At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held in Shanghai from July 17 to 20, Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian shared his insights on the future of AI.

He stated that current applications of artificial intelligence in scientific research are largely limited to reading paper texts and parsing attached code, rarely touching the original scientific data. The boundary of using AI to understand science is still confined to human-written papers, suggesting a vast potential yet to be tapped.

Wang Jian noted that in fields like earth sciences, over 70% of information does not exist in textual form. Data such as spectrograms, seismic waves, and acoustic signals fall into this category. While the industry often says "a picture is worth a thousand words," a single spectrum might be worth millions of images.

He emphasized that, driven by advancements in foundational models, artificial intelligence is at an unprecedented turning point. AI is poised to become a fundamental tool akin to mathematics, transcending any single specialized domain.