World Internet Conference 2019 Highlights

Healthcare, Technology, Financials Author: Sirui Zhou, Zhao, Jiawen and Li, Teng Oct 21, 2019 11:40 AM (GMT+8)

What did they say on the first day of the Sixth World Internet Conference (Wuzhen Summit)?

Wuzhen. Image credit: Unsplash.

The sixth World Internet Conference, held by Cyberspace Administration of China and the Zhejiang government since 2014, takes place on October 20 to 22 at Wuzhen. Internet experts, tech entrepreneurs and investors gathered and talked about hot topics around 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and so on. 

Ke Ruiwen (柯瑞文), Chairman of China Telecom Group: Adhering to the direction of SA independent networking
 
China Telecom has been the only domestic operator that only implement SA independent networking since the release of 5G commercial licenses on June 6. Ke Ruiwen emphasized the point during the speech at the Entrepreneur Summit Forum. 

"This is the first year of 5G commercialization.5G not only accelerates the digitalization but also accelerates the transformation of the real economy to achieve high-quality development," said Ke Ruiwen. He emphasizes the importance of innovation, especially the independent network and mobile devices. During the process, digitalization and cybersecurity are crucial. 

Robin Li (李彦宏), founder of Baidu: Key to industrial intelligence is the cooperation with the real economy

The market capitalization of Baidu has been surpassed by Chinese Internet newcomers Meituan Dianping, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Netease. As search business slowing down, Baidu is doubling down on AI business.

Robin Li said at the speech now is the era of AI-driven smart economy. Technology innovation is the background of a smart economy and it would bring major changes in three aspects: the transformation of human-computer interaction, the tremendous changes to the IT infrastructure and the emergence of new business models. 

As AI is adopted in more industries, technology is to return to the essence of industries. The center of smart transportation is transportation and the key to AI education is education.

Lu Qi (陆奇), CEO of YC China: To explore a new mechanism to balance privacy and value  

Innovation drives social progress, and technology is the largest, most sustainable driver of innovation. Lu Qi believes that the AI era will see a faster process of innovation and digitization, greater challenges, and increasing importance of open cooperation.

The core value of AI is to extract knowledge, gain insights from data and use it to solve tasks. AI systems will be fully digital based on sensors and actuators. Any industry and vertical will face a digitalization and the information industry itself will be reconstructed. we need to dig deeper into every vertical, complete the scenes and establish industry platforms.

Lu Qi pointed out the need to work together to establish new generation mechanisms just like open-source software, which not only protects data privacy but also provides stronger cooperation. This is a common challenge we face and It requires everyone to contribute to policy issue, infrastructure, research, technology, products, and business models.

Gong Yu (龚宇), CEO of iQiyi: 5G reduces mental and physical costs, VR will become light

Tracing back through the history of communication technology, the 2G era is represented by words, the 3G era makes picture communication possible, and the 4G era witnesses small videos all the rage, but for medium to long-length videos, the 4G network is not serving well for this 'heavy' application.

Gong Yu said to a reporter at the WIC that the large-scale 5G application is to transition the 'heavy applications', such as long videos and VR/AR into 'light application'. The reason is that 5G networks can reduce the mental and physical costs of the audience in scale, solve the problems of bandwidth and delay, and make VR/AR become a better application.