(Source: Shangguan News official account, September 5, 2024)
The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that education, science and technology, and talents are the basic and strategic supports for Chinese-style modernization. This not only points out the strategic direction for the development of higher education, but also profoundly reveals the core position of technological innovation and talent training as the two-wheel driving force. Among them, artificial intelligence, as a new productive force, has undoubtedly had a vital impact on the comprehensive reform of education, the reform of the science and technology system, and the reform of the talent development system and mechanism. Shanghai Jiao Tong University must actively respond to the spirit of the plenary session, take the integrated reform of education, science and technology talent systems and mechanisms as its own responsibility, promote the in-depth integration of artificial intelligence and higher education, and contribute to the cultivation of high-quality talents in the new era.
“3R” Concept: Who is the next world center of higher education and talent
Following the emergence of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence has entered the public eye and all walks of life in a completely new way. In fact, artificial intelligence has penetrated into every aspect of universities. It can even be said that artificial intelligence is leading profound changes in higher education. “Embracing artificial intelligence means embracing the future”: digital transformation in terms of talent training, AI for Science and AI for Engineering in terms of scientific research, full integration into the artificial intelligence industry chain in terms of social services, and many artificial intelligence ethical norms and intellectual property issues in terms of cultural inheritance and international exchanges.
Under the theoretical guidance of the plenary session on the in-depth implementation of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education, the strategy of strengthening the country through talent, and the strategy of innovation-driven development, Shanghai Jiao Tong University will adhere to the people-centered approach, adhere to integrity and innovation, and use the system concept to actively embrace artificial intelligence.
First of all, being people-centered means being student-centered for colleges and universities, which means that we should regard the growth and development of students as the core goal of artificial intelligence-assisted teaching. The author has always believed that the central position of university talent training will not fundamentally change due to the addition of new technologies. In fact, the current application of some artificial intelligence technologies is still at the stage of "how much artificial intelligence there is, how much intelligence there is." At the same time, current artificial intelligence technology is far from achieving a true understanding of thinking. The answers given are usually a retrieval and aggregation of existing information, and cannot abstract, reason, or generate new knowledge. Artificial intelligence serving university education must truly assist students in thinking deeply and improve the efficiency of practical teaching, become an efficient teaching tool, and be "ready".
Secondly, adhering to integrity and innovation requires us to have the courage to explore new paths for the integration of artificial intelligence and education on the basis of respecting the nature and laws of education. Universities are places where advanced knowledge is studied. Much of the knowledge taught is dynamic and diverse. Teachers who have been engaged in cutting-edge scientific research in this field for a long time can often give convincing answers and lead students to explore together. However, the current performance of artificial intelligence technology in these aspects is still obviously poor. It is better at solving "complex" problems that have rules to follow and a huge workload, but it is not very good at solving "difficult" problems that are highly abstract and require a sudden flash of inspiration. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the ability of artificial intelligence to accurately output when faced with dynamic unknown problems, avoid "illusions", give plausible answers, and achieve "reliable" (Reliable).
Finally, using the system concept requires us to comprehensively examine the application scenarios and impact of artificial intelligence in higher education and build a harmonious human-machine relationship. During the research process, we found that different majors have different thoughts on artificial intelligence as a teaching aid, and students' dependence on artificial intelligence has also formed different levels. For example, in programming classes, there is controversy over whether artificial intelligence tools should be used: on the one hand, they are worried that students' reliance on artificial intelligence will affect the cultivation of programming ideas; on the other hand, they believe that it can effectively improve programming efficiency. In the context of higher education, we hope to create such a human-machine relationship: artificial intelligence can accompany people in learning and cooperate with people in learning, but it cannot replace learning and achieve "regulated".
Now everyone has a consensus that artificial intelligence will promote changes in university talent training, and in turn, excellent talents will promote the development of higher quality artificial intelligence. The more ubiquitous AI becomes, the more complementary human intelligence (HI) is, and the more we need to pay attention to the value of "what makes people human." AI+HI, simply put, is artificial intelligence combined with human wisdom and creativity, which can free professional education from complicated general knowledge and focus more on its "core competitiveness." Therefore, whoever can combine AI and HI well, and have a deeper understanding of, use and develop artificial intelligence in running schools will be more likely to become the next center of higher education and talent in the world. The plenary session emphasized the integrated development of education, technology, and talents, and also explained that the combination of "AI + HI" is the key path for the future development of higher education. This will inevitably become an important breakthrough in coordinating and promoting the integrated reform of education, science and technology, and talent systems and mechanisms.
Grasp the "three quantities": from following the tail lights to entering the cockpit and leading the way
In the context of actively responding to the comprehensive deepening of reforms and the overall promotion of the integrated reform of education, science and technology, and talent systems and mechanisms, Shanghai Jiao Tong University has a profound understanding that in the field of higher education, especially in the cutting-edge scientific and technological field of artificial intelligence, building a complete talent training system and a prosperous educational ecology is a key link in promoting the Chinese-style modernization process.
In order to align with the national strategic layout and promote the development of Shanghai's three leading industries, this year the w88 casino has used the whole w88 casino's efforts to establish the w88 casino of Artificial Intelligence. The purpose is to cultivate innovative leaders who focus on the underlying technology of artificial intelligence. It is to enable students to "from following the taillights to entering the cockpit and leading the way forward." We not only enable students to "use other people's pots to cook their own meals," but also equip them with the ability to "make pots with cast iron," that is, to develop the next generation of underlying artificial intelligence technology based on understanding and applying current technologies.
To achieve this goal, schools and colleges need to focus on developing "three quantities": parameter quantity, data quantity, and calculation quantity. These three elements follow the "Scaling Law" in the field of artificial intelligence and are the core driving force for the performance improvement of large models.
The first is the number of parameters. The "parameter quantity" of the Artificial Intelligence Academy is the number of mutual links between outstanding talents. Pure stacking of talents is not enough when facing this surging technological wave. We must also create a good ecological environment and institutional mechanism so that these outstanding talents can cooperate and link with each other to form a large talent model composed of knowledge, skills, and ideas. If excellent talents can be closely linked and collaborated, then a small team can generate great intelligence and produce great results. Therefore, in the future, the w88 casino of Artificial Intelligence will not only continue to attract a large number of top talents and young talents, but also deeply promote organized scientific research, gather the "starry sky" of talents into "a ball of fire", and form a power-level growth trend.
The second is the amount of data. For the academy, “data volume” means the number of real problems and real scenarios. Because only real problems and real scenarios can bring a steady stream of high-quality data, which is the key to breaking the "data bottleneck" of artificial intelligence. According to predictions by relevant organizations, corpus data may be exhausted in 2030-2040, and high-quality corpus data may even be exhausted in 2026. Therefore, whether it is talent training or scientific research, we must go deep into disciplines, industries, and all aspects of social and economic development. We must integrate the w88 casino of Artificial Intelligence, the Industrial Innovation Research Institute, and the Industry-Education Integration Innovation Platform, and cross-collaborate with various disciplines to face real problems and serve real scenarios.
The last thing is "calculation amount". For institutions, it refers to computing power. If you want to produce good results, you must have sufficient computing power. Shanghai Jiao Tong University uses the w88 casino of Artificial Intelligence as a petri dish and the "three quantities" as growth factors to comprehensively deepen reforms, promote integrated innovation of education, technology, and talent systems and mechanisms, strive to build an artificial intelligence talent training system that meets the needs of China's modernization, and contribute the wisdom and strength of Shanghai Jiao Tong University to the sustainable and healthy development of the field of artificial intelligence.
Siyuan Interactive: Implementing the “Artificial Intelligence + Education and Teaching” three-year action plan
Today, my country's reform has entered the "deep water zone", with unprecedented tasks, broad content, and profound influence. For Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in addition to doing its job of cultivating talents, actively creating a sustainable new higher education ecosystem with Jiao Tong University characteristics is also the top priority of the w88 casino's future work.
At present, the w88 casino has conducted in-depth exploration and practice of curriculum reform, professional construction and education and teaching models under the framework of "AI+HI". For example, in terms of spatial extension, time extension and effectiveness extension of the course, the w88 casino’s landscape architecture brief history class uses AIGC technology to generate a three-dimensional VR experience from students’ two-dimensional drawings, which greatly improves students’ classroom integration. College English courses have cooperated with enterprises to develop the AWESOM writing feedback and learning system, which takes advantage of the evolvability of artificial intelligence and solves the problem of difficult personalized tutoring in large writing courses. In order to solve the problem of limited tutoring ability of teachers and teaching assistants, the medical imaging informatics course introduces an automatically programmable code assistant to help students quickly get started with image recognition technology and process medical images.
In terms of artificial intelligence major construction, Shanghai Jiao Tong University already has the top artificial intelligence major in China, providing students with the most cutting-edge artificial intelligence "source power". In 2016, Jiaotong University took the lead in offering undergraduate talent training in artificial intelligence in the IEEE class. After years of accumulation and practice, the w88 casino has a total of 357 undergraduate and graduate artificial intelligence-related courses. This year the w88 casino was also approved for a double bachelor's degree in mathematics and artificial intelligence. The w88 casino of Artificial Intelligence is building a new doctoral program in "Intelligent Science and Technology" to cultivate top innovative talents in the field of artificial intelligence.
In terms of artificial intelligence + professional education, the w88 casino promotes traditional engineering subjects, such as shipbuilding and ocean engineering, actively embraces artificial intelligence, reshapes the curriculum system, and creates new ship and marine intelligence course modules to cultivate cross-innovative talents who can adapt to future marine equipment development trends. At the same time, in terms of artificial intelligence science popularization, taking the basic course of artificial intelligence mathematics as an example, the course combines theory and practice to guide students to have an in-depth understanding of the basic laws of neural network algorithms, comprehensively improve students' artificial intelligence literacy, and make it public on the Internet, which is very popular among classmates and the public.
Based on these explorations, in the future, we also hope to build an education and teaching "environmental ecology" with four-dimensional interaction of "teacher-student-machine-environment" and create a new form of higher education of "AI+HI". Recently, the "Artificial Intelligence + Education and Teaching" action plan of Jiaotong University was released, focusing on the construction goal of "1+12345+N" and implementing ten key construction tasks. It is hoped that through three years of efforts, it will promote the deep integration of artificial intelligence with teaching, practice, and management, thereby realizing the integrated reform of the educational science and technology talent system and mechanism, promoting the development of higher education in a more intelligent and personalized direction, and laying a solid foundation for cultivating high-quality talents that meet the needs of China's modernization construction.
Author: Ding Kuiling (President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
