Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai questions AI's limits, casts doubt on humanoid robots
Alibaba Group Holding chairman Joe Tsai raised 'philosophical' questions on Wednesday to young entrepreneurs about whether machines could ever surpass human intelligence and cast doubt on the necessity of humanoid robots.
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Speaking at the grand finale of Jumpstarter, an event organised by the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund designed to promote fresh start-up ideas, Tsai highlighted the transformative potential of
artificial intelligence (AI) across industries, saying it is set to benefit society. However, he challenged assumptions about artificial general intelligence (AGI). Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
'How do you define 'smarter than human beings'?' Tsai asked the audience, noting that while AI can handle maths and coding much faster than human brains, it lacks the emotional intelligence, or emotional quotient (EQ), and compassion that define human interactions.
'All the positive encounters that you have with people that you love, people that you really enjoy spending time with, that judgment, that data, how does the machine capture that data in order to train AI to replicate the positive energy?'
Tsai cited his experience in educating his children about interacting with others, making friends and expressing emotions in an appropriate way. None of this, he said, is captured in training data.
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'So without training data from the parents, I am not sure how we train the machine to make them 'smart humans' or 'smarter than human beings' with EQ and compassion,' Tsai said.
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