Jack Ma: Asia has ‘chance to win’ in emerging era of super machines
Asia may have missed the boat in dominating the current internet age, but the vast region’s increasingly wired societies must not squander the “chance to win” in a new era where superiority in building data-driven machines will define success, Alibaba Group executive chairman Jack Ma said on Thursday.
After an era in which the internet powered the global economy, landmark developments in areas like machine learning have made data the centre of the technology world, Ma told a business conference in Malaysia.
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence – the idea that computers can be programmed to emulate sentient behaviour.
Machines are going to be more powerful and smarter than people...in 30 years
“In Asia we are now moving from the IT time to the DT time. It’s not Donald Trump time. Data Time,” said Ma, the executive chairman of Alibaba – the owner of the South China Morning Pos t.
“With the IT time, Asia lost our chance. We don’t have an IBM, we don’t have a Microsoft, we don’t have Cisco, we don’t have an Intel. But on the DT time, we have a chance to win,” he said.
“Look at Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. So many farmers are using mobile phones. If we can use the mobile technology to collect data, things are going to change.”
Speaking to a full house at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, Ma said “these changes are going to come faster than you thought”.