Discussion keeps the worldturning.
This isRoundtable.Hello, welcome to Roundtable where we serve up piping hot debates on the issues that Sizzle in China andBeyond.
I'mYeol-Hulin. If there's one concept that everyone knows about and is eager to learn moreabout, it's definitely artificialintelligence.
In our recentepisodes, Roundtable has zoomed in on specific areas to explore AI'simpact.
Today, it's the business sector'sturn.
From optimizing supply chain to enhancing customerexperiences, let's discover how AI is revolutionizing the way we conduct businessglobally.
For today'sshow, I'm joined by Yushen and SteveHatharly.
Now grab your virtual compass and follow us to the heart of thediscussion.
To kick start today'sshow, I want to ask both of you aquestion.
Now at thismoment, if you can have asuperpower, what would you like tohave,Yushen?
Superpower? Anysuperpower?
Goinginvisible? That is a sadsuperpower.
Why isit?Okay, twoquestions.
Numberone, whyinvisible?
And numbertwo, why is that a sadsuperpower?
You speak very visible and you are very amazing and you are on the show and you talk topeople.
Right, you're not supposed tobe.
Want to beinvisible. You don't want her to beinvisible.
I don't want her to beinvisible.
Okay, whyinvisible? That's verykind, but being able to turn invisible whenever I want to or being able to open a portal of source and transfer myself to wherever I want has always been like a childhood dream ever since I wasyoung.
So when youask, I just naturally came to the fact of going invisible because I'm very introverted bynature.
So if I don't feel like confronting something or doingsomething, I can just dothat.
Immediatelydisappear.
Yeah, just likethat. But you mentioned the secondsuperpower, which is myanswer,teleportation.
Yeah, so I could go from this studio after the show isfinished, I could go Paris forlunch.
Then I could go to a beach in Boracay or something like that and just back home to my bed when I'm ready to go to sleep atnight.
You can make a lot of money helping people buying things from differentcountries.
But you're goingto. Professionalshopper, internationalshopper.
Oh, that's notbad.Right,teleportation.
What'syours? What'syours?
Mindreading. What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
What'syours? What'syours?
Okay, the reason I'm asking you these questions is because now I feel like artificial intelligence is kind of like asuperpower, empowering people to do things that they previouslycan't.
And one very interesting example we see in specifically the business sector is the fact that for many businesspeople, because they do wish to be able to communicate with peopleseamlessly, especially with foreign business partners from all over theworld.
Andnow,apparently, with the help of artificialintelligence, many of them have achieved that goal and realized thatdream.
Yeah, that is something happenedlately,actually.
You know this place called the EU in East China's Georgian province in the city of JinHuah.
Just south ofShanghai, Ithink.
Yeah, I think that's where it's geographicallylocated.
Well, thatplace,EU, is known by many as the world supermarket or the world capital of smallcommodities.
Andlately, EU has gone popularagain, not really because of what it alreadyis, but rather on the fact that it used AI technology and helped many of its traders to be able to upload a Chinese video and just automatically generate that into multi-lingual videos and just share it with whoever in whatever corner of the world speaking whatever language theywant.
Sonow, EU traders are able to just speak or like switch seamlessly between 36languages.
Wow. Promote their goods to the wholeworld.
And that is like one bigstep, you is taking very recently thatgot, youknow, very popular onlinelately.
We have to talk about what this placeis, this EUmarketplace.
Wow, is this a huge shoppingcenter?
Infact, the biggestbizarre, the biggest marketplace in theworld.
I looked at a video online and came away with somestatistics.
These numbers might be differentnow.
The video is about three yearsold.
But at the time they said 1500 containers leave that market every single day for different destinations around theworld.
In2017, the market did 24 billion euros in business insales.
80% of the world's Christmas decorations come from thisplace, which I thought was a funone.
This is funtoo. Half of the umbrellas in the world come fromyou.
And two thirds of the toys aswell.
That's just a little bit of a snippet to give you an idea of how vast and how huge this market is and how important it is to the world'sbusiness.
Depending on where you are in theworld, ofcourse, depending on the time ofyear, but you by the sounds of things supplies 24 hours a day and 365 days ayear.
Yes, EU definitely is the capital of small commodities and originally is towards onlyChina, but apparently like Steve has justsaid, it is now the place where the biggest market around theworld, which means they have to conduct business with people around theworld.
And knowing 36 language in one's lifetime seems impossible in the previous age andera, but now with the help of artificialintelligence, apparently people are communicating with business partners from all around the world from differentcountries.
And it does not have to be rocketscience.
It does not have to be precisetranslation, very beautifulones, translate not only themeaning, but also the culturalbackground, thehumor.
It does not have to be that specific actually as long as it serves the function of translating ofcommunicating, itworks,right?
You would thinkso, but actually artificial intelligence is doing a better job than weexpect.
Yeah, so the software that we're talking abouthere, it's called China Goods and it is something that EU has been developing in the past few years and their AI function over the China Goods platform was just launched lastyear.
Andnow, and lately in thisMay, it was reported that eight EU businesswomen, now here's the keyword businesswomen, were seen promoting their productions in fluent English to global audiences via the big screen in Times Square in NewYork.
So thataberties.Exactly.
I know that you can actually purchase some time over that screen in TimesSquare.
I went to Times SquareNYC.org.
There's a website that gives you the different screens and how to contact the companies that own thosescreens.
And I guess you have to contact them to get priceinformation, but I did find oneprize.
You andI, we could put our picture in Times Square for 24hours, it would air once every 15 seconds every hour and it would cost you $150 for the 24hours.
This is not even thatmuch.
Not even thatmuch. And the more screens youuse, the more expensive it would get and the more time youuse,obviously.
Let's put round table on TimesSquare.
Yeah, but Ihad. Let's all pitch in a littlemoney.
So, this sounds sogood.
But,well, for the eight business women'scase, they just recorded Chinese videos ofshowing, youknow,okay, maybe like one of them sellstoys, so they just promote their toys in front of the camera and use a few seconds to introduce what their brand is and what they sell and prove to the audiences on the fact that the toys have good quality andstuff.
So each of these eight businesswomen, they have a few seconds and together they created this Chinese video of just a few minutes and then they use this China goods AI function to transfer that into fluentEnglish.
And also in thevideo, their English quote unquote speaking mouth shape is matching with the tone and everything and the sound sounds like their own voicestoo.
So it's like a debut for these business women who are like bossladies, EU boss ladies to the wholeworld.
Before jumping into the great application of artificialintelligence, let me first ask a question that is a little bit offtopic.
Why businesswomen? Why age businesswomen?
Where are themen?Well, goodquestion, youknow, because I'm not sure if Steve has heard of this phrasebefore, but in Chinese we actually have a phrase calledNanzhu, why in Niu JiuNui, which literallymeans,well, in thefamily, the male or like the guys are supposedto, youknow, manage businesses outside of the household or outside of thehome, while the ladies stay inside and manageto, youknow, endureaffairs.
So in thiscontext, then the men would be out doing the labor related things and the women are taking care of theAI, internationalmarket.
For these traderscase, many of which are actually the wife of the business menhere.
So many of theguys, they just went outto, youknow, contactfactories, supervised like manufacturingprocedures.
While the ladies stay inUU, stay at their stand or their store there and manage the sales and contact customers andstuff, that is why in thisscenario, there's like business women boss ladies in thevideo, youknow, showcasing theirproducts.
Oh, that's actually verynice.
And we see AI empowering these women in this way aswell.
Right. When it comes to the application of artificial intelligence in the businesssector,actually, it has beenthere.
It has been playing a significant role for quite a longtime.
And now the reason we are looking at different relatively more notable applications is because more and more major companies and major platforms started to roll out their own artificial intelligence or AI bots helping business operators on their platforms to better maintain theirbusiness.
Forexample, we knowEUO, they had this Chinagoods, actually according to its officialwebsite, the China goods platform has launched on October21st,2020.
And by2021, China goods mainly focusing on e-commerce live streaming and striving to view this super supplying chainplatform.
And the AI innovative function was released actually lastyear.
And actually inAlibaba, there is the Alibaba's very own artificial intelligenceapplication, helping business operators on their platforms aswell.
And if you think about doingbusiness, if you find doing business quiteintimidating, which Ido, doing business with overseas partners would be evenharder.
Because I think it's in previousyears, maybe even more than 10 yearsago, it is said that in order to ship one container of fresh flour from Kenyato, forexample, theNetherlands.
And it takes around 200 pieces of paper documents to finish thattransport.
And that actually accounts for around20% of the entire shippingcost.
So it isarduous. It is reallyhard.
It's not like I am selling this box of stuff to Steve and I can just give it to Steve and end of story because with a container on different crews and different ship and maybe sometimes if it's cargo in theair, it's actuallyeasier.
But still you have different customs tocross.
And there are so many different paperwork and so manymiddlemen.
I have tohave, forexample, Yushan as themiddleman, verify all of my papers and also verify the product and also the shipping status and all that is verified byYushan.
And then youshan, handed toHeyang, Heyang handed toYushan, Yushan handed to Limeing and all theseprocess.
Every singlestep, one person needs to verify the qualification as well as the certification of the previous person and one theship, one the cargo finally reachSteve.
I have already spent a lot of money and time and energy onit.
But with the help of artificial intelligence to startwith, they can come up with a better way to ship things and also they can help initiate all these different papers and with blockchaintechnology, actually a lot of business people are using this technology to have this relatively automatic certificationprocess.
So with the help of technology definitely in the world ofbusiness, in the world of internationaltrade, a lot of changes have alreadyhappened.
We asconsumers, we might not knowthis, but these changes aresignificant.
But we can know this asconsumers.
Almost the last time you bought somethingonline, probably prettyrecently.
Prettyrecently. And if you didn't know where togo, if you didn't know which shopping app to use and you just did an internet search about thatproduct,boom, within a half asecond, there's your searchresults.
And it would direct you straight to the shopping place where you could go and buy that product within amoment.
We're talking aboutdata, big datahere.
We're talking about AI and how they go hand inhand.
And internet searches are fasternow, directing people to their productsfaster.
That's helped from AI that's allowing us to dothat.
So you're right in thesense, I think that we don't really know as consumers who don't really know too muchabout.
Step bystep.Yeah, what's going oninternally, but it's right in front of us and we're using it and we're reaping the benefits of it almost everyday.
Yes. And I think this also proves in especially in the business sector that now is thetime, now is the era where traditional business modesslowly, if not gradually get transcends into the digital time or e-commercetime.
Because in the example ofEW, there are also analysts saying that why China goods is working so well inEW?
And it's because of the fact that the city actually has a big enough of a market size and also a sophisticated innovation application scenarios for the AI function to provide this one stop kind of service where the entire round table one stop example you just gave homein, all of the communication costs and all the time for transporting the good between different parties are all managed now by AI in the case of EW and also maybe inAlibaba, the other example you raised justnow.
So this is like where we see how the technology is being adapted in real business scenarios and it's really working well for the case of EW atleast.
Yeah, working I think is an important thing to know about this because if you're putting forth the effort and there's no there's no fruit at the end of that effort then what's thepoint?
But I was reading an article about one particular business woman in you and she was referencing one of her customers from Poland who had seen that advertisement in New York City on the billboard and was able to get in touch abuyer, a business owner from Poland and became acustomer.
So there's the evidence right there that this is worth the time but not just worth the time the technology is really working well for the business owners aswell.
Definitely and not only are artificial intelligence helping people to communicate with each other speaking differentlanguages.
They're also producing different promotionalvideos, different pictures generating pictures and helping promoting these differentproducts.
Forexample, we mentioned a little bit about the applications wrote out byAlibaba, the Alibaba InternationalStation.
Their AI has actually helped a business operators on the platforms according to their internaldata.
This AI product increased the merchants exposure by more than19%.
And for thisMr.Dong, hewas,well, actually he is a person exporting medium and large coffee equipment on thesite.
And they have been struggling to find out the perfectpicture, the promotionalpicture, basically an advertisement picture for theirproduct.
There is not a huge team and they do not have the personnel to do that and with the help of this AIproduct, they generate a product image recognized as the best of the individual entireteam.
And that picture has helped them reach a lot of overseasconsumers.
And they find it very helpful aswell.
And one another very interesting example I find is that with the help of artificialintelligence, these people who are used to only conduct business with their Chinese counterparts realize that the overseas consumers sometimes want differentthings.
Forexample,one, they are giving their info to the AI bot because you need to give them your basic information to generate thebest, forexample,advertisement, promotional lines foryou.
Andone, they're selling the product for overseasconsumers.
The AI product actually extract eco-friendly handmade these keywords from the original info theygave.
So they have all thesetraits.
They are quite environmentallyfriendly.
They arehandmade, but they didn'tknow.
These are the highlights that would attract more consumers from overseasmarkets.
Big data companies are learning more about theircustomers.
They're learning more about how to keep their customers for the long term or at least knowing how long they have the potential to keep their customers for a really longtime.
It seems to beendless, the amount of information that can betaken,stored, and streamlined as well to make everything so much more efficient than it used tobe.
Yes. Iwonder,though, you talk about this video from the business women appearing on Times Square and they're speaking English in thevideo.
Thanks to the use ofAI. I wonder if this will change face-to-face interactions when people do business internationally in the future or if AI is going to replaceeverything.
I think nowadays a lot of the businesswomen, now that we're talking about the business ladies inEU, they're embracing this newtechnology, ofcourse, but in themeantime, they have not been face-to-faceinteractions, as youmentioned,Steve, has not been completely erased or replaced by AI in general because I have proof forthat, whichis, according to a Finnish online content creator who called himselfAlex, who released some videos on social media earlier inJune, that over 100 EU business women lined up early in the morning to join a daily English trainingcamp.
And according to other reports that I've beenreading, most ofthese,again, business ladies who manage the sales and contact customers as part of their dailyroutine, speak more than one languages other thanChinese.
So it'slike,yeah, they're also learning foreign languages to be able to conduct face-to-face interactions with customers all over the world aswell.
They're not justreplaced.
And that's a goodidea. I watched that video I referenced before about what EU is and how big it is and how much they sell and how much theytrade.
I watched another person's simple travel video and theysay,okay, here I am at the EU market and I'm going to go in and see what theyhave.
It was funny when they went inside the first reactionwas, oh mygosh, there's too muchhere.
Let me come back to you in a littlewhile.
But that person spoke with peoplefrom, ohgosh, I can't even remember how many countries itwas.
Shoppers, shoppers who were there from so many different countries in theworld.
So Ithink,yes, implementing AI into yourmarketing, into your business strategy is a greatidea, but also don't forget as well that human interaction is a great way to do businesstoo.
So currently one AI is used so widely and so deeply and intertwined with people's operation everyday.
Do we meet any problems or is there any challenges that these business operators need toovercome?
Forexample, are they learning artificial intelligence the way or efficient enough or deep enough so that they can take advantage of these different tools well enough or is it possible that maybe because they don't understand artificial intelligence good enough so certain risks could come out that we don't anticipate justyet.
They did a survey in Canadarecently, the company was called SalesForce, it was a software company and the report was based on a survey with more than 4,800 advertisers from 29 different countries around the world and they conducted it from early February to mid-March of thisyear.
Canada was one of the countries that was studied aswell.
And what they wanted to look at in the study was how AI was connected to marketing for business owners and was it one of their toppriorities.
And inCanada,81% of advertisers said that they're experimenting with AI or applying it to their workflow at the moment and they're determined to apply AI in their operations with the rightdata.
They're concerned though about security according to the study that always comes up in AI conversations thesedays.
But they're also needing help with how to doit.
I think companiesare, whenever we talk aboutAI, it seems that we always have to say we're in the beginning stages and businesses are in the beginning stages aswell.
These business owners need tech supporttoo.
Are they using it as efficiently as they possiblycould?
Probably notyet. But they know that they want to useit, they have the tech support there to help them out to learn how to use itproperly.
And when we talk about this in 12 monthstime, 24 monthstime, I'm sure those numbers are going to go up to maybe100% of businesses using AI as part of their marketingtools.
