(Yicai) March 24 -- The ultimate goal of developing artificial intelligence is not to create the most advanced models but to ensure AI applications are widely adopted to benefit society, Joseph Tsai, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding, said at the China Development Forum.

One of the key reasons for China’s AI success is its commitment to a mutually beneficial open-source strategy that aims to make AI technology a public good for humanity by breaking down technological barriers, thereby supporting global economic growth and improving living standards, Tsai said at the recent forum in Beijing.

Another key factor is China’s deep integration of AI with the world’s largest manufacturing system, he said, noting that the vast and rapidly digitizing production network generates huge volumes of industrial data daily, providing core resources for AI training.

Alibaba’s revenue from AI-related products has posted triple-digit year-on-year growth for 10 consecutive quarters, according to the company’s latest financial report released on March 19. The company aims to increase annual revenue from its cloud computing and AI commercialization businesses from CNY100 billion (USD14.5 billion) to USD100 billion within five years, Chief Executive Eddie Wu said during the earnings call following the report’s release.

The Hangzhou-based tech giant announced on March 16 the establishment of the Alibaba Token Hub, which will be directly overseen by Wu to strengthen strategic coordination across its AI businesses and accelerate the implementation of its AI strategy.

Han Xinyi, chief executive of Ant Group, a key partner of Alibaba, also discussed the company’s AI development strategy at the two-day CDF. Ensuring AI delivers shared prosperity requires addressing four major challenges, he said.

The first is energy consumption resulting from the rapid expansion of computing power. The second involves model and data security. The third is ensuring AI applications genuinely benefit humanity. The fourth concerns how humanity will evolve in the AI era.

Ant Group committed in 2021 to achieving net-zero emissions by 2030, but the additional energy demands from AI development have made this target more challenging, Han said. He added that Ant is working to build a green computing technology system to reduce the generation of invalid tokens and lower the unit energy consumption of valid tokens to help achieve the company’s net-zero goal.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine