Alibaba cloud visionary expects big shakeup after OpenAI hype
The Chinese e-commerce giant has gone all-in on AI, joining the race to build human-like intelligence
[HONG KONG] OpenAI’s ChatGPT started a revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) development and investment. Yet nine-tenths of the technology and services that have sprung up since could be gone in under a decade, according to the founder of Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud and AI unit.
The problem is the US startup, celebrated for ushering AI into the mainstream, created “bias” or a skewed understanding of what AI can do, Wang Jian said. It fired the popular imagination about chatbots, but the plethora of applications for AI goes far beyond that.
Developers need to cut through the noise and think creatively about applications to propel the next stage of AI development, said Wang, who built Alibaba’s now second-largest business from scratch in 2009.
“Probably 90 per cent of the AI people are talking about, I would say, will go away in five or 10 years because it’s not really the essence of this technology,” said the computer scientist. “But that’s not bad, and it just helps us to explore.”
Wang, who cemented his reputation at Microsoft Research Asia before joining Alibaba, knows a thing or two about thinking outside the box. Shortly after joining, he pitched the idea of a computing business to Alibaba’s billionaire co-founder, Jack Ma. He recounted being nervous because he had no concrete business proposal, no models to present, just a conviction that the need for computing would explode in the coming years. He was right.
Alicloud, as it’s commonly known, is today a US$16 billion business. It not only underpins Alibaba’s global e-commerce and logistics endeavours, but it’s also the progenitor of the Qwen model, considered on par with DeepSeek and US rivals such as GPT and Gemini. Alibaba has gone all-in on AI, joining the race to build human-like intelligence.
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US and Chinese companies are investing billions of US dollars to develop a technology with the potential to turbocharge economies and, over the long run, tip the balance of geopolitical power. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders in a call to arms to ensure companies such as OpenAI and Google help safeguard America’s lead in the post-ChatGPT era.
Wang refrained from addressing that broader conflict. But he did have some choice words for the way the likes of OpenAI and Meta Platforms have thrown money at the problem, including by signing on talented engineers at sports-megastar salaries.
“What happened in Silicon Valley is not the winning formula,” he said. “It’s really about innovation. So when you are in the early stage of innovation, I don’t think talent is a problem because the only thing you need to do is to get the right person, not really the expensive person.”
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Going back almost two decades, Wang admits he never saw the present-day AI revolution coming so soon. All he envisioned was computing becoming as vital as electricity or oil. That should remain so for at least decades.
As for China, Wang’s firm belief is it will remain a hotbed of innovation, in part because it’s one of the biggest technology laboratories in the world.
“It’s a test bed for the new technology,” he said. “People are just fascinated about technology. They are doing a lot of different things.” BLOOMBERG
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