Global participants from a range of industries at the ongoing Summer Davos are discussing how the era of artificial intelligence (AI) may impact everything from breakthroughs in medicine to the way people access information.
Running from Tuesday to Thursday in northeast China's Dalian City, the 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as the Summer Davos, is themed "Next Frontiers for Growth," with many discussions focused on how intelligent technologies are changing lives.
In the meeting's open discussion areas, business executives pointed to areas where AI may help address scientific shortcomings.
"There are 10,000 diseases and very few of those drugs are truly curative. So we actually have not made a giant leap in drug hunting over the past 30 years," said Alex Zhavoronkov Insilico, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine.
"Another important thing is how best to optimize resources. Especially in areas like Africa, where on one hand, you have some resources in abundance, but they are unprocessed, and on another hand, you have very scarce resources," said Khalil Suleiman Halilu, CEO of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure in Nigeria.
In medicine in particular, AI-generative technologies are expected to help researchers identify and target the sources of disease.
"More countries and more institutions that can get into this game with higher probability of success and also cheaper and faster," said Insilico.
"It's going to have an impact on the quality of the service you can bring to the patient. So better understanding the patient, measuring more of the data needed for health, and using this in the research progress, in the innovation process," said Andre Hoffmann, chairman of Massellaz SA.
Another hot topic at the event is how AI will affect key aspects of the online world, from shopping to social interaction.
"We also see a recommendation system being used for consumer goods, and also whenever we consume social media, essentially we are relying on recommendations of algorithms that learn about our preferences," said Kang Xi, assistant professor of strategy at Vanderbilt University.
The increasingly widespread use of AI in content delivery raises concerns about privacy and intellectual property rights, resulting in calls for balanced measures to be taken at all levels.
"Government regulation, that is definitely needed. And also, the company's developers of these models should develop their algorithms in a socially responsible way. So, we rely both on regulation and increasing moral standards of the company, so leveraging their corporate social responsibilities," Kang said.
Summer Davos' attendees anticipate AI-driven reshaping of science, information
