Alibaba Cloud's Wang Jian: The key to AI+ lies in innovative mechanisms

On September 5th, at the Inclusion·Bund Summit, Wang Jian, the founder of Alibaba Cloud, shared his thoughts on AI, AI+, and AI infrastructure.

He pointed out that AI+ is not simply the combination of AI and industry, but a combination of data, models, and computing power. Cloud computing is the infrastructure of the AI era.

Wang Jian reviewed the development history of artificial intelligence. Although artificial intelligence has a long past, it has a short history. Scientists such as Turing have been thinking about artificial intelligence since the 1940s and 1950s, but it wasn't until 2017 when Google proposed Transformer that artificial intelligence returned to everyone's attention, forming an impact on the industry.

Wang Jian bluntly stated, "Google is very capable, but also not very capable."

"It excels in completing 0-1 innovations, from ChatGPT to weather forecasting, which are very diverse applications, but behind them is the most basic thing, which is the Transformer proposed by Google. However, Google did not continue to develop OpenAI, nor did it create value for society like ChatGPT."

In his view, this has led the industry to think deeply, "What is the mechanism of successful innovation, which far exceeds the understanding of scholars and even the industry today, and is our greatest challenge."

Wang Jian further pointed out that during Microsoft's cooperation with OpenAI, they did more than just Chat, "In fact, they discussed with Bill Gates at his home what scenarios things like GPT could be used for, and in the end, only Chat was the most revolutionary, so it became a product. This achieved the ability for computers to 'listen and speak' that everyone wanted."

Therefore, in the current wave of "AI+", Wang Jian believes that the "+" part is very important, "It's not about adding something, but how to add it, and more importantly, it's a mechanism innovation. This innovation is the combination of data, models, and computing power. When the scale of data, models, and computing power has undergone huge changes, it is necessary to introduce something new, which is the AI infrastructure."

Wang Jian said, "When something reaches the level of infrastructure, it is a form of technological penetration. What technology will have the longest-lasting impact on humanity? It becomes infrastructure." He cited the view of Sequoia Capital that in the cloud era, mobile era, and AI era, infrastructure is cloud computing.

Wang Jian concluded, "When you look at AI, AI+, and AI infrastructure, you will find that not only is technology revolutionary, but mechanisms and infrastructure are also revolutionary. There is nothing more exciting than these three revolutions happening at the same time. I think these revolutions are creating the future."