It is the annual Wuzhen time again. On November 9, the World Internet Conference officially opened.

At present, a new round of technological changes and industrial transformation represented by artificial intelligence (AI) is reconstructing the global innovation map and reshaping the global economic structure, creating broader development opportunities for countries around the world, but also bringing security. Ethical risks and challenges. In this changing situation, how to adapt to the development trends of informatization, digitalization, networking and intelligence, while shaping the ethical value of health is an urgent issue that people face together.

Today (November 10) afternoon, at the World Internet Conference Sub-forum "Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics", Zhang Yan, honorary dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Gao Wen, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Zhijiang Laboratory Director Zhu Shiqiang and other well-known experts and scholars in the fields of artificial intelligence and digital technology, as well as leaders of leading companies in the fields of artificial intelligence and digital technology such as Microsoft and Alibaba, jointly focus on security risk governance and digital ethics construction in the process of artificial intelligence technology, application and industrial development. , exchanges with the theme of "Industrial Direction and Ethical Orientation of Artificial Intelligence". Dear guests expressed their opinions and collided thinking, exchanges and mutual learning in order to promote the international community's research on artificial intelligence ethics and the construction of a governance system.

AI research and governance require participation from different fields around the world

As early as the 1950s, American science fiction novelist Asimov proposed a forward-looking "three laws of robots" for related robots in his novel "I am a robot": that is, "robots must not harm humans, nor are they allowed to do so. Seeing that people are going to be harmed, they stand by and watch; robots must absolutely obey humans unless such obedience is harmful to humans; robots must protect themselves from harm unless they make sacrifices to protect humans or to mankind.

However, the above reminder did not attract the attention of the artificial intelligence community, because artificial intelligence research was still in the exploration stage at that time and progressed slowly. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the former "long-term thinking" seems to have become increasingly "close worries".

Regarding the idea of ​​developing the third generation of artificial intelligence, Zhang Biao, honorary dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Tsinghua University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes: "The research and governance of artificial intelligence require participation and cooperation among different fields around the world, in addition to engaging in artificial intelligence In addition to the research and development and use personnel, they also need the participation of personnel in different fields such as law, morality, and ethics. We need to clarify the standards of ethics and morality. What are moral and ethical? Different countries, ethnic groups and individuals have countless The same understanding is required, therefore, global cooperation is needed to jointly develop a set of standards that are in line with the interests of all mankind.”

Zhu Shiqiang, director of Zhijiang Laboratory and vice chairman of the China Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance, believes that artificial intelligence is an extension of human intelligence in the field of machines, and the real initiative is still in people. "Now, as long as any technology is developed by humans, there is always someone who can control it, so technology does not have original sin, but the application of technology is good and evil."

He used the kitchen knife as an example and said: "The kitchen knife is used to cut vegetables, and the kitchen knife has been used to kill people many times, but the kitchen knife has no original sin. Our technical logic is to hope that the kitchen knife will be built with the Tao and the technical means. It's a sharp one, but it can never cut off people's heads. This sounds a bit fantastic, but it should at least be one of the directions we are working on."

Zhu Shiqiang said that in the current development stage, the most important task is still to develop technology. According to him, "We are building a technical map of Zhijiang Laboratory to prevent artificial intelligence from harming society, and trying to use an advanced technology to prevent the abuse of artificial intelligence and malicious illegal applications."

In addition to domestic experts, Joseph Sfakis, winner of the 2007 Turing Award and member of the World's Top Scientists Association, also gave a speech through video. He is the winner of the 2007 Turing Award and honorary research director of the laboratory of the International Embedded Systems Research Center. He has served as the technical coordinator of the European "Network Excellence" (of) Embedded System Design Research Alliance.

For years, Sfakis has been observing the convergence between ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and artificial intelligence. He believes that this integration is getting faster and faster, and ICT and artificial intelligence have also brought about autonomous systems together, which is a major progress from weak artificial intelligence to universal artificial intelligence. But the challenge now is that autonomous systems rely too much on components empowered by artificial intelligence.

Regarding how to implement autonomous systems, Sfakis believes that artificial intelligence should be integrated into key applications, but this is not fully implemented yet because artificial intelligence does not have the ability to explain itself, such as explaining how neural networks are like this Learned from many techniques.

Computing power will be as easy as electricity

After discussing the technical logic of artificial intelligence ethics and the legal principles and principles of digital ethics, the impact of artificial intelligence and its industrial model optimization on the future production and life forms of human society has also attracted much attention from the outside world.

As we all know, artificial intelligence technology can significantly improve human efficiency, especially in the fields of image recognition, speech recognition, etc., to quickly complete recognition and complex operations. In addition, in the face of openness, artificial intelligence technology can also find laws and relationships that humans cannot expect through exhaustive calculations.

In the view of Academician Gao Wen, big models are changing some research situations and current situations of artificial intelligence in various fields, such as natural language big models, but it is very important to train big models to have computing power, and the computing power is good. The development of the national economy plays a great role.

"Computing power has a significant impact on the country's macroeconomic development and is positively correlated with the trend of GDP/digital economy. For every point increase in the computing power index on average, it may contribute 5% to the growth of the digital economy. GDP will There is a 0.18% increase. Not only that, computing power will also promote scientific innovation,” Gao Wen said.

So, is it possible to transmit computing power to all departments and industries in the future through a computing power network? Gao Wen said that by building a computing power network through tools such as East and West Calculation, computing power will allow users to use computing power as easily as using electricity, and computing power will be a consumption.

However, in order to achieve the above ideal state, computing power still faces many technical problems. However, with the deployment and support of the National Development and Reform Commission, Pengcheng Laboratory explored China Computing Power Network 0.1, launched the construction of China Intelligent Computing Network pre-research project in 2019, and completed acceptance in June this year. Gao Wen introduced that after the end of China Computing Power Network 0.1, it is currently promoting the work of China Computing Power Network version 1.0. This work execution period will be from July 2022 to December 2025. I hope that after the completion of China Computing Power Network 1.0, it can gather. Greater computing power.

From the perspective of the enterprise, Ni Xingjun, chief technology officer of Ant Group, believes that technological ethics should be integrated into the company's business and product life cycle, and enterprises should adhere to a responsible attitude towards users, industries and society, and better serve the high level of digital economy. Quality development and high-level safety.

According to Ni Xingjun, Ant Group has done some work in barrier-free and age-friendly transformation, ensuring algorithm fairness, and enhancing algorithm universality.

In addition, since last year, Ant Group and some academic institutions and peers in Zhejiang Province have initiated the establishment of the Zhejiang Financial Technology Ethics Committee, and its digital financial platforms have also issued platform self-discipline guidelines. In June this year, Ant Group launched the ESG sustainable development strategy, and "Technology and Ethics Construction" was promoted as an important sub-item to the group's key work.

At the same time, Ni Xingjun also revealed that Ant Group has established a Science and Technology Ethics Committee within the company, and will also set up an advisory committee in the future to invite senior experts and scholars in the industry to participate in and guide the construction of science and technology ethics.