Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Tuesday, Feb 18, 2025
Mugglehead Investment Magazine
Alternative investment news based in Vancouver, B.C.

AI and Autonomy

Robots take over 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference

The conference started Thursday and ends Saturday will also feature such companies as Tesla Inc, Apple and Microsoft Corporation

Robots take over 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference
Optimus standing in front of the cybertruck. Image via Tesla.

Tech companies from all over the world showed up at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this week, with China leading the pack with over 1,500 artificial intelligence-related robots, products and models.

The conference started Thursday and ends Saturday will also feature such companies as Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). The theme for the conference is “Governing AI for Good and for All” and be focused on China’s development efforts regarding AI despite U.S. sanctions on chips and chipmaking tools.

Chinese AI and facial recognition company, SenseTime, revealed its Sensenova 5.5 large language model (LLM), saying that it serves as an adequate rival for OpenAI’s GPT-4o.

“Nobody will deny that we are facing limited computing power in China,” said Zhang Ping’an, head of cloud computing unit at Huawei, which is under U.S. sanctions. “If we believe that not having the most advanced AI chips means we will be unable to lead in AI, then we need to abandon this viewpoint.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce put Huawei on its trade blacklist in 2019. Despite this, the company has managed to obtain advanced chipmaking tools from U.S. companies through a special license. However, Huawei is struggling to ramp up production of its Ascend 910B artificial intelligence chip, China’s top alternative to Nvidia’s AI chips, which U.S. trade restrictions prohibit from being sold to Chinese customers.

Meanwhile, Tesla displayed its humanoid robot Optimus behind glass at the conference on Thursday. The second-generation humanoid robot, still not in full-scale production, can perform tasks that are unsafe, repetitive, or boring, according to the company.

Read more: Verses AI onboards chief product officer in push for AI product Genius

Read more: Verses AI raises CAD$10M in private placement and leans into AI product, Genius

China reveals general-purpose robot designed with AI software

Optimus, however, may have some competition.

The National Local Joint Human Robot Innovation Center also revealed its general-purpose robot Qinglong. This initiative aims to accelerate innovation, collaboration, and development within the global robotics and AI communities, potentially driving advancements across a range of industries.

The company designed Qinglong for developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) software and hardware. VERSES AI Inc. (CBOE: VERS) (OTCQB: VRSSF), a Vancouver-based AI tech firm, calls AGI the next stage of development. It includes systems that show the flexible, general-purpose intelligence found in humans.

The robot is 1.85 meters tall and weighs 80kg. The robot is open-source and researchers can access its hardware structure, parameters and soon its embodied intelligence software package. The goal is to release a new robot every year named after one of the Chinese zodiac animals.

The conference also inadvertently put the limitations of the technology on display.

Visitors experienced a few unexpected occurrences, including falling robots, lost entry scan codes, and AI models that underperformed.

Additionally, the facial recognition entry gates posed problems for children and attendees purchasing tickets on-site, as their facial information wasn’t registered.

The conference displayed artificial intelligence models for education, finance retail, and other industries in the exhibition halls.

However, a mother testing an AI-powered learning machine expressed frustration as the system provided irrelevant results, making her repeat “I don’t understand” multiple times. Industry experts attributed these issues to the on-site internet environment and surrounding noise.

These incidents compounded experts’ concerns about generative AI applications, including biases, data security, control of autonomous devices, and the evolving social and technical landscape, and also how balancing innovation with ethical considerations needs to remain a key focus.

Verses AI is a sponsor of Mugglehead news coverage 

.

Follow Mugglehead on Twitter

Like Mugglehead on Facebook

Follow Joseph Morton on Twitter

joseph@mugglehead.com

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like

Alternative Energy

The two Illinois projects created 500 construction jobs

AI and Autonomy

Vance told world leaders the Trump administration would take advantage of AI

AI and Autonomy

The reveal was made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Feb. 11

AI and Autonomy

It assesses mortality risk in non-small cell lung cancer patients