Visitors browse high-tech products at the 2019 Smart China Expo (SCE) in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. Photo: Chu Daye/GT

Artificial intelligence (AI) and entrepreneurship are the latest trends in China at the moment, and the former could actually help the latter, according to a senior executive at a top internet company in Southwest China that harnesses AI technology.

Ye Meng, Chief Technology Officer at the Chongqing-based online crowdsourcing service firm ZBJ Corp, said that AI could help China's burgeoning class of freelancing experts by reducing the cost of acquiring contracts and helping outsourcers to land in more agreeable price range.

For the tertiary industry, it is important to note that humans have a limit on their labor output, Ye told the Global Times on the sidelines of the ongoing 2019 Smart China Expo (SCE) in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

"A factory manager usually smiles at more-than-expected orders, but for a freelancing expert who could design five logos a week, it would be a nightmare if you give him 10." 

More Chinese people are self-employed these days, taking temporary jobs on an on-demand basis. There are 14 million registered freelancers, including individuals, small partnerships and micro-sized companies, selling services ranging from programming to planning on ZBJ's platform, according to the company's website.

Nationwide, the tertiary industry has grown in importance, accounting for 54.9 percent of GDP as of the first half of 2019.

"What we do at each transaction is to efficiently and effectively match one freelancing expert out of a huge crowd of freelancing experts with one job outsourcer out of a huge crowd of outsourcers," Ye said.

For the service provider, it is vital to cut the time and energy needed to nail down a contract, giving them more time and energy to focus on their work, noted Ye.

Some outsourcers are amateurs, according to Ye. They could not describe their demands articulately, and have no idea how much their desired service is worth and whether that cost exceeds their budgets - a key element that determines whether or not a deal can be struck.

In 2018, the company spent three months with an academic team from a California-based US educational institution to hone out a mathematical model that can guess "how much a demanded service is worth" by reading ZBJ's multi-year data.

"There is a huge difference between talking with three different potential customers but ending up with nothing, and talking with just one customer, agreeing upon [a deal] and rolling up sleeves to get things started," Ye said.

"The US has strengths in AI talents and technology, and China has big data and application scenarios," Ye said. "The California project is a win-win. They got our funding, we got intellectual property for the model and applied for a patent."

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He recently floated the idea of AI-related industries emerging as a key growth driver for the Chinese economy, which is currently experiencing a shift from high-quality growth from high-speed growth.

Industries related to AI have grown in importance in China, with an initial survey suggesting that the scale of China's AI-related industries reached roughly 500 billion yuan ($70.5 billion) in 2018.