Digital economy and AI key to China’s post-Internet future

The World Internet Conference, the brainchild of disgraced former Internet tsar Lu Wei, has been held annually since 2014 in the picturesque canal town of Wuzhen in northern Zhejiang province.

Chinese tech leaders articulated their vision for the post-Internet future at the World Internet Conference held this past week, with artificial intelligence, complete digitisation of the economy and a call for more basic science being among the topics of discussion – though it was mostly a local affair with the absence of high profile US tech company representatives amid the ongoing US-China trade war.

“Artificial intelligence and the internet represent two different eras,” said Baidu CEO Robin Li Yanhong. “We will step into the AI era in the coming three to five decades while the previous 20 years belonged to internet.”