At the 2017 Annual Meeting of Chinese AI Industry, Li Deyi, board chairman of CAAI and academician at Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), made a keynote speech.

Li believes that AI has become a new engine for economic development and an accelerator for social development. He buttressed his view with the typical cases of AlphaGo and Tesla self-driving cars.

"Alpho Go, the computer program, has beaten many world top-ranking players of the ancient Chinese board game Go, giving us an early glimpse of the necessity to discover new knowledge as well as inspiring the Go players to try new strategies and uncover new ideas."

Concerning the Tesla self-driving cars, he said, "The cars have traveled hundreds of millions of miles all over the world with very few manual interventions. They are expected to greatly change people's travel modes."

Looking into the future, Li said that AI is a double-edged sword, propelling a fast development of human society but pinching some of the existing living and production modes, and that human beings should try to make the best use of it to strive for a bright future.