The end of the world as we know it: artificial intelligence and economic transformation
If you are craving a time-honored colonel Sander’s fried chicken in Shanghai, what about a whole new gen experience? In collaboration with Baidu, KFC launched in 2016 the KFC Original+ concept to offer services enabled by artificial intelligence (AI). The main attraction in my view is not the Jiangnan garden design and neo-Chinese décor themed site, but “Dumi”, the WALLE-looking Baidu’s artificial intelligence robot that uses voice and speech recognition to take your order or chat with you. You can pay for your meal with a smartphone via mobile payment services, such as Baidu or WeChat Wallet, of course. While I could not see Dumi in action when I visited the site, the experiment illustrates Baidu’s and China’s forays into artificial intelligence. In another KFC-Baidu experiment in a site in Beijing, AI technology will scan customers’ face, deduct age, gender, mood, whether the customer is a repeat business, then will analyze all the data and recommend orders based on the stream of information. Jointly, these experiments provide a glimpse into how the current Chinese environment is a fertile ground for AI experiments, into how AI is shaping modern Chinese society, and into how AI can potentially disrupt unlikely segments of global industries worldwide.
Google took an early worldwide lead in machine learning followed by other large U.S. Internet companies such as Amazon, but Chinese tech companies are trying to catch up and the experiments and projects are spreading across China. New developments in artificial intelligence are transforming every part of value chains such as production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. In the retail side of supply networks, Alibaba has reduced e-commerce customer service by about 90% with the deployment of AI-powered customer service chatbot, which can reply to millions of text queries and take thousands of phone calls from online shoppers daily. JD.com is using AI and robotics to improve efficiency in logistics and warehousing.