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Dec. 5 (NBD) -- With the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, AI has become a buzz word and triggered heated discussions during the 4th World Internet Conference held in eastern China's Wuzhen on 3-5th of December.

AI now is regarded as a technology that has the disruptive influence on human society, following the electricity and the internet. 

NBD noticed that over the past 12 months, the internet giants across the world such as Alibaba, Tencent and Google not only poured a huge amount of money into the establishment of AI studios, but also invested heavily in the related companies. As great opportunities emerge from the new technology, a fierce "arm race" in the AI filed has started among the technology companies around the world, expecting to have more say in the future competition.

According to the data from CCIDnet, by 2018, the market size of global AI market will reach 269.73 billion yuan (40.8 billion U.S. dollars), with a growth rate of 17 percent. In addition, the statistics demonstrate that more than 30 Chinese listed companies have entered the AI market, building AI industry chains which mainly covers software algorithm core system, image and speech recognition technology, computer vision and sensors,etc.

Alibaba's Jack Ma made a speech in the conference saying that in the future, workers in the manufacturing industry will be replaced by AI-powered machines.

Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu, pointed out that the internet companies make efforts to develop AI because they saw benefits brought by the large population of netizens were disappearing. AI industry is still at its early stage and will create more chances during its development, he said.

As one of the first internet companies to conduct research about AI and its commercialization, Baidu has announced its All in AI strategy in early 2017. From 2014 to 2016, the internet company's spending on R&D in AI field increases year by year. 

Liu Feng, author of the book Internet Evolution, noted that the evolution of the internet inevitably impels the industry giants to develop AI because those companies are more competitive in terms of data, talents and technologies. As the AI industry involves various fields, the giants are more likely to be investors, instead of doing all business on their own, which in turn creates opportunities for internet start-ups.

Besides, he also said that the internet has developed to a certain point based on which AI technologies can be commercialized. Combining AI technologies with specific industries or application scenarios has been an inevitable trend, noted Liu. 

Under such circumstances, how to commercialize the achievements of AI technology rapidly has become a question for the enterprises to consider.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn