TencentNews “Frontline” Davos Report Group

On January 22, local time, during the 2020 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum being held in Davos, Switzerland, Zhou Bowen, vice president of JD Group, president of JD Cloud and JD AI, and chairman of the JD Group Technical Committee, told Tencent News “Frontline”JingdongStarting from a simple online retail e-commerce platform, it is undergoing a deep transformation into a “technology and service enterprise based on the supply chain”.

Zhou Bowen said that JD began proposing technological transformation in 2017, when it was in the USIBMZhou Bowen, who took office, chose to join JD and participate in leading JD's technological transformation. The reason why it chose to carry out technological transformation at this stage is because JD has entered a new stage of internal and external integration from the day it was founded to the current accumulation of nearly 20 years.

At this stage, JD not only needs to support its existing business, but also exports technology as its core competency to the outside world. It can be summed up in eight words, “endogenous energy, external empowerment.” Transforming “using technology to solve business problems” to “technology itself becomes business.”

At the beginning of December 2019, JD Group announced the establishment of the JD Cloud and AI Division. Zhou Bowen became the head of this division, integrated the structure and responsibilities of the former JD Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, and IOT divisions, and reported directly to Liu Qiangdong. Three days later, JD also announced the establishment of the Group Technical Committee as the top management decision-making body of JD's technology line, with Zhou Bowen as the chairman of the technical committee.

ABCDE strategy is the core of deep transformation

Unlike the previous outward to inward perspective, technology is used to serve JD's own business. Now that it has changed from the inside out, how to better integrate and open up and build a platform ecosystem, and better help JD's partners and enterprises in all walks of life carry out digital and intelligent transformation has become particularly important in the era of the industrial Internet.

This means that JD needs a more structured organization and decision-making body that can achieve internal and external integration, and the JD Group Technical Committee was created from time to time. The Technical Committee is responsible not only for technology accumulation, but also for technical strategic personnel, organization, brand, culture, etc., and is the highest body for all technology-related decisions in JD.

Zhou Bowen used “symbiosis, platform, and hub” to describe the role played by the Technical Committee in the JD ecosystem. On the one hand, vertical sedimentation, and on the other hand, external export, the products formed on this basis will serve different business scenarios. The technical committee not only provides shared underlying technology, such as establishing a group-wide technology center to support JD retail, JD logistics, JD Cloud and AI, and overseas business.

Zhou Bowen previously proposed building the core support for JD's deep transformation — the ABCDE strategy: AI (artificial intelligence), big data (big data), cloud (cloud computing), devices (IoT), and exploration (cutting-edge exploration). “Just like the human body, it must not only have a brain, but also blood vessels, muscles, oxygen, nerve endings, etc. Every part of the body has its own unique function.” Zhou Bowen gave an example.

The members of the technical committee, which are relatively independent from each business department, are composed of senior scientists and algorithm experts above T12 of the JD Group, and all those responsible for technical business at the level of vice presidents and above. According to Zhou Bowen, the generation of decisions is divided into two types: the “up-down” model and the “bottom-up” model: the former is an issue raised by the committee, discussions and decisions are made, and then implemented downward; the latter is a specific business that ultimately makes decisions from the bottom up based on certain functional or technical requirements.

“5G is infrastructure, artificial intelligence is the core capability”

“5G is infrastructure, and artificial intelligence is the core capability.” On the issue of changes brought to society by the development of 5G technology and AI technology, which is currently being hotly debated in the technology industry, Zhou Bowen believes that 5G is an accelerator for AI, and AI will provide more application scenarios for 5G.

According to Zhou Bowen, one of the current challenges facing the development of 5G technology is the lack of sufficiently rich application scenarios. In the 5G environment, the scale value of AI can be better demonstrated. The characteristics of 5G itself with high bandwidth, low latency, and wide coverage also make it possible to implement AI applications that are difficult to actually implement.

Zhou Bowen said that with the support of 5G and AI, everyone will see that the integration of the “edge of the cloud” will change consumers' communication, consumption habits, and lifestyle habits. Taking live video delivery as an example, the application of 5G technology and AI may help viewers watch a soccer game with a thousand players in front of them. For example, fans of Ronaldo and Messi fans may be watching the same game, but the images and excitement seen by both sides are completely different.

Specifically, when it comes to JD Group, Zhou Bowen believes that live streaming is only a relatively elementary e-commerce business. In the future, when “cloud-side” collaboration can be realized, through AI and AI's understanding of consumers' consumption habits, it is entirely possible to have personalized interactions with influencers and explore more aspects of product characteristics.

Currently, the descriptions of many products of the JD Group are produced through the technical committee's artificial intelligence technology. AI will produce text descriptions and picture pictures suitable for that consumer based on people's consumption habits. Artificial intelligence can not only recommend the most suitable products for users, but in the future, artificial intelligence can also help goods find the most suitable user group.

However, according to Zhou Bowen, there are still some challenges in the commercial application of 5G. “When society doesn't care about a technology, no one will say anything; once society starts to pay attention to a technology, that technology will instead be restrained by society.” Zhou Bowen told Tencent News “Frontline” that 5G cannot solve all problems, and there is no universal model. Therefore, everyone will see that the application of 5G technology will mature first in some scenarios.