Abstract:
According to CNBC, TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi predicts that
AI will drive major scientific breakthroughs in the next three years and bring changes to many industries
. Zhou Shouzi said at the DBS Asia Foresight Summit in Singapore on Monday: "In the next two to three years, we will make real scientific breakthroughs in the fields of physics, biotechnology, chemistry and materials science, and all of this will benefit from AI. This is very, very, very likely to happen."
Zhou Shouzi
Just as Zhou Shouzi made the above remarks,
TikTok parent company ByteDance is expanding AI research into areas beyond consumer applications
. In April this year, ByteDance’s Seed research team released Protenix-v2, an AI model focused on biomolecule structure prediction and design, with potential application value in drug discovery.Zhou Shouzi said that AI is making rapid progress, and what it can do in the future will go far beyond its current uses. At the same time, how to ensure that increasingly powerful systems operate within human ethical boundaries remains an open question.
"If this happens, then the question becomes: How to make the model consistent with human values? How to make the machine behave in the way that we humans take for granted?" Zhou Shouzi said.
Long-term impact underestimated
He emphasized that technological development is accelerating, especially in the field of scientific research. He believes that the long-term impact of AI may be far greater than currently expected.
"The trend is very, very clear. We are just beginning to explore what AI might be capable of," he said. "If you look at where the trends are, where the progress is, especially in science, it's climbing up a very steep curve at the moment."
Zhou Shouzi explained that while the short-term impact of AI may be exaggerated, its long-term potential is still underestimated. He said: "I think we may have overestimated the short-term impact of AI and underestimated its long-term potential."
The optimism shown by Zhou Shouzi comes at a time when technology giants are spending billions of dollars on AI-driven scientific research. Last week, the U.S. government, Meta and Google announced their participation in a $1.8 billion initiative to develop AI models capable of predicting cell behavior to accelerate biological research and drug discovery.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is also developing its own AI models and exploring opportunities to collaborate with scientists on research.
"We are working hard to explore how to collaborate with many scientists to jointly promote scientific progress," Zhou Shouzi added, "We have already done some work in this area, which is very exciting."
He described scientific discovery as one of the most promising application areas of AI. At the same time, AI is increasingly reshaping the way TikTok operates, covering many aspects such as content creation, content recommendation, search and content review.
Stronger security
Zhou Shouzi warned that as AI capabilities continue to increase, especially as autonomous AI systems become more widely used, the industry must take stronger security protection measures.
"I think network security risks are quite large." Zhou Shouzi said. He warned that users may grant AI agents broad permissions without fully understanding the potential consequences.
He pointed out that there are risks in allowing AI agents to shop autonomously, because in their rush to complete tasks, these systems may end up buying more items than the user intended.
Zhou Shouzi also emphasized that the cybersecurity challenges faced by enterprises are becoming increasingly severe because as AI models become more and more advanced, the cost for malicious actors to carry out fraudulent activities is declining significantly.
"So you need to have the right tools in place to address the threats posed by the rapidly declining cost of creating problems, including security issues for platforms like ours," he said.
Comments