The 4th New Economy Think Tank Summit: Three Things You Need to Know
Time： 2019-01-10 18:35   Views：1438

http://www.aliresearch.com/en/news/detail/id/21669.html

By Coral Zhang and Neal McGrath | Coresight Research

On January 6, the Coresight Research team attended the fourth New Economy Think Tank Summit in Beijing. Attendees included significant figures in retail, and these are some of the things they discussed:

(1)Artificial intelligence (AI)is not about the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Twin, or any of the latest technologies: It's about using machine learning to solve business problems.

(2) AI can dramatically shorten the product development cycle.

(3) Robots and humans unite: Pairing the two on the factory floor will be the next wave.

The Coresight Research team was in the room when some of China's most innovative, tech-focused retailers came together for the fourth New Economy Think Tank Summit by AliResearch, the research arm of Alibaba. The Speakers included Min Wanli, Chief Machine Intelligent Scientist, Alibaba; Chen Weiru, Executive Director of Alibaba Industrial Internet Center; Liu Song, Vice President, Alibaba Group; Gao Hongbing, Vice President, Alibaba Group, Director of AliResearch; Steven Zhang, Vice President of Alibaba DingTalk; Ma Mingjie, Director General of Research Department of Innovation, The State Council Development Research Center; and, Michael Irwin Jordan, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Chair of Ant Financial Scientific Advisory Board.


1. Intelligent Technology: From IoT to AIoT

Min Wanli, Chief Machine Intelligent Scientist for Alibaba Cloud, put forward the opinion that AI is not “technology” or any of the fancy words being bantered about when talking about AI such as the IoT, 5G, VR and blockchain. Instead, AI is about decoding the process of human perception to make machines think more like people — and be able to do more in the commercial space to add value.

One example is Alibaba's experiment to "teach the production line how to think," using AI to find improvements in the production line. The result? The company improved the efficiency of one coal-burning boiler 2.6% using holography data analysis and AI process optimization. That may not seem a lot, but it means saving over a million tons of coal a year.
Another example is using AI in agriculture. In one experiment, various intelligence technologies such as OCR, yoloV3, GoogleNet, FCN, ASR, NLU, MIF, ElasticNet were used on a pig farm to analyze every step, every detail of every individual pig's mating, pregnancy, birth, growth and death. The information they learned helped reduce mortality 3% annually.


2. Speeding Up the Product Development Cycle

AI is also helping companies with new product development. The Tmall Innovation Center teamed up with Mars to create a new, spicy candy bar based on big data that showed many Chinese consumers prefer spicy flavors. Alibaba then used an intelligent feedback system to find the target consumers who like spicy flavors, create simulation models, organize trials, receive feedback and improve pilot products. The traditional R&D center needs an average of 18 months to create and launch a new product. Alibaba says its intelligent systems could cut that to just nine months.


3. Intelligent Economy: From Carbon-Based Ecosystem to Silicon-Based Ecosystem

Quoting from The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley, Gao Hongbing, Vice President of Alibaba Group and Director of AliResearch, said the business world today is transforming from “a carbon-based ecosystem” to “a silicon-based ecosystem” in which intelligent technologies such as AI, machine learning and the IoT will be married into various business forms and generate an intelligent economy.

Closing with a dose of reality, Michael Irwin Jordan, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, researcher in machine learning, statistics, and AI, and Chair of Ant Financial Scientific Advisory Board, offered this perspective: “The world will be redefined by data and algorithms.”
Does that mean machines will be smarter than humans? Jordan doesn't think so: It is more like a comparison between a human and a piano. The human needs the piano to play music, but there’s no way the piano can write the music.

“Power of Platforms” In Focus at Luohan Academy Summit
Time： 2019-06-28 15:47   Views：59

By Christine Chou | Alizila 

Alibaba Group has connected buyers and sellers in the digital age in ways that were not possible in previous eras of technological and economic development, said Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang this week.

But there’s much more at work on Alibaba’s shopping sites, such as Taobao and Tmall, than that one-to-one relationship, Zhang said. That’s because trade relationships in the digital economy are multidimensional, unlike the linear relationships that defined traditional commerce.

“The world is not flat. [In e-commerce], it is never just between the buyer and the seller,” he said, speaking at a conference in Hangzhou put on by Luohan Academy, an Alibaba-initiated global research platform. “Each buyer represents a family and a community, while the seller is part of a value chain that includes production, distribution and sales. There are many people that must work together to make a store successful.”

The Luohan Academy Digital Economy Conference was held to mark the one-year anniversary of the Academy’s launch. Last year, Alibaba brought together six Nobel Laureates, as well as renowned economists, social scientists, tech pioneers and professors to address the economic consequences and social disruptions that arise as new technologies are introduced to the world. “Luohan” is a Buddhist term for “beings who have achieved a higher state of consciousness.” In Chinese, it is often used to describe empathetic thinkers who work for the good of others.

During the panel discussion, which also included the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Bengt Holmström, New York University Professor Michael Spence and London School of Economics Professor Christopher Pissarides, Zhang said that while most people focus only on the transactions between merchants and consumers, platforms in the digital age are creating opportunities for multiple players throughout a consumer-driven value chain that has been changed by new technologies and services. Now, new jobs are available to people whose digital skills had no place in the traditional economy, Zhang said.

“There are huge opportunities to create new jobs with the development of technologies,” he said, adding that this benefitted society as a whole.

For example, the booming key opinion leader market in China and globally has created new job opportunities for innovative young people as merchants shift to new channels, such as short-form video and livestreaming, to sell their products. Alibaba’s role in this, Zhang said, was facilitating these innovations so that people could pursue these careers in the new digital economy.

10 Questions for the Digital Economy

During the two-day event, Luohan Academy posed a list of questions that were meant to guide conversations regarding the fast-paced adoption of digital technologies in the world today, such as how these technologies affect the job market and whether they will widen or bridge the digital divide.

“Our 10 Top Questions shed light on the most critical issues societies would face in the future,” said Luohan Academy Director Chen Long. “There won’t necessarily be any absolute, correct answers for these questions, but we hope that our publishing them could inspire society to think, discuss and achieve a degree of consensus, which can help reduce public anxiety at times of great uncertainty.”

Calling technology a “double-edged sword” that offers benefits as well as problems if it isn’t implemented correctly, Chen called on the academic community, policymakers and the private sector to work together to ensure inclusive growth as the world grows increasingly digital.

In a closed-door meeting with Academy committee members on the eve of conference, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma echoed those sentiments.

“No one is an expert of tomorrow,” he said. “We should formulate wise policies at the moment of wisdom, instead of solving tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s practices.”

http://i.aliresearch.com/file/20181225/20181225155645.pdf

Digital Technologies Allow People to Take on Risks and Explore New Opportunities
Time： 2019-02-18 10:58   Views：1201

By Xubei Luo | The World Bank

In the era of digital technology, the structure of production as well as the interaction between humans and machines is being redefined. The diffusion and application of digital technology can increase productivity in an unprecedented manner, with potential to reshape the role of humans in the function of production. Jobs are the drivers of development and pillars of resilience for people. Five years ago, the World Development Report (WDR 2014),  Risk and Opportunity – Managing Risk for Development, highlighted the role of enterprises in supporting people’s risk management by absorbing shocks and exploiting the opportunity side of risk. There have been heated debates on how technology may lead to risks, such as job loss and structural changes of employment. While the risks are real, the estimates of the impact of digital technology on employment vary widely, from substantial job loss for both skilled and the unskilled workers, to potential job gains thanks to the complementarity of humans and machines, as well as the income and wealth effect derived from higher productivity.

The World Bank and the Alibaba Group have been conducting joint research to examine how China has harnessed digital technologies to contribute to growth and expand employment opportunities through e-commerce development. Early findings show e-commerce fosters entrepreneurship, including for the youth and women, and contributes to growth in Taobao villages. Most people, especially e-households, in Taobao villages perceive their social status as equal or higher when compared to five years ago, and they believe they will have equal or even higher social status two years into the future. While it is still early to judge the impact of e-commerce on total employment, or the additionality of e-commerce to the economy as a whole, a few examples of innovation in the e-commerce platforms indicate possible channels how digital technology can create new business and employment opportunities, as well as pave ways for new opportunities.

Digital technology can create new business opportunities 

Digital technology can support innovation. In Sichuan, local firms collaborated with AliCloud to set up “profiles” for farm pigs using computer vision and AI voice recognition. The “ET Brain” documents their breed, age, weight, eating conditions, exercise intensity and frequency, and movement trajectory to reduce mortality rate of baby pigs and increase the fertility rate of female pigs.  

Technology and big data can improve quality and increase profit margins. In Xinjiang, with the support from local service providers, farmers apply new technology to improve the quality of melon for online sales.  The e-commerce contract farming model not only allows farmers to minimize risks of price fluctuations at harvest, but also enables platform companies to ensure product quality and pre-stock products in nearby warehouses according to big data sales predictions to enhance consumer satisfaction.  

E-commerce platforms can create markets for traditional products. In Qinghai, women of ethnic minority sell traditionally embroidered clothes (intangible cultural heritage as classified by the Chinese government) online, leading them to move out of poverty while balancing the needs to stay at home caring for their elderly and children.

Technology can create new forms of employment 

E-commerce can provide flexible/part-time jobs, meeting the special needs for employment of the disadvantaged and improving their sense of satisfaction. For example, women can take advantage of flexible working schedules to start and do business online while taking care of the young and elderly family members. Almost half of e-entrepreneurs in Taobao are women (this compared to 25% of women entrepreneurship in China), and three quarters are under the age of 34.  Female business owners, through knowledge sharing, demonstration, and affinity, often inspire more women in the neighborhood to find employment opportunities, including part-time jobs.

E-commerce creates on-the-ground jobs for logistics business. According to the State Post Bureau of China, 40 billion of parcels were delivered in 2017, generating revenue of nearly 500 billion RMB (or over 70 billion USD) with a year on year increase of 25 percent.  According to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchase, the number of employees in express delivery services increased 130 percent from January 2014 to November 2017.  There are numerous anecdotal stories of how people first start from being deliverymen and become owners of delivery companies in their hometowns making use of the close kinship in rural areas to expand business. The experience obtained through on-job-learning can help the disadvantaged to develop their human capital and be well placed to pursue better employment opportunities.

Technology can also pave the way for financial inclusion 

Fintech can improve access to finance in a more flexible and inclusive manner. For example, through Alibaba’s “310” loan service, in China, 4 million micro and small business receive loans with a total amount of RMB 700 billion, with an average per-account outstanding loan of less than RMB 30,000. And this is achieved through a 3-minute application, 1-second approval & grant, and 0 manual intervention. 100 million consumers, who have no or very limited loan history, now have credit ratings from AntFinancial.

Big data and block chain technology can facilitate public participation in welfare programs and support health insurance for poor households. For example, a new internet public welfare program provides free health insurance to breadwinners of poor households to reduce the risks of falling into poverty due to catastrophic health expenditure. Mobile payment, image identification, and blockchain technology together enable the participation of the general public to welfare programs and enhance the transparency and efficiency of the program management.  And local mobile public platforms can improve administrative efficiency and transparency.

Technology has been changing the ways by how production is conducted and how employment opportunities are distributed. The steam revolution lowered transport costs and made it feasible to spatially separate production and consumption, with production becoming specialized and concentrated in select areas. The ICT revolution lowered the coordination costs and separated the production stages previously conducted in close proximity. The separation of the stages of production across regional and national borders became more profitable and the higher end of the production concentrated in developed countries and the lower end in several developing countries. The fourth industrial revolution, such as robotics, AI, Internet of Things, is transforming the entire systems of production and management and the ways people interact, with the potential of making the world more integrated or segmented depending on the evolution of multiple forces.

With access to better opportunities as well as better risk management tools, places with better digital technology and individuals with better endowment are likely to have the first mover advantage. Meanwhile, the drastic improvements in market access and potential of productivity increase may benefit the less fortunate more in relative terms as they can learn from the first movers without an expensive trial-and-error but by directly adopting the new technology.

While numerous examples show how technology can bring new opportunities to people, this comes with unprecedented risks as well. When the natural barriers that segregate local markets are drastically reduced by e-commerce platforms and numerous innovations are stimulated to meet the increasingly fast evolving demands and provide tailored services to the unique taste of various consumers, the risks due to the exposure to fierce competition and unpredictable changes in the online markets are substantial and require new ways to manage. The jury is still out about what these risks may lead to, and how the benefits and costs will be distributed across the different segments of the population.

The World Development Report 2014 Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development, contends that the solution is not to reject change in order to avoid risk but to prepare for the opportunities and risks that change entails. What policy measures to put in place, in what areas, and in what sequence, to support people to seize the new opportunities of digital technology while managing risks will have a profound impact.  The WDR argues that “people can successfully confront risks that are beyond their means by sharing their risk management with others”, and that “the various systems—from the household and the community to the state and the international community—have the potential to support people’s risk management in different yet complementary ways.”  In the digital era, concerted efforts are crucial to support equitable access to technology and skills, as well as a conducive business environment for everyone, to make digital technology more beneficial to people in an inclusive manner.