Institute established to research AI management

Shanghai University of International Business and Economics opened an Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Change Management on the weekend.

Zhu Guohong, president of the university, said the institution will promote development of AI from the perspective of economic management and will focus on its influence on the development of society, industries and organizations.

Through cooperation with enterprises and other research institutions from home and abroad, it will not only research new phenomena and rules brought by AI, but also the education of future talent needed in the era of artificial intelligence.

After the opening ceremony, some companies and research institutions also impressed the audience with some recent cases highlighting what changes artificial intelligence could bring to humanity.

These included an application developed by Shanghai Wordoor Technology Co., which could translate between Chinese and Russian to enable online business negotiations between parties from China and Russia without the need of an interpreter.

Another example is a medical robot developed by the Tsinghua-iFlyTek Joint Lab for Speech Technologies at Tsinghua University.

It took the qualification exam for doctors in August, which is believed to be one of the most difficult exams in China, along with ordinary test takers and scored 456 points, comfortably above the minimum required 360 points.

Experts pointed out that though AI has brought some advancements already, it’s too early to say the era of artificial intelligence has arrived.

Wu Ji, director of the Tsinghua-iFlyTek Joint Lab for Speech Technologies, said though AI was able to achieve a high score in the qualification exam for doctors, or even provide advice to doctors, it is still not mature enough to fully replace them.

“There are still a lot of problems that need to be overcome in the development of AI technologies, and we need to do more to apply the technologies in real industries,” he said.