Focus on Hangzhou companies at World Internet Conference

The fifth World Internet Conference, organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the People's Government of Zhejiang province, was held in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, between Nov 7 and 9.

With the industrial internet, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain among the hot topics at the conference, let's take a look at how some Hangzhou companies contributed to the forums that took place.

The rise of the industrial internet

Xu Guanju, chairman of Transfar Group, a Hangzhou-based private logistics conglomerate [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

As a combination of information technology and the manufacturing industry, the industrial internet is developing at a rapid speed, said Xu Guanju, chairman of Transfar Group, a Hangzhou-based private logistics conglomerate.

"Last year when I attended the WIC, I called on the internet to serve the manufacturing industry. Now, everything's changing as internet technology and the manufacturing industry are becoming more and more integrated with each other", said Xu.

Having realized the interconnectivity of the two sides, an intelligent logistic canter, a joint venture between Transfar Group and China Telecom was established amid effort to boost China's manufacturing industry by leveraging the logistics strengths of Transfar Group and the technical and internet competitiveness of China Telecom.

Artificial intelligence industry has great development potential

Ding Lei, founder and CEO of NetEase, a leading internet technology company in China. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

"The WIC has evolved into an important platform for international tech heavyweights in relevant industries to conduct exchanges and share insights and I hope more cutting-edge technologies that can reshape people's futures will be showcased at the event," said Ding Lei, founder and CEO of China's internet technology company NetEase.

Focusing on the application of the internet in the AI industry, Ding believes that "internet technology has permeated into every sector of our society".

Impressed by the Go match between AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence Go-playing program and Ke Jie, the world's number one Go player in last year's Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, he noted that the developed internet technologies will lead to a new era for AI as AlphaGo swept aside the world's best Go-player 3-0.

Ding also predicted that human translators will be replaced by machines in two to three years and the same thing will happen to human drivers with the development of self-driving vehicles, albeit not on the same time scale.

At the Light of the Internet Exposition on Nov 6, NetEase Youdao, the online education brand of NetEase presented the second-generation smart translator, which offers online translation in 43 languages. The newly unveiled gadget can provide offline voice translation between Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean.

Blockchain: a new mechanism for trust

Jing Xiandong, president of Alibaba's financial arm Ant Financial [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Jing Xiandong, president of Alibaba's financial arm Ant Financial believes that the blockchain technology, which helps to build a new mechanism for trust, will exert profound impacts on the finance and business community in the future.

As the world's largest third-party payment platform, the company has the largest numbers of blockchain-based patents among all companies around the world.

Despite that, none has anything to do with ICO, said Jing, adding that Ant Financial has been focusing on two things over the years, including establishing a financial blockchain platform and actively exploring the application scenarios for the cutting-edge technology.

"The next few years will be critical periods for the development of blockchain technology as its real value will start to emerge," he said.

Author: Editor:Dong Lixue