Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian: New large companies will definitely emerge in the AI era

"The AI that appears in front of the public today is different from the artificial intelligence of the past few decades. The next ten years will be a very exciting decade."

At the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held on July 4th, Wang Jian, the founder of Alibaba Cloud, confidently stated that artificial intelligence is very revolutionary, "the potential of GPT has not been fully explored yet." He believes that the huge potential of AI will be reflected at the industrial level - the birth of new giants and the rebirth of old giants.

"As long as it is a new technology, there will definitely be new large companies emerging, just like GE back then." In his view, this is the key to testing whether a technology is disruptive.

However, this does not mean that the giants on the technology table will all be reshuffled. Wang Jian believes that AI is actually dependent on aspects such as data, which is an advantage for large companies. From this perspective, AI is friendly to large enterprises.

Wang Jian gave an example that "old money" like Apple is also trying to rejuvenate itself with AI, "I don't think Apple is using AI to serve its end customers, but AI technology is restructuring the company Apple. Because of AI technology, Apple is different as a company, and only by being different, it may be able to thrive in the future."

However, being friendly does not mean being tolerant, "if you lack creativity, it won't be forgiving." Because in large companies, it is harder for everyone to embrace AI than in small companies.

Obviously, for "old money" and the younger generation, whether they can change their destiny ultimately depends on cognition. "In the end, you find that there is a factor that is easily overlooked, which is people. Large companies think of AI as a revolutionary tool, while small companies think of AI as a tool for revolution. That is the difference between large and small companies. If large companies also have the consciousness of a revolutionary tool, then the epoch-making impact will come." Wang Jian said.

However, when AI exerts its great "magic," people's fear of being "replaced" arises.

Wang Jian is quite indifferent to this, "I am an optimistic person who believes that technology is 'incurable.' In technology, any problems created by humans themselves, humans will definitely solve them. History has proven that we have this ability."

As for the rapid advancement of AI posing challenges to energy, Wang Jian pointed out, "this is not a problem that the AI industry needs to worry about now."

He listed three inequalities existing in the industry: first, applications are not as good as basic models; second, basic models are not as good as existing computing power; and finally, computing power is not enough compared to existing electricity.

"In 1980, the whole world was worried that oil would run out soon, but later oil became cheaper. You can't imagine that maybe ten years later, the computing power mentioned will not be the same as today's, and the electricity mentioned ten years later will not be the same concept as today's electricity." Wang Jian said that we cannot solve the problems of ten years later with the current state of affairs, we must solve the problems of ten years later with the state of affairs of ten years later ”