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Alibaba Group Holding's outgoing chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang Yong, Nobel Prize laureates and other eminent researchers gathered at the annual digital economy conference hosted by the company's open think tank in Hangzhou, China to discuss the opportunities and dangers brought about by artificial intelligence (AI).
In a dialogue with Nobel economics laureates Thomas Sargent, Christopher Pissarides and Eric Maskin, Zhang shared his views on the promise of AI, which has become a key focus of Alibaba's cloud computing unit, as it works to integrate its own large language model (LLM) into various company products.
"We're in a fast-changing world where we have proved that foundation models work," Zhang said, referring to AI systems that are trained on vast amounts of data. "This will generate new industries or new services that we've never seen, and I think this makes the whole society move forward."
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But Zhang also voiced concerns about ethical issues stemming from the emergence of cutting-edge technologies.
"Now that machines can be fed with data from the public domain, how do we know where the original information and knowledge come from? How can they be respected? This is just one example of issues that worry me a lot," he said.
Zhang was speaking at a two-day event hosted by Luohan Academy, an open think tank founded in 2018 by Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.
The conference coincided with Alibaba's announcement on Tuesday that Zhang will step down as group chairman and CEO in September to focus on the cloud business, with Joe Tsai and Eddie Wu Yongming succeeding as chairman and CEO, respectively.
The surprise management shake-up is part of the tech giant's largest-ever corporate restructuring, announced in March, that will see it split into six independently-run entities, each potentially seeking their own fundraising channels.
Zhang said in an internal memo that it would be "inappropriate" for him to continue serving as chairman and CEO of both Alibaba and Alibaba Cloud as the cloud unit prepares for an initial public offering.
In a show of unity, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and Zhang showed up together at the office of Alibaba Cloud on Tuesday, while Tsai, who is also a co-founder, appeared at the Hangzhou headquarters of Cainiao Network, Alibaba's logistics arm.