This year's China Conference of Artificial Intelligence aims to address the future of robots and the influence of Al technology on traditional industries. [Photo: cas.cn]

Chinese artificial intelligence experts and AI device makers are meeting now in Beijing to discuss the future development of the industry.

Zhao Yanwei with a Beijing-based biometric recognition device maker says the country's AI industry has seen great progress in technological development.

"Our facial, iris and fingerprint recognition devices have found wide application in the backstage platforms of banks. Our algorithm has been certificated by the state cryptography authorities. That means our customers don't need to worry about the security of their systems."

China has seen a rapid development of AI technology in recent years, especially in the fields of character and voice recognition, biometric recognition and robot manufacturing.

Latest stats show that 56-thousand industrial robots were sold last year, rising 54 percent from the previous year.

But Tan Tieniu from Chinese Academy of Sciences admits that China is still lagging far behind industrialized countries in both the development and application of AI technology.

"We can still see great gaps between our manufacturers and their foreign counterparts in the development of large-scaled AI systems and the making of core AI device partss."

Tan adds that there is still a long way to go for the emerging industry to improve "general-purpose" AI technologies.

"The development of 'general-purpose' Al systems is still facing challenges. Compared with all-round human brains, current Al systems have intelligence, but lack wisdom, have Intelligence Quotient, but lack Emotional Quotient. They can hardly interact with humans. They can calculate, but can't think."

The development of AI technology has been highlighted in China's newly released China Manufacturing 2025 and Internet Plus strategies.

Tan Tieniu suggests efforts should also be made to enhance AI-related legislations and push forward with the research on the influence of AI technology on human society to ensure a sound development of the sector.