The really important question for long-term growth is how to apply the AI capabilities deeply across different sectors in the economy, to realize productivity gains that are possible in theory but hard to translate into the organizational workflows in companies, said the World Economic Forum managing director.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Broad dialogue and collaboration are needed to achieve the expected impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on economies and societies in the future, said Stephan Mergenthaler, managing director and chief technology officer at the World Economic Forum (WEF).

AI has once again become one of the main focuses of leaders gathering at the ongoing WEF annual meeting in Davos, as massive amounts of investment are being mobilized to build AI-related infrastructure, data centers and frontier models, said Mergenthaler in an interview with Xinhua.

He noted that compared with a few years ago, when people's interest in AI was still largely driven by curiosity about the capabilities of the technology, now people have clearly seen its potential applications.

The really important question for long-term growth is how to apply the AI capabilities deeply across different sectors in the economy, to realize productivity gains that are possible in theory but hard to translate into the organizational workflows in companies, he said.

This process cannot be done by the technology sector alone, but requires broad and deep collaboration between different sectors and stakeholders, he said.

Talking about the theme of this year's WEF annual meeting, "A Spirit of Dialogue," Mergenthaler said dialogue is perhaps even more critical in the realm of AI technology than in other areas.

"We need broad-based dialogue and collaboration if we want to see the broad-based impact of these technologies on economies and societies that we are hopeful to see in the future," he said.

He believes that assessing the level of AI development globally primarily involves three dimensions: first, infrastructure and computing power, along with the energy supply required to develop computing capacity; second, technology diffusion and application; and third, the readiness of the workforce.

Mergenthaler explained that much of the WEF's work centers on identifying the most transformative AI application cases and practical experiences from enterprises deploying AI to achieve significant changes.

To this end, the forum launched a global initiative called MINDS, which stands for "Meaningful, Intelligent, Novel, Deployable Solutions," and is designed to identify and recognize success stories of AI-enabled transformations that are creating tangible impact, he said.

A new report released during the WEF annual meeting showed that China now accounts for nearly half of all recognized solutions since the launch of the first batch last year.

This demonstrates the "strong investment" in AI applications and the dynamism in applying AI to solve real problems across different sectors in China, he said.