This photo taken on Nov. 15, 2022 shows an AI-generated portrait of a visitor at a booth of the 24th China Hi-Tech Fair (CHTF) in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)
"I would not count China out of anything. The record of innovation, the creativity, the fearlessness and taking risks, I think all point in that direction. There's a lot of uncertainty in where AI is at, but I think the ingredients for China to become a world leader by 2030 are all there," said Thoughtworks' CTO Emerita Rebecca Parsons.
by Martina Fuchs
TORONTO, Canada, June 28 (Xinhua) -- An executive of global technology consultancy company Thoughtworks said at the Collision conference in Toronto on Wednesday that China is expected to become a superpower in artificial intelligence (AI) across the world by 2030.
"I would not count China out of anything. The record of innovation, the creativity, the fearlessness and taking risks, I think all point in that direction. There's a lot of uncertainty in where AI is at, but I think the ingredients for China to become a world leader by 2030 are all there," said Thoughtworks' chief technology officer (CTO) Emerita Rebecca Parsons in an interview with Xinhua at Collision, one of the world's largest technology gatherings taking place from June 26 to 29.
Over the past few years, China has rolled out plans to facilitate the development of the digital economy and to integrate its industrial sector with information technologies in the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).
In 2017, the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a plan for AI development, setting the target of China becoming a major center for AI innovation and leading the world in AI technology and applications by 2030.
"I've been so impressed at the level of innovation and creativity and risk taking in China. We are going to see more innovations in responsible tech coming from China as a result of that," Parsons said.
People visit an intelligent technology exhibition during the seventh World Intelligence Congress (WIC) in north China's Tianjin, May 18, 2023. (Xinhua/Li Ran)
Asked about how Chinese businesses can better apply AI in their respective industries, Parsons said: "The first key is to make sure that for the time being you keep the human in the loop. Where people have got into trouble is when they just take it on face value and don't check."
"With the incredible growth in the Chinese economy you've got both: the increased pressure from that growth to address some of these issues, but you also have the capacity," Parsons added.
Founded in 1993, Thoughtworks based in Chicago is a leading technology consultancy with more than 11,500 employees across 51 offices in 18 countries.
The company provides a range of services, such as enterprise modernization, platforms and cloud, customer experience, product and design, data and AI, and digital transformation and operations.
RESPONSIBLE TECH
In January, Thoughtworks released its "The State of Responsible Technology" together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review.
It surveyed 550 senior executives and directors from industries including financial services and insurance, the public sector, healthcare, retail and e-commerce, automotive, and energy and utilities.
A woman experiences an AI device during the 2023 Collision Conference in Toronto, Canada, on June 27, 2023. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)
The report found that respondents from India, China and Australia were most likely to rank their organizations' adoption of responsible technology highly. Meanwhile, respondents from the United States gave their organizations the lowest scores on average.
Parsons noted that it's crucial to create a culture of "responsible tech" in organizations. "It's the collective responsibility of technologists to be more inclusive, be aware of bias, transparent and to mitigate negative inadvertent consequences during the design process of new solutions using AI."
"China is more focused on investor perceptions of their responsible tech, whereas globally, people thought more broadly about perception," she said.
The Collision conference, now in its fifth year in Toronto, has reached a new record by bringing together 36,378 attendees from 118 countries, the organizers wrote in a press release on Tuesday.
In addition, 41 percent of all attendees at the event are women and 36 percent of speakers are women, while a record-breaking 30 percent of start-ups this year are women-founded. ■
