Ivan Liang, Executive Director and Head of Asia Telecom & Internet Research at CLSA, said even if U.S. tech giants slow down their AI development pace, Chinese tech companies are unlikely to follow suit, and he believes China's progress in the AI field will remain unaffected; therefore, he is skeptical about a slowdown in AI development.
Liang believes that many ethical considerations exist during AI development, and methods must be found to address these ethical issues, such as how to better train AI models to possess ethical reasoning, but this will not slow down the overall global iteration speed of AI models.
*Not worried about large capital expenditures by tech companies*
Regarding tech companies' capital expenditures, Liang stated that Chinese tech firms' capital spending this year is approximately 200 billion RMB (about 30 billion USD); the ratio of capital expenditure to sales in China is about 20%, compared to 40% to 50% in the U.S., meaning costs in China are significantly lower than in the U.S.
For next year's capital expenditures, she believes it will depend on consumer demand; as long as demand remains strong, Chinese tech firms will continue increasing capital spending. She is not concerned about large investments, as the resulting cloud revenue represents recurring income; although there is a time lag between data center construction and revenue generation, these funds will be 'well spent' (well spent). (hp)