(Yicai) May 23 -- The future of artificial intelligence undoubtedly belongs to young people, as the world will leave the most challenging problems for them to solve, said Wang Jian, founder of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group.

Wang made these remarks during his speech at the Beyond International Technology Innovation Expo 2025, Asia's largest technology ecosystem event, which is held in China’s Macao from May 21 to 24.

Wang is an academician at the Chinese Academy of Science. He serves as chairman of Alibaba Group Holding's technology committee and director of Zhejiang Lab, a research institution jointly established by the Zhejiang provincial government, Zhejiang University, and Alibaba in 2017.

The rise of tech companies such as DeepSeek and Unitree Robotics demonstrates that small enterprises can work miracles, Wang noted. "People previously believed that AI as a disruptive technology could only be driven by large companies, but the reality is that overlooked small teams can actually achieve breakthroughs."

The public often does not understand disruptive technologies at the early stages, Wang said, adding that if everyone recognized them from the beginning, they would not be truly disruptive.

For example, when semiconductors were first discovered, no one believed they would change the world. It was not until about 30 years later that they became a core industry.

Wang encouraged everyone to pay more attention to the application scenarios of large language models and to engage less in debates over concepts. Once foundational model capabilities are strong enough, true breakthroughs will come from unexpected application scenarios, he noted.

Many people are still using traditional thinking to impose limitations on AI, claiming "AI can't do this, AI can't do that," Wang pointed out. But in reality, there are many things AI can accomplish that humans have yet to realize.

Wang believes that AI will develop at a pace beyond people's imagination in the next five, 10, and even 50 years. The capabilities of existing LLMs far exceed previous expectations.

"It is time to think about how to apply AI in space," Wang said. By building AI and space computing infrastructure, we can address the data processing efficiency bottlenecks of traditional satellites, thereby promoting the application and development of AI in space, he explained.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione