Macao Big Data Forum 2016 | Computer engineers voice opinions on smart city development

Chen Lei

Three experts on data management were invited to the University of Macau, to participate in the Macao Big Data Forum 2016, last week. Their expertise was called on to discuss the status quo, applications and the future development of our interactions with data systems.

Yang Qiang, Chair Professor and New Bright Professor of Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Chen Lei, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST, and Zheng Yu, Research Manager of Urban Computing Group from Microsoft Research, presented the results of their research to the forum visitors.

The three computer engineers introduced recent big data developments and the history of big data, among other related topics.

Speaking to the media, Chen Lei said that “Macau is very similar to Hong Kong in terms of building itself as a smart city.” Chen said that in both cities the governments have made data collected in the territory available to everyone, which he considers to be the biggest advantage for Macau in becoming a smart city.

The professor also voiced his opinions regarding the main problems Macau will encounter in transforming itself into such a city.

“The existence of a smart city implies the need for data. If there is no data, then we cannot do anything smart,” Chen explained. “The biggest bottleneck [for Macau] is still data.”

Professor Yang Qiang said that since Macau has a great service industry, there are many sectors in the territory which can adopt artificial intelligence rather than resorting to human operations.

“The service industry is facing several problems. First, the shortage of population, and, second, the switching period between old and young employees,” said Yang. “It is not that straightforward for a skilled employee to teach a new worker, as the teaching process is very difficult.”

Yang noted that several tasks are comprised of repetitive movements and that humans are in theory not required to perform such work. “Humans should do creative jobs,” argued Yang.

He believes that using robots to replace humans where labor is mostly repetitive could be a good move. However, he said that there are flaws in regards to the use of artificial intelligence in the service industry, such as using robots to serve food.

“Nowadays, some fields are still not mature enough, such as robots walking, their visual recognition, and speech recognition.”

Microsoft engineer Zheng Yu voiced his opinion on how Macau can achieve the goal of becoming a smart city.

“First, it depends on the government’s policies. These policies must support the opening and sharing of data. The government might not necessarily need to do such a thing, but it must promote the development of it [the sharing of data],” said Zheng.

It was noted that the second thing Macau needs to do if it wishes to become a smart city is to have companies provide a platform to manage this data. In his last address, Zheng said that Macau must have engineers look into the design of mathematics that perform data analysis. JZ