•Ma says more "made in America" goods could be the perfect products to sell to China's swelling middle class.
•He warns that artificial intelligence could set off World War III, but humans will win.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma spent 800 hours traveling around the world last year and plans to increase that to 1,000 in 2017, evangelizing his burgeoning e-commerce platform, globalization and artificial intelligence.

The billionaire Chinese businessman sat down with CNBC this week at the Gateway '17 conference in Detroit for a wide-ranging interview on those topics and others. Here are the highlights:

Shrinking giants

The world's biggest public companies — like Apple, Alphabet and Amazon — have become so dominant that some critics have said they border on monopolies.