What comes to your mind when you think about intelligence? Big data, 5G, robots … these are just a glimpse of today's thriving smart industry.

During the ongoing 2019 Smart China Expo, some of the most newsworthy business leaders shared their views on intelligence and offered their suggestions for the industry. Here are some of the quotable quotes captured from the expo.

Jack Ma Yun, co-chairman of the United Nations High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and the founder of Alibaba

An intelligent world does not mean making everything look like a human being. Rather, it means enabling everything to learn like a human being.

In the era of intelligence, we shouldn't spend much energy on technology or equipment, but on people's progress and feelings. The intelligence era should not put people out of jobs, but let people do more valuable things.

In the 5G era, many companies will be left in the 4G and 3G eras forever, including companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. The best in this era could be eliminated by the next. Only those who make full use of 5G, respect 5G, lead the innovation and take the responsibility can embrace the 5G era.

China needs dozens of companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. We should not fear that innovative companies grow into heavyweights, and we should be concerned that these giants could cease to advance in innovation.

Pony Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent

Today, at a time when variables such as informatization, the most important one, begin to be integrated into all walks of life, industrial competition is changing. Rather than have a rivalry within a single industry, the vertical entity economy has combined with the horizontal information industry, to form a new pair of "crisscrossed partners" for competition.

5G is not a single technique, but a series of technological innovations requiring combined efforts to succeed. No country in the world today can fully possess all the needed resources, technologies and capabilities for a new round of technology and industrial development. Industrial fragmentation and technology decoupling will hurt the long-term interests of mankind.

Robin Li Yanhong, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu

Artificial intelligence is no longer just about something cool, but about real implementation. For artificial intelligence, today, we pay more attention to what convenience it has brought to us and how much it can improve efficiency. We are more concerned about how autonomous driving can be truly safe, and cars that can run on open roads in low-speed environments with reduced costs. We are more interested in how much value a robot can bring to a person, and in what degree we can have a voice in the overall development framework of artificial intelligence.

We should take full advantage of open source and open platforms, especially the latter, which play important roles in artificial intelligence development.

Open source does not mean that everything is free, independent and controllable for us. We need to have a full understanding that many open source technologies are still owned by others.

Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group

Human society is moving from an informational and digital era to an intelligent era, and we have been able to experience a more active, caring and convenient life brought by intelligent transportation, medical care, education and finance.

What's behind the efficiency dividend unleashed by intelligent manufacturing is the intelligence driven by data, computing power and algorithms.

China will use a new generation of artificial intelligence to drive the development of science and technology, industrial optimization and upgrading, as well as overall productivity improvement. It is necessary to use data as a basic resource and an innovation engine, to accelerate industrial transformation and upgrading, and make innovative breakthroughs in core technologies through the industrial internet and intelligence.

Wang Chuanfu, founder and chairman of BYD

In automotive industrial transformation, going electric is actually only the first half, and intelligence is the second half. That's a real huge change.

A mobile phone has up to 13 sensors, but there are about 300 to 400 sensors in a car. The life change brought by a car will be much larger than that of a mobile phone, since the former has more application scenarios.

In the future, smart cars can not only change people's living habits and ways of thinking, but also add hundreds of millions of mobile sensing terminals to a city.

Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi

5G is a popular topic in the smart industry. Over the past three years, the entire smartphone market had seen a declining trend, while 5G will inject fresh energy into the whole industry.

Xiaomi began to preview its 5G technology and 5G mobile phones three years ago. Its first 5G mobile phone was released in Europe this year, and Xiaomi's second 5G mobile phone is expected to come out in China in September.