The 1st National Primary and Secondary School Teacher Training Course for Artificial Intelligence (首期全國中小學人工智能師資培訓課程) (Day 1)

I am a Committee Member of Extenics Society, Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI) (中國人工智能學會可拓學專業委員會委員) and attended the 1st National Primary and Secondary School Teacher Training Course for Artificial Intelligence (首期全國中小學人工智能師資培訓課程) organized by Primary and Secondary School Working Committee, CAAI (中國人工智能學會中小學工作委員會) and School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (中國科學院人工智能學院) from 19^th to 21^st July 2019 in The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China (RDFZ) (中國人民大學附屬中學) in Beijing.  Group photo was took after the officer speech finished.

Day 1 (20190719):

I arrived the The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China and took a photo for memory. 

I met a classmate Mr. Bingo Wong (華南師範大學附屬中學黃秉剛) who is from Guangzhou.

So many participants attended the training.  Then Mr. Yuan Zhongguo (中國人民大學附屬中學信息技術教研組長袁中果) chaired the opening and Ms. Wang Weining (中國人工智能學會秘書長，北京郵電大學王衛寧研究員) gave welcome speech. 

In the beginning, Mr. Ren Changshan (教育部科技司信息化處任昌山副處長) was the first speaker who explained the “Education Policy of AI”.  He briefed the missions included optimization of AI innovation system in higher education, talent training system and AI commercialization and demonstration.

Then Mr. Ren briefed the 10 strategies in education and focused on enhancing Information era education revolution.  

Finally, he mentioned the perspective on China education development on intelligence era. And quoted the Beijing Consensus (北京共識) in the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education (國際人工智能與教育大會) as conclusion. 

The second speaker was Prof. Tao Jianhua (中國科學院自動化研究所所長助理兼任中國科學院大學人工智能學院院長助理、模式識別國家重點實驗室副主任陶建華研究員) and his presentation entitled “Artificial Intelligence State and Challenge”.  Firstly, Prof. Tao briefed what is AI that is to study and develop the theory, methodology and technology as well as application in simulating and extending of human intelligence.  

Then Prof. Tao mentioned the three key school of AI and they were symbolicism (符號主義), connectionism (聯結主義) and behavioralism (行為主義).  Then the history of AI development was briefed and we were in the 3^rd wave.  

After that Prof. Tao stated the AI from digital world to physical world and from non-critical to critical impact.  Now, it used “AI+X” model to integrate into different industries such as medical, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, machine-human interaction and culture. 

And then he mentioned several bottom neck of AI such as energy consumption, lack of common sense, motion control, etc.  Finally, he stated the new generation of AI and AI2.0 was the new direction of AI development.  He expected some perspectives in the future including human brain cognition neutral model, IoT self-cognition operation system, and super ANN computing and smart robot.  Lastly, he said that the key of AI development was talent so that we needed to invest more in AI education.

The third speaker was Prof. Zhang Jiajun (張家俊, 中國科學院自動化研究所, 中國科學院大學人工智能學院) and his topic named “Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Translation – Past, Current and Future”.  NLP is using computer to understand different human languages that could be read and wrote. 

Then Prof. Zhang introduced some challenges on NLP such as large ambiguity in our language and large unknown language. The NLP history were discussed from 1946 to 2015.  

Prof. Zhang said there were two key methods to handle it and they were logic-based approach (using rules) and statistic-based approach (using data). It could be integrated to use both approach.  

Finally, he discussed the NLP development.  Currently, the NLP function was good and applied widely but still had many problems. However, the following four problems were identified.

i)                    Lack of explanation and robust (魯棒性)

ii)                  Lack of domain knowledge guide

iii)                Lack of common sense and reasoning

iv)                Lack of memory and discrimination ability

At the end, Prof. Zhang discussed the future NLP that could be based on brain decoding and knowledge based on lifelong learning. 

During the lunch break, we had lunch in student canteen.

Very nice and health lunch set

They used automatic payment system for different lunch set. Each disc has RFID for counting price I think. 

 The fourth speaker was Prof. Liu Xiaobi (北京理工大學計算機學院圖像計算與感知智能研究所副所長劉峽壁) and his topic entitled “Artificial Neural Network and its Learning: A History”. Firstly, Prof. Liu explained AI and ANN in simple statements that AI is “to know yourself” and ANN is “to know the brain of yourself”.  It is a bottom-up AI.

Prof. Liu mentioned that ANN is connectionism (聯結主義).  Then he asked two critical questions that were network structure and learning algorithm included supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning. And then he briefed the history of ANN from network structure and algorithm since 1943.

Lastly, Prof. Liu discussed the future development of ANN would be from small sample learning that included Finetune from characteristic study and Meta Learning (learning to learn), as well as, visualization (e.g. Heatmap, Image patch based, Activation map / matrix).   

The fifth speaker was Prof. Fan Lei (首都師范大學教育學院樊磊) and his presentation was “Implementation Problem of the Course on Information Technology / Artificial Intelligence”. Firstly, Prof. Fan discussed the content of AI + Education. They were:

i)                    AI Generalization,

ii)                  Education digitalization to AI,

iii)                AI in Education System, and

iv)                AI and Science Education Integration.

Then Prof. Fan explained why we needed AI course because of training our next generation to adopt smart society.  And then he introduced the course requirement standard such as understanding AI development history, description of AI algorithm realization process, AI application and practical experience, etc.  The following diagram is reference from USA.

After that Prof. Fan suggested AI course with key core in algorithm, programming and data, as well as, design principles in follows:

i)                    Systematic and state-of-the-art AI technologies

ii)                  Focused and visualized

iii)                Project oriented and experience by design

iv)                Real data and real life case

v)                  Smart society and responsibility

At the end, he quoted a good news that top university was considered the students who were outstanding in AI.

The last speaker was Mr. Yuan Zhongguo (中國人民大學附屬中學信息技術教研組長袁中果) and his topic named “The AI Education Implementation Report of the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China (RDFZ)”.  He quoted the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education on 16-18 May 2019 that AI course establishment in high school and RDFZ established a pilot class.  

Then Mr. Yuan introduced their IT teachers’ background.  It observed very high education background and upto 53% were doctorate degree.

The AI course design example was showed.

Finally, he introduced the High School AI training platform under Primary and Secondary School Working Committee, CAAI.

Reference:

CAAI - http://caai.cn/

《首期全国中小学人工智能师资培训》7月19日在京隆重开班 - https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/l0Xemohk-cnXxjGT5EH0PA

习近平向国际人工智能与教育大会致贺信 - http://www.cicpa.org.cn/Column/hyxxhckzl/zcyxs/201905/W020190524342822810580.pdf

20190719: The 1st National Primary and Secondary School Teacher Training Course for Artificial Intelligence (首期全國中小學人工智能師資培訓課程) (Day 1) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-1st-national-primary-and-secondary.html

20190720: The 1st National Primary and Secondary School Teacher Training Course for Artificial Intelligence (首期全國中小學人工智能師資培訓課程) (Day 2) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-1st-national-primary-and-secondary_20.html

20190721: The 1st National Primary and Secondary School Teacher Training Course for Artificial Intelligence (首期全國中小學人工智能師資培訓課程) (Day 3) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-1st-national-primary-and-secondary_21.html