,’ and ‘understand’.”

Artificial intelligence was the emerging technology that put China in the center of attention last year. It’s no wonder then that this year’s EmTech China conference in Beijing put a major focus on AI. The three-day event organized by MIT Technology Review that began on Sunday gathered some of the most interesting minds from science and business to discuss AI from every corner. We took a peek at how Chinese companies are advancing in this field and how the technology will affect the way we work and educate ourselves.

One of the core concepts discussed was AI in the cloud. This enables the huge amount of computing required by AI applications to be transferred from limited hardware to the cloud.

“If we take cloud as the internet, I think in the future the internet will be the key carrier of many AI applications,” said the president of Alibaba Technology Committee, Jian Wang who talked about Alibaba’s AI plans in smart city and traffic management.

“I think it was Andrew Ng who said that AI is the new electricity,” said Animashree Anandkumar, principal scientist at Amazon Web Services. The speakers representing the two biggest cloud companies explained how AI could become something ubiquitous as electricity:

“To me democratized AI comes in different forms,” said Anandkumar. “One is making sure that AI is accessible for everybody, both the results of AI and the people who want to work on AI research. Currently, working on AI requires a huge amount of resources and supercomputers but the cloud is a way to democratize AI because everybody is able to access that huge amount of power.”

But should everyone jump on the AI bandwagon? A talk between three major Chinese AI players Microsoft, Tencent, and iFlytek revealed that AI may not be for everybody.

“If a company would like to adopt AI the first thing they need to know is whether they have data,” said Microsoft’s natural language processing researcher Ming Zhou. “If they don’t have the data I wouldn’t suggest AI.”

However, as iFlytek’s senior VP Guoping Hu showed, AI can sometimes be applied in unexpected places.

“I think that companies should first analyze their own business and work to see where AI can be used. We have a cooperation with a pig farm where we use AI to detect if pigs are coughing because there is nobody inside [to monitor the pigs].”

A recurring theme at the event was the question that concerns us all—will AI take our jobs? During the entire event, the speeches and discussions were translated on the screen in real time by iFlytek’s AI software iFlyrec which likely gave chills to the translators covering the event. Tencent’s AI Lab director Tong Zhang also showcased Dreamwriter, the robot reporter.

Most of the speakers sent reassuring messages that AI will take over the dull, repetitive work freeing up time for us. However, as Tencent AI Lab director Tong Zhang demonstrated, AI is now capable of doing tasks that were thought only humans could do—being creative. Microsoft’s Ming Zhou showed how their AI programs are composing music and performing it on CCTV.

After all the hype around AI and the dark premonitions about its effect on work, it’s not surprising that a lot of students are looking to get into AI. One of China’s leading AI academics Xiao’ou Tang from CUHK advises them otherwise.

“If they had done this five years ago I would definitely encourage them to do this,” said Tang urging them to follow their heart instead of what’s hot on the market. “Five years later everyone will be doing AI, I think a lot of people will not be able to get a job.”

Tang also touched upon the relationship between the world’s two biggest AI forces.

“I think it would be really nice to have a rivalry, that means that we are equal, that we are advanced. But at this point, we have so much to learn from the US,” Tang shared. “Of course China has its unique advantages: we have a lot more scenarios for AI application and we have a lot more data that is allowed to be used and we don’t have such strict laws about data like in the US. And we have a leadership which is mostly engineers which is why we have this national policy to push for AI research. That’s the advantage on the Chinese side, but the idea is that we should collaborate.”

This is the first post of TechNode’s profile of Chinese AI and robotics firms present at the Beijing edition of Global Mobile Internet Conference or GMIC.  Read Part 2 here.

GMIC kicked off with a somewhat ominous recorded message from Stephen Hawking, played on a massive screen at the China National Convention Center in Beijing.

“AI could be the best thing or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity,” warned the renowned Cambridge physicist in his distinctive mechanized voice. “AI could spell the end of the human race.”

An unusual way to start a technology conference featuring many of China’s AI and robotics firms. So TechNode took to the exhibition floor and talked to representatives from these companies. What do they think of Professor Hawking’s message?

iFlytek

iFlytek is China’s leading speech technology company providing voice recognition and distributed speech synthesis tech to over 80% of the market that uses such technology, for example, firms that offer service-type robots. The company is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and is currently worth about RMB 41.92 billion.

While internet giants like Baidu and Tencent have also entered the voice recognition and speech synthesis arena, iFlytek has been solely dedicated to voice tech since being founded in 1999. The company provides its software to firms and developers on an open platform, as well as offering tailored hardware. In fact, iFlytek has so many robotics firms as its clients, it organized a large exhibition stand for itself and several of its clients at GMIC.

Could AI end humanity?

“Technology naturally has its positives and negatives,” iFlytek Open Platform’s Zhou Yue said. “Even if AI replaces human labor in some fields, our sense of humor and artistic appreciation can’t be replaced. So maybe in the future, our arts and culture industry will flourish even more. So I think [AI] is more of a good thing.”

Smart Dynamics

Smart Dynamics was one of the robotics firms invited to GMIC by iFlytek and brought its Aiwa robot. Whenever someone calls out “Aiwa!”, the robot turns its head in the direction of the voice.

The two-year-old Shenzhen-based robotics firm focuses on B2B, targeting clients such as banks, airports, and hospitals. Its Aiwa series of robots are equipped with facial and voice recognition technology and are designed to carry out basic reception duties. Its other series of robots offer patrol and cleaning capabilities.

AI replacing humans?

“AI replacing humans is still in the realms of theory,” said Smart Dynamics sales manager Kong Lingtao. “Whether AI can threaten humanity, we’ll have to see in 30, 50 years’ time.”

On being asked about Aiwa replacing staff working in reception or cleaning, Kong saw this as a positive.

“You can’t look at it this way. Some people will advance themselves. [Robots will only] free people from simple, repetitive tasks to do more meaningful jobs. This is a stage in our society’s progress.”

Ubtech

Another Shenzhen-based robotics company, Ubtech is making inroads in the international market. 60% of its sales come from outside of China and their products are available at Amazon and Walmart. At GMIC, they showcased the Alpha 1 and 2, Jimu and Cruzr robots.

Their Alpha series are home entertainment robots capable of a range of motions. The Alpha 1 has 16 motor servos (similar to muscle joints) while the Alpha 2 ups that number to 20. The robots are also working with an app where you can program motions you’d like the robot to perform. Ubtech Jimu robots are a type of educational robot that resembles Lego and can be modified while the Cruzr is the B2B offering, capable of basic reception duties.

Do you agree with Stephen Hawking?

“I half agree and half disagree with Professor Hawking,” Ubtech domestic sales manager Reymo Hong said. “In many fields, [AI] technology has great value. However, in the medical field, if [AI] has accidents, that could negatively affect the development of [AI] technology.”

What if AI technology takes over the human race?

“Tasks that require human thinking cannot be implemented by robots. But in the future, it’s hard to tell. Humans should be smarter in the future, so we shouldn’t be scared by the progress in AI.”