Written by: Liu Peixiang
Translated by: Guo Yanhui
Edited by: William Mosteller
Date: 2018-9-21
The 2018 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, jointly sponsored by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Internet Information Office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Shanghai Municipal Government, was held in Shanghai. President Xi Jinping sent a letter to congratulate the opening of the conference and emphasized this opportunity to share the development of the digital economy and jointly promote artificial intelligence for the benefit of mankind. At the opening ceremony, Li Qiang, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, read the congratulatory letter from President Xi Jinping and delivered a speech. Liu He, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council, also attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech.
The conference announced the establishment of the Global Artificial Intelligence Academic Alliance. HIT is one of the 16 initiating units, and Xiong Sihao, the Deputy Secretary of the party committee, joined the opening ceremony on behalf of HIT. Liu Hong, Assistant to the President, attended the round table meeting of the presidents of the Alliance on behalf of HIT and, during a series of activities entitled “Intelligent Robot Theme Forum”, made a special report.
The Global Artificial Intelligence Academic Alliance was jointly initiated by 16 universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the United States, Singapore Nanyang Technological University, the University of Sydney, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, University of Science and Technology of China, Tongji University, Beijing Aerospace Universities, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shanghai University, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, and Shangtang Science and Technology, all well-known universities (scientific research institutions) at home and abroad.
The Alliance aims to build the world's top artificial intelligence academic exchange platform and constantly promote international academic exchanges and cooperation. The initial cooperation scope of the alliance includes establishing the "Artificial Intelligence Scientific Committee" mechanism, promoting AI international academic exchanges, strengthening communication with government and policy decision makers, assisting the government in optimizing AI investment, enhancing "production-research cooperation", incubating AI enterprises, providing a variety of learning opportunities for students, and popularizing artificial intelligence to the public. The Alliance will hold regular seminars, workshops, and international academic conferences to build a platform for national artificial intelligence laboratories, provide theoretical basis for policy decision-making, establish industry standards, and open up the research-application chains to accelerate the transformation and grounding of basic subjects and technologies. The establishment of the alliance will help solve bottlenecks in the development of the artificial intelligence talent reserve, basic theory, and hardware, especially by strengthening cross-disciplinary and cross-regional academic cooperation and gathering universities, scientific research institutions, enterprises, and experts from across the field of artificial intelligence, thereby bringing together the “best minds” in the world to jointly promote the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology.
At the conference, Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Li Yanhong, and other experts, scholars and entrepreneurs from nearly 40 countries and regions conducted dialogues and exchanges on the frontiers, industrial trends, and hot issues of artificial intelligence technology. More than 200 leading enterprises in the field of artificial intelligence participated in the forum and exhibition. Some teachers from HIT’s Institute of Artificial Intelligence and the School of Telecommunications attended the conference.
The artificial intelligence research of HIT began in the 1950s and started almost simultaneously with the world's artificial intelligence research. For more than half a century, HIT has not only cultivated a group of outstanding artificial intelligence leaders, represented by the likes of academician Gao Wen, but has also ranked first in the country in terms of the total number of artificial intelligence talented professionals. Since 2000, our university has achieved a number of important scientific research achievements in machine perception, pattern recognition, natural language processing, robots, and intelligent systems in the field of artificial intelligence and has established close relationships with IBM, Microsoft, Baidu, Ali, Tencent, iFLYTEK, and other well-known enterprises at home and abroad by jointly carrying out scientific research and the training of talented individuals. A large number of innovative achievements have been successfully applied and promoted and a large number of outstanding graduates have devoted themselves to artificial intelligence research and have been well received by employers. In May of this year, the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of HIT was formally established. It aims to develop artificial intelligence science, technology, and industry by concentrating on a group of outstanding young and middle-aged scholars in the field of artificial intelligence at HIT and strives to build a world-class artificial intelligence innovation base.
The Global Artificial Intelligence Academic Alliance Kick-off Ceremony
The Round Table Conference
Intelligent Robot Thematic Forum
