Artificial Intelligence: Interview with Kai-Fu Lee (part 1)

I want to talk to you about you know casual conversations you have with people like you go to a party man in 30 years ago people were like eh I now it's probably a AI so how does it change how is your life changed well think of AI as a tool as a spreadsheet on steroids that's a pretty good model so it's an automated computing when you click computations happen and results come out and they're amazingly accurate and the the the the black magic in the spreadsheet is what AI can do but ultimately it only computes and it does some results but it isn't human intelligence is a tool that we can throw a lot of data at it and have it come out and say I think you're most likely to buy this product I think we can maximize user retention by used by showing you this content or we think the face we're looking at is most likely this person next likely that person or we should steer the car a little bit to the left given what we see on the cameras in an autonomous vehicle so this decision made making brain inside AI is built upon large amounts of data works only in one very narrow domain and it makes kind of a discrete decision so it is much much less than the scope of what we as humans can do but yet a lot of this is very commercially valuable and a lot of this is what many people do for large percentages of their jobs if their jobs are routing or repetitive so it has huge impact to the society even though this breakthrough is more like a another spreadsheet another database less like another species and not at all like and other species I want to talk about the present and the future and your vision of the future but I want to talk about something that you said that I thought was really interesting because it breaks into two different columns research implementation and I kind of think of that as ideas and execution and you've said the u.s. is pretty good with the research piece implementation not so much so so give me the playing field out there what does it look like well before there could be implementation that needed to be the research breakthroughs and they have happened in particular about ten years ago a technology called deep learning and the enhancements built around it in the past ten years have become the solid pillar on which all modern functioning AI is built on and that research is basically done so now the question is more who can build good buildings now that we can all get that great foundation so in terms of applying deep learning to banks and insurance companies and health care and cancer cure and autonomous vehicles I think companies in countries all the countries in the world are racing ahead to to make progress now there may be another breakthrough but based on the last 10 years we haven't seen another one so yes there can be another breakthrough which can give a university a country or a company some advantages but we haven't seen one for a while and and the last breakthrough deep learning has so much more commercial value that hasn't been properly reaped so so we're very excited as a venture capitalist to look for entrepreneurs who will apply deep learning implement it and make money and create value so that's why we're excited about the business we're in and we're hopeful someone will make another breakthrough but those can't be planned and may not be that quick an example of deep learning is Mei Tai which means beautiful vegetable we founded the company in 2014 with a goal of sourcing vegetables for about 10 million small and medium-sized restaurants it allows owners to use an app on their smartphone to order specialties like bok choy and eggplant from farms the data helps farmers control the amount of vegetables they produce in a season it means no overproduction or wasting water and fertilizer I mentioned build buildings when you think of building buildings you think of China you think of infrastructure yeah and you here in the US we need more infrastructure projects so he's China leaping ahead in this regard do you think yes using the bed building metaphor China West built a hotel in 15 days so similarly the execution the dedication the hard work the optimization are all aspects of Chinese entrepreneurship the Chinese entrepreneurs we fund often work 100 hours or more a week and to them there's nothing other in their lives other than being successful in the company that devoted to and they're willing to do whatever it takes to be successful so they're not you know religious about the particular algorithm or about being the first to invent something they're much more pragmatic about how to win the market how to become the number one in the market how to make the market larger so if that requires not a scientific breakthrough but hiring a lot of engineers to build something quickly or hiring a lot of people to label data or go collect a lot of data or go hire a lot of people to to make deliveries whatever it took the entrepreneurs will do that in order to succeed so this result driven hard-working winner-take-all and tenacious culture of entrepreneurship coupled with a lot of venture capital coming into this field has created the most effective execution engine in the world and that's what is keeping China ahead in not just AI but generally in executing quickly in all kinds of areas mobile payment is another example where China leads the world it just happens faster for all those reasons I mentioned and that will be an advantage for China again data there's more data available I mean there's more people in China as well and you know you talk about I know you've talked about in the past we chat people don't carry I mean they don't need to carry a wallet they don't carry money they don't carry credit cards it's on what the phone isn't exactly so theta is actually the rocket fuel for AI because AI doesn't work on human programming every intricate detail you know when you talk to a AI conversational robot it's not programmed as if he says this I should consider this response and put in the slots it's actually completely driven by past data so it builds out what they should say to you based on all the things people have ever said in such conversations and more based on whether saying something leads to a positive outcome user satisfaction more money being made so data is what drives the quality of the AI and the profitability of the company so data is all important and China has more data than any any other country by far not only because it has a larger user base for of times of the US for example but but also for each user the usage depth is more so there is collection of your payment in the u.s. payments could be by cash or credit card but in China it's all captured within the ecosystem so more more breath in users and more depth in the usage so all that data makes the also makes a Chinese AI work better so artificial intelligence doesn't actually have the capability to think and relies on the data humans generate on a daily basis Chinese traffic police are increasingly using facial recognition technology to identify jaywalkers and then automatically issuing fines by text authorities in Shenzhen are using facial recognition surveillance cameras that can identify suspected criminals their faces then displayed on large screens at Street crossings and on a government website to be about AI today because a lot of people talk about you know the future five years out ten years out fifteen years out but but there are applications today right there are a lot of applications virtually every internet application that you use has AI behind it because once you've got a couple of million users that's enough data to train some AI system that that decides what you should see next so and that's very critical to the apps that either want to retain you as a user on its app with your eyeballs or convert you to pain within the app or showing you something that you might take action upon such as click or pay or buy or trade or something so how to present that UI to user interface to you when you go to Amazon or Taobao what picture of a product should show to you to entice you to click that is a I behind it so we don't feel it but every app that we use whether in US China or anywhere else if it's at all popular there is AI behind it that's personalizing targeting for you to become a more satisfied user and for the company to make more money that's the most popular kind of AI there's of course AI behind speech recognition Alexa Siri and the Baidu system Alibaba system etc there's AI behind the face recognition gesture recognition systems around and there's AI behind autonomous vehicles although that's not yet fully deployed but there are some places starting to deploy them for parking for and some car manufacturers have automated parking that's AI some have automatic driving stay in lane on highway that's AI and then there will be cars that completely self drive on highways and that's AI so we're gonna see more and more more of that it's not always science fiction like you know an app is just as there's just as much a eye learning behind it asked the autonomous vehicle AI has become all the rage in the automotive industry us car makers spent nearly 350 million dollars on AI and 2018 alone forecast expect this number to reach three billion dollars by 2025 any Innovation Centre in Shenzhen a boss avoids pedestrians speeds up slows down breaks for emergencies overtakes other cars and navigates traffic lights while it may look like a normal bus it's actually controlled automatically and while there's a driver in place for safety during the entire route his hands never touch the wheel and his feet never at the brakes this is one of four electric intelligent driving buses being tested on public roads let's talk about self-driving cars I mean when when are we gonna be out there on the road and looking around and there's nobody behind the wheel I mean is that foreign the distance or is it soon it's probably going to take a little while for full adoption so there are a lot of reasons for that one is that some roads are just much much easier than other roads for machines and interestingly what autonomous vehicle is good at isn't what we're good at it's almost the opposite many drivers hate parallel parking but autonomous vehicle can park perfectly because it can measure because it's a fixed problem it's not different every time it's between two cars a certain distance you have to turn at exactly the right angle it's better than any human for that autonomous vehicles great on highways because on highways there are very little variability there are no cross traffic no red line no stop sign no pedestrians no no babies strollers so basically all you have to do is stay in lane don't get hit and then exit when you need to exit whereas for humans on the highway the speed is very fast if you fall asleep or don't pay attention or look at your phone and steering wheel turns 10 degrees you could be dead in in the in the next 20 seconds so it's very different people are afraid of driving on highways but autonomous vehicles very good at it yet there are places where the environment changes tremendously and every environment is different like hutong a small valley in in beijing that could be very difficult you know a country side turn in Mid America in an unnamed road that could be difficult not on the map but not difficult for the autonomous vehicle but for the human you're just reacting you know to to to the you know cats and dogs and kids running around and certainly you won't hit them that you're human because you recognize each one as is but for the autonomous vehicle every baby you know baby crawling versus a dog versus a doll it's not clear computer vision can make that distinction given the variabilities in light maybe it's a streetlight and it doesn't know how to stop the car get out and check if that's a doll or a baby so so the potential danger on people's lives make it really hard for autonomous vehicle to drive in these unknown a mapped tiny streets so given that a full deployment complete replacement of human driving is going to take a long time one final point is that new cities smart cities could accelerate this and China is building some some new cities shown iron is a city near Beijing the size of Chicago being built from the ground up for autonomous vehicles while that city will take many years to construct when it's done it will be immediately and hopefully fully ready for autonomous vehicle because if we think about it the limitations I talked about the hutong the alleys and the mud roads they were designed for human driving and if we're thinking about world where humans don't drive one could already design a new city in which in which it's a fully for autonomous vehicle and I know that in the u.s. in New Mexico as well in Saudi Arabia a city corneum are being constructed so it's possible these new smart cities will generate a lot of excitement for more and more cities to be built or rebuilt and that could also accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicle as well as other technologies you mentioned the baby stroller and and I've heard critics of self-driving cars and ton of US vehicles say look the cars coming down it's a computer it doesn't have the same feelings as us there's a little baby coming across in the stroller it's gonna be an accident there's a bus with 60 people in it does it take out one or does it take out 60 us as humans would never think of flattening the baby in the stroller we try and figure out something the computer it doesn't have feelings like us what about the critics who make these points what would you say to them well first I would say most human decisions before accidents or avoidance of accidents were not made consciously because if you ask all the people you know how did you avoid that accident why did you hit that car and they'll say well it just went so fast I can tell because cars go that fast we we would like to think we're logically and morally evaluating every situation but there's no time to do that so I think that's just you think it's a false argument yeah I think it's it's an imagination that we have the adaptability all the time we may sometimes but you know if we really saw a stroller and a big bus I'm sure most of us just slam on the brakes and try to not hold either not hit either that's probably a good enough step for most people to actually sway Oh away from the baby and intentionally hit the truck I don't think our brains work that fast so I think that's just imagination but also I think we can program things into the AI that we think are the right optimization so actually we can make AI do a better job to what we human want us to do if we want to say never ever hit a baby or we can program that in if we want to say always minimize likely loss of lives over all similar incidents we can do that too so I think it's our own decision how we want to program AI and and then let it do a great job doing what we tell it to do and it can do that job much better than what we

Channel: CGTN America

Views: 6,111

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Keywords: @cgtnamerica, China news, China, Global, Television, Network, Artificial Intelligence, CGTN, Sinovation Ventures, full, AI Superpowers, machine learning, self-driving cars, Kai-Fu Lee, AI, frame

Id: VORTTxkyvts

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 11 2020

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• Original Title: Artificial Intelligence: Interview with Kai-Fu Lee (part 1)
• Author: CGTN America
• Description: As the impact of artificial intelligence becomes more visible in the tech world, the global race to develop AI is intensifying. Kai-Fu Lee is a leading AI expert and ...
• Youtube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VORTTxkyvts