WAIC 2020 · Futuristic City Summit | Selected Insights

Technology Author: Yingwei Fu Editor: Luke Sheehan Jan 05, 2021 04:48 PM (GMT+8)

Key takeaways from the EO-held event under the aegis of WAIC, arguably the largest AI-themed conference of 2020.

2020 WAIC

On July 10, EO Company, EqualOcean's parent organization, held the Futuristic City Summit online. The Summit was a part of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2020. (Check out EO Intelligence: AI Commercialization in China report, which was prepared exclusively for this event.)

We invited various speakers from academic, business and investment circles to share their thoughts on the status quo and the future of intelligent urban systems and the global technology landscape overall. China's 'new infrastructure' plan, essential trends in hardware, software and at the interface of the two, various applications of machine intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other topics were touched upon many times on site.

Below is the nitty-gritty of what our guests were discussing. The quotes are in chronological order.

You Tianyu, vice president at EO Company, head of EO Intelligence: "China's 'new infrastructure' is not a from-zero-to-one process, but a long-standing trend that results from years of technological development."

Tao Dacheng, fellow of Australian Academy of Science: "The 'new infrastructure' will be the main carrier of livable cities, bearing various aspects of urban construction, such as smart security, smart transportation, and smart medical care."

Lee Der-Horng, fellow of Academy of Engineering Singapore: "Localized, unmanned, and lightweight travel modes will be the key direction to solving the problem of urban traffic resilience."

Marco Landi, ex-COO and ex-president of Apple Computer: "It's time to start building a human-centric Artificial Intelligence system."

Wu Minghui, founder and CEO of MiningLamp: "A city, much like human beings, is a living body composed of various cells; it needs to be constantly evolving."

Chen Ye, founder and CEO of Tigerobo: "Compared to the 'consumer Internet,' the breakthrough of the 'industrial Internet' is great, but it will be more difficult to implement."

Zheng Wenxian, vice president at Intellifusion: "The 'new infrastructure' is not just a new version of the traditional infrastructure that was built the past, it is an entirely new, data-driven system."

Zhang Rong, COO at Westwell: "How to keep a port city alive? Digitalization and automation are making unmanned terminals' operation possible."

Zhang Yong, principal scientist at Keda Technology: "Edge computing is a promising concept in the public safety sphere - it will play a greater role and become a very important tool in the field."