From DeepSeek to job risks: What tech leaders are saying on AI right now

CONVERGE LIVE - Singapore, March 12-13 2025 - Request invitation

The future of artificial intelligence is a major topic of conversation among global tech and business leaders at CNBC's CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore. 

Numerous executives talked up the potential of AI and discussed how it's expected to impact the future of work and productivity. 

Here's a compilation of quotes from some of the top corporate leaders attending CONVERGE LIVE this week:

Joe Tsai, chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba, spoke about how AI can enhance productivity and boost global GDP, with a total addressable market of "at least $10 trillion, if not bigger."

"If you look at AI, what does it do? It actually improves human productivity," he said, noting that Alibaba itself can benefit a lot from the deployment of AI within its own business. 

Tsai also discussed how the release of Chinese AI Start-up DeepSeek's open-sourced R1 model in January has impacted the global AI space and has led to a "proliferation of applications." 

"I think the so-called DeepSeek moment is really not about whether China has better AI than the U.S., or vice versa. It's really about the power of open source," he said.

"Once you open-source the model, people can take the model and deploy it on their own infrastructure, whether it's in the data center or in your laptop computer, all of a sudden you have the power of AI at your fingertips."

"Now you have small companies and big companies and corporations and individuals and entrepreneurs developing on top of these open source [models], so the AI game is not just left to the five richest companies in the world that can afford to invest like $50 billion a year," he added.

Dean Carignan, AI innovations lead at Microsoft, discussed the concept