Focus on Talent Development in the Age of AI Wisdom is More Important than Knowledge
On March 24th, the "Artificial Intelligence +" Academician Forum gathered more than 30 academicians to discuss the opportunities and challenges in the era of artificial intelligence.
What to learn in the age of AI?
"Artificial Intelligence era, wisdom is more important than knowledge," said Zhu Shiping, Vice President of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), on the topic of talent training in the face of AI challenges. He said that in the past, students used to get knowledge from the "brush problems", knowledge is important, but in the era of AI, knowledge acquisition is no longer difficult, the machine in cracking the "set" even more than the people in the field. In this case, a higher level of wisdom, that is, creativity, is irreplaceable machine. Only to train talents to be more innovative consciousness, in order to avoid the "machine more and more like people, people more and more like machines," the strange circle. Zhu Shiping pointed out that the future of talent is more important to the comprehensive ability, "we encourage students to go out to see more, and different backgrounds, different cultures, more exchanges, to see more to enhance the comprehensive ability."
Lv Jian, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former president of Nanjing University, said that in the age of AI, even if the knowledge system is learned well, it may be eliminated in less than five years, so "it is necessary to learn the things behind the knowledge system. The first is the thinking system, with the thinking system, in order to talk about creating talent training; the second is the creation system. What kind of people can create? It is the people who know and do." Lv Jian pointed out that in the AI era, it is necessary to learn all the things behind these knowledge systems in order to ensure that they are not quickly eliminated by AI.
How to "learn" in the age of AI?
The rise of AI has brought new anxiety to many parents. Let the children learn computers, learning programming heat has not yet faded, AI has become a new track. In this regard, Ding Ning, executive vice president of the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, has his own views - "We are all afraid that we can't keep up with the craze, but in fact, learning AI is fundamentally different from learning computers and programming." Ding Ning said that the computer industry belongs to the skill-based, mastery of skills can be based on, but the AI era will be repetitive and logical work slowly replaced after the future need for creativity and a more in-depth and more complete understanding of the world, "learning in the field of artificial intelligence puts more emphasis on the idea, that is, the design of the idea and the sky's the limit of creativity."
In light of this, Ding Ning suggests that instead of sending their children to various AI training courses, parents should let their children come out of the classroom.
What should universities do?
As an important source of innovation, what contribution should universities make in the AI era? Li Guojie, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, researcher and former director of the Institute of Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and former chairman of the Chinese Computer Society, cited a set of figures - "In 2022, technology companies created 32 important machine learning models, while academia produced only three, which formed a marked contrast from 2014, when most AI breakthroughs came from universities. About 70 percent of talent with AI PhDs have entered private sector employment in recent years, compared to 21 percent 20 years ago." This means that the high cost of training models is excluding researchers, and the "monopoly" of head tech companies in the AI field is getting worse, with academia facing unprecedented challenges. Academician Li Guojie believes that with the increasingly fierce competition in the AI product market, more sustained and in-depth efforts are needed to ensure the diversity and independence of AI research, and scientists have to play their due role in leading the benign development of science and technology. He called for universities and research institutes to play a more important role in AI research.
Besides being a link in the innovation chain, universities are also a link in the talent chain. Sun Yu, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Sciences, an academician of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, suggests that domestic colleges and universities should do a good job of combining AI with various majors and improving the quality of talent training in order to be invincible in the technological competition in the AI era and ensure that the AI will better empower thousands of industries in the future.