The Smart Exhibition

By+lu+Yan

‘ive been under the weather recently.”“Where does it hurt？ ”

“Could you be more specifi c？”

“When did it start？”

This seemingly conventional conversation between a patient and a doctor appears normal enough， but all is not as meets the eye. The exchange in fact took place between a patient and a ro- bot named Wangzai at the exhibition center hosting the Fourth World Internet Conference （WIC） in Wuzhen， east Chinas Zhejiang Province.

Wangzai， whose technical name is Sogou01， has been developed as part of a collaboration between Sogou Inc.， one of Chinas leading Internet product and service providers， and the Tiangong Institute for Intelligent Computing of Tsinghua， a department at one of the countrys top academic institutions， with the help of experts from robotics laboratories around the world. Utilizing the latest in artificial intelligence （AI） technology， the dog-faced robot can see， think， and answer questions thanks to the complex operations made possible by its programing. And giv-ing medical advice is only one of its many amazing stunts.

The Fourth WIC， held on December 3-5， proved to be a major coming together of new products， especially the latest in Internet technology like Wangzai. Over 1，500 guests descended on Wuzhen for the conference， hailing from more than 80 countries， including heads of state and industry celebrities such as Apple boss Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Homegrown Chinese companies and foreign giants alike participated in the activities， with representatives from Alibaba， Baidu and Tencent collaborating with those of Cisco， Microsoft and Facebook to conduct the opening and closing ceremonies. They also attended forums where among the many topics discussed were those re- lating to the digital economy， cutting-edge technology， and cyberspace governance.

“Building a cyberspace community with a shared future has become the unanimous goal of our international society，”Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a congratulatory letter to the conference.

At the cutting-edge

A major source of interest at this years WIC was so-called “black technology，” a term popular amongst Chinese Internet users for technology seemingly beyond the capacity of human innovation. The application of such lexicon here， usually reserved for the realm of sci-fi or fantasy， is itself an indication of the futuristic place the tech industry fi nds itself in 2017. One company exhibited a drone able to automatically transport a single passenger up to 60 mph， whilst elsewhere Face++ demonstrated the speed and accuracy of their facial recognition technology to general astonishment. To mark this years event， a committee composed of 44 experts from around the world selected 18 articles of world-leading technological achievement from a pool of nearly 1，000 candidates， covering theoretical innovations， techniques， products and business models， their announcement constituting one of the headline events at the conference.endprint