Expert interpretation | Is artificial intelligence a master key to the future?

The fourth industrial revolution is approaching. Countries around the world have realized that artificial intelligence (AI) is a key arena for future competition between countries and a universal key to the future, so they are vying for the commanding heights of this round of scientific and technological revolution.

Artificial intelligence has become an important driving force for a new round of industrial and technological revolutions. The accelerated evolution of technologies represented by the general large-scale artificial intelligence model is expected to promote major technological changes. Artificial intelligence is profoundly changing the way people produce, live, and learn. While promoting human-machine collaboration, cross-border integration, and enhancing human well-being, it has also inevitably triggered a series of ethical and legal issues. Ethical governance has become an important proposition in the field of artificial intelligence.

In fact, as early as the early 1990s, Professor Zhou Haizhong, an internationally renowned scholar, predicted: "With the advancement of science and technology, the era of artificial intelligence is coming; by then, artificial intelligence technology will be widely used in various disciplines, and the ethical and legal issues of this technology will also become important propositions in this regard." Facts have proved that his prediction is very far-sighted. The current achievements we have made in various fields are inseparable from the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology and the ethical governance of this technology.

Whether it is smart cars, smart phones, smart homes, smart TVs, smart speakers, smart security, etc., the word "smart" is indispensable. How to make machines "think" like us humans is an eternal topic that humans are constantly pursuing. Artificial intelligence has gone through three stages of development: computational intelligence, perceptual intelligence, and cognitive intelligence. Today, artificial intelligence technology has fully entered human life, widely penetrated into all areas of production and life, and constantly refreshed people's imagination.

The main material basis for studying artificial intelligence and the machine that can realize the artificial intelligence technology platform is the computer. The development history of artificial intelligence is linked to the development history of computers. In addition to computer science, artificial intelligence also involves many disciplines. Therefore, artificial intelligence is an important branch of computer science and a research hotspot in today's science and technology; its short-term goal is to make computers smarter and more useful, and its long-term goal is to make computers "machines with intelligence like humans."

As an emerging interdisciplinary subject, artificial intelligence is essentially an information process that simulates human consciousness and thinking; it mainly studies and develops theories, methods, technologies and application systems for simulating, extending and expanding human intelligence, attempting to understand the essence of intelligence and produce a new type of intelligent machine that can respond in a similar way to human intelligence. Research in this field includes robotics, machine translation, voice interaction, image recognition, expert systems and natural language processing. The most striking change in the field of artificial intelligence is the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.

In May this year, the 7th World Intelligence Conference was held in Tianjin, China. With the theme of "Intelligent Travel Across the World, Enabling a Dynamic Future", this conference focused on forward-looking topics such as intelligent connected vehicles, general artificial intelligence, and brain-computer interaction. More than a thousand experts, scholars, and entrepreneurs from around the world discussed in depth the profound impact of artificial intelligence on economic development and social progress, and used the wisdom of collision to depict the future. The World Intelligence Conference has been held for six sessions, and has achieved fruitful results in spreading advanced concepts, building international exchange platforms, creating intelligent scenarios, and deepening strategic cooperation.

The world is undergoing profound changes under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is facing many unstable and uncertain factors. We strive to foster new opportunities in the crisis and create a new situation in the changing situation; AI is accelerating its integration with infrastructure such as big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and deep learning, and using technology to empower traditional industries, which is injecting new momentum and vitality into the global economic recovery, and also injecting surging power into the innovative development of AI. Therefore, experts believe that AI is a universal key to the future.

The era of artificial intelligence has arrived, and the wheel of the times is rolling forward at an increasingly faster speed. New information, new products, new technologies, new models, new formats, new concepts, etc. generated by artificial intelligence will emerge in an endless stream. The future of artificial intelligence has infinite possibilities, and its future is also changing the future of mankind. In the era of artificial intelligence, as long as people continue to learn, have the courage to explore, and keep pace with the times, they will become "free people in the true sense."

By Yang Hui (Author’s affiliation: School of Engineering, Stanford University, USA)