Robots Take Center Stage at World AI Conference in Shanghai

China doesn’t need the most advanced chips to take a leading role in global AI development, Zhang Ping’an, CEO of Huawei Cloud, said at the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week.

Based on the technologies exhibited at the conference, major players in the country’s AI industry may be attempting to draw attention away from China’s chip shortages and toward its advancements in a quintessential sci-fi form: humanoid robots.

According to Huawei’s Zhang, accepting the premise that advanced chips are the only path to AI leadership amounts to a de facto embrace of defeat. "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," he said.

While banned chips can be found in places like Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei electronics market, they are rare and expensive. As the United States continues to tighten its controls on chip exports to China, it makes sense that top tech executives would try to find an effective spin.

Read the whole article via Forbes here.