Promote artificial intelligence technology to empower society

       In recent years, the emergence of artificial intelligence big model technology has set off a research boom in the development of a new generation of artificial intelligence, and has also brought new development opportunities for the application of artificial intelligence in various industries.

　　What possibilities does the future of artificial intelligence hold? How should we respond? The reporter interviewed relevant experts.

　　Artificial intelligence research is shifting from being driven by academics to being driven by demand.

　　As an important driving force for the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, artificial intelligence is generally believed to have a profound impact on economic and social development.

　　In recent years, artificial intelligence research has shifted from being academically driven to being demand-driven, and the development goals of artificial intelligence are undergoing major changes.

　　In the view of Wu Fei, director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Zhejiang University, artificial intelligence is expanding from the original "using computers to simulate human intelligence" to three directions: "machine + human" (combining machines and humans into enhanced hybrid intelligent systems), "machine + human + network" (combining machines, humans, and networks to form new group intelligent systems), and "machine + human + network + things" (combining machines, humans, networks, and things to form more complex intelligent systems such as smart cities). Driven by the application of "empowering society", a series of intelligent technologies are booming.

　　Liu Wei, director of the Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Engineering Laboratory of the School of Artificial Intelligence at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said that the three trends in the development of artificial intelligence, from using mathematical models to establish machine intelligence, to using statistical probability to achieve machine learning, to trying to use migration methods to achieve context-aware behavioral intelligence systems, reflect the development path towards human-machine environment systems. "Only when we have the ability to perceive, understand and interact with the environment can we be considered general artificial intelligence in the true sense," Liu Wei said.

　　The "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by the State Council in 2017 clarified various technical forms of artificial intelligence, including cross-media intelligence, swarm intelligence, hybrid enhanced intelligence, etc.

　　Wu Fei gave an example, surgical operations involving surgical robots cannot be completed independently by doctors, nor can they be completed by robots alone, showing the characteristics of human-machine collaborative hybrid enhanced intelligence. "More vertical industries are also accelerating the exploration of related human-machine interaction, either introducing the role of humans into intelligent systems, or introducing biologically inspired intelligent computing models into artificial intelligence systems. Humans and machines continuously interact and learn from each other to achieve the goal of continuously improving their own intelligence level." Wu Fei said.

　　Avoiding AI risks through technical and legal means

　　Artificial intelligence benefits mankind, but it also has potential risks.

　　"The risks of artificial intelligence mainly exist in the following possible situations: first, malicious and incorrect use of artificial intelligence; second, software vulnerabilities and hardware failures causing artificial intelligence failures; and third, environmental changes causing artificial intelligence to get out of control," said Liu Wei.

　　The risks of improper use of artificial intelligence have aroused people's concern. For example, artificial intelligence technology can collect and analyze massive amounts of data, which may lead to personal privacy leaks, data leaks and cyber attacks; artificial intelligence technology can generate false photos and videos, etc., which encourage illegal activities such as online fraud. The advanced scenes depicted in science fiction movies with artificial intelligence themes also make people think about the ethical issues that artificial intelligence technology may bring. For example, how will humans get along with "intelligent" machines in the future?

　　In Wu Fei's view, humans are always the master switch and determiner of the height, breadth and depth of artificial intelligence, and the coordinator between humans and man-made things. Therefore, on the one hand, we cannot simply equate artificial intelligence with the human brain and blindly believe in the view that "artificial intelligence replaces humans". On the other hand, we must be good at using artificial intelligence as a human helper to create a better future in human-machine collaboration.

　　Experts believe that AI-related risks can be avoided through technology and legal means, and humans are also capable of finding effective ways to resolve risks.

　　my country has always been an active advocate and practitioner of AI governance. In September 2021, the National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional Committee issued the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Ethics Code", emphasizing the integration of ethics into the entire life cycle of AI. In October 2023, during the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, my country issued the "Global AI Governance Initiative", which systematically elaborated the Chinese AI governance plan around the three aspects of AI development, security, and governance, fully demonstrating my country's responsibility as a major country in dealing with AI governance issues.

　　Establish a good ecosystem to support AI to empower society

　　In recent years, more and more countries have placed the development of artificial intelligence at the national strategic level, and incorporated concepts such as preventing the monopoly and disorderly expansion of artificial intelligence technology into the top-level design.

　　How to prevent the abuse of artificial intelligence technology?

　　Experts interviewed said that multidisciplinary and multi-field cooperation should be established to encourage scientists, engineers and the public to participate widely and jointly explore the development direction, application areas and moral and ethical issues of artificial intelligence. The world should work together to adhere to the principle of giving equal importance to development and security, and ensure that the development of artificial intelligence technology is in line with the overall interests of mankind.

　　Liu Wei said that from a technical perspective, in order to increase the fairness, trustworthiness, explainability, transparency, and security of artificial intelligence, research and development entities must maintain the design ideas of the human-machine environment system throughout the entire process, from top-level design, process control, and engineering completion.

　　Tian Tian, ​​CEO of Ruilai Wisdom, believes that we must do a solid job in the basic theory of artificial intelligence and improve the inherent security performance of artificial intelligence; forge and reserve the ability to evaluate the security of the new generation of artificial intelligence, and master the methods and means to evaluate its accuracy, efficiency, content security, anti-attack capabilities, etc. At the same time, we must also focus on the research and development of necessary security tools, such as providing deep fake detection tools to help the public identify the authenticity of information and prevent online fraud.

　　Data and algorithm security are the core of AI security. Experts said that we should attach importance to the construction of high-quality corpus, optimize training through precise and labeled data and feedback data, and ultimately select the best and eliminate the worst model outputs.

　　Wu Fei believes that promoting AI technology to empower society requires the overall support of a good ecosystem, not just technology research and development itself. We must grasp the characteristics of the high integration of AI technology attributes and social attributes, and strengthen forward-looking prevention and restraint guidance. "A good ecosystem can organically connect ethics and morality, technology and industry, capital and market. In such an ecosystem, every AI participant from different fields can benefit from it." Wu Fei said.