Toronto event features tech advances, AI fears

Project Arrow is a concept electric vehicle (EV) from Canada that features zero emissions and lightweight, connected technology. All of the vehicle's parts were made in Canada — except the touch screen, which is provided by Lenovo, a Chinese multinational technology company.

The EV captured attention at Collision, North America's fastest-growing tech conference, which was held from June 26 -29 in Toronto.

"Actually, the only innovation that we couldn't get within Canada is the screen, and Lenovo China provided the screens for us. It's pretty cool," Paula Ambra, ACE project manager at Ontario Tech University told China Daily.

As one of the largest international technology conferences, Collision brought more than 40,000 innovators, tech professionals and visitors from 118 countries around the world to the largest city in Canada. Among them were representatives of Fortune 500 companies, groundbreaking startups and world-class speakers.

Hans Tung, managing partner at GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm, told Collision that China's market has changed dramatically compared with 15 years ago. Since then, more innovative and high-tech companies in North America have expanded to the Chinese market.

There are still companies that are growing efficiently despite a looming recession in the Western world.

"We've seen this happen to many other emerging markets like China or Southeast Asia; you just have to be patient to get through it," Tung said at a Q&A session.

He said "the world may see more geopolitical conflict; you also see more redundancy. China is becoming more self-sufficient. The emerging markets including China, Southeast Asia, India are becoming more and more confident. These clusters grow up, and behind that, global data points become very powerful."

Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of the popular Web Summit and Collision tech conferences, told Xinhua News that China is by far the center of innovation in the world today, and its prowess is accelerating.

Although the conference did not see so many Chinese and Asian companies on site, Rise — the largest tech gathering in Asia, is returning to Hong Kong in 2025.

"Rise is an Asian version of Collision hosted by Web Summit," Jorge Lee from the Hong Kong Tourism Board told China Daily at Hong Kong booth.

"So, we're coming here to answer questions and promote different travel experiences in Hong Kong," he said.

Christopher Chen from Invest Hong Kong said the group has hosted a master class on the main stage a couple of times.

"Hong Kong is a hub for fintech. We are one of the strongest funding platforms for biotech in the world," Chen told China Daily.

Canada has some matching technologies with Hong Kong, such as fintech, ESG (environmental, social and governance) sustainability, food-tech and biotech, he said.

"We work closely with the Canadian governments to try to find the right match," said Chen, adding that Hong Kong provides the world connectivity to the Greater Bay Area.

Artificial intelligence (AI) took center stage the past couple of days at the conference and not without some controversy.

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) told Collision that by 2025, all of Amazon will use 100 percent renewable energy.

"So that's just two years from now. We're already over 85 percent of the way there for three years in a row. We've been the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy on planet Earth," Selipsky told the audience. "We have (put) a lot of effort into being a true leader in sustainability, and I hope others will join us."

Many young people lined up at Google's Experiences booth to learn how the company uses AI in daily life, businesses, communities and workspaces.

Concerns around powerful AI systems, however, are mounting.

Cognitive psychologist and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton — the "godfather of AI" — started researching AI more than 40 years ago, when it seemed more like science fiction than reality. But he warned that the world will be in trouble if the goal of developing AI is to control people.

"First, I have to emphasize we're entering a period of huge uncertainty. Nobody really knows what's going to happen," Hinton told the audience in a conversation with The Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson on Wednesday.

"We have to take seriously the possibility that if they (AI) get to be smarter than us, which seems quite likely, they may well develop the goal of taking control, and if they do that, we're in trouble," said Hinton.

Hinton expressed his concerns that the digital intelligence that powers ChatGPT and Google's PaLM may have an advantage over people, and the world could lose control of the technology.

For example, Hinton said, some "bad people" are going to make battle robots. They're busy doing it in many different defense departments because their primary purpose is going to be to kill people, he said.

"That's my main concern with battle robots. It's a separate concern from what happens with super intelligent systems taking over for their own purposes," Hinton said.

The big increase in AI productivity will cost some people their jobs.

"It's going to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. And that's very bad for society," he added.