Tech experts weigh pros, cons of artificial intelligence

Global Business

Artificial Intelligence continues to make worrisome headlines with Tesla CEO Elon Musk calling for the need to regulate Artificial Intelligence before it becomes a danger to humanity.

But at a recent gathering in Silicon Valley, tech experts discussed how AI’s potential benefits outweigh the risks.

CGTN’s Mark Niu reports.

At the Sync Conference in Silicon Valley, the focus is on bringing together experts from the two countries leading the Artificial Intelligence revolution: China and the U.S. Didi – China’s largest ride-hailing app with more than 20 million rides a day, recently opened a Silicon Valley office to conduct research on artificial intelligence. Didi used AI at six traffic lights in Jinan, China to reduce the peak waiting times of drivers by more than 10 percent.

In Silicon Valley, scientists believe AI’s ability to sift through massive amounts of data can also help combat cancer. Subarna Sinha has helped developed a software called MISL that seeks to tailor specific cancer treatments to a person’s genetics.

“What we are proposing is to use the patient’s genetic characteristics to precisely pinpoint what would be the right drugs to use for these patients. One of the advantages of this is: it’s only going to attack cancer cells. It’s not going to attack normal cells and so the toxic effects we see with chemo therapy will go away,” Subarna Sinha, program lead at SRI International said.

Some of the most innovative and immersive technology often finds a home in the entertainment and gaming world first because of the size of the market and its less stringent ethical implications. But now one visual effects company founded by the famous director James Cameron is looking to push the envelope in that arena by utilizing AI.

Digital Domain’s special effects have been used in countless blockbuster movies. But now CEO Daniel Seah shows off its new technology that allows a user to control or become a digital avatar of someone else. Seah predicts that in less than three years everyone will have their very own virtual life.


Digital Domain CEO on the future of artificial intelligence

For more on where Digital Domain is heading with artificial intelligence, and the world of the digital avatar, CGTN’s Mark Niu sat down with the company’s CEO Daniel Seah.