China News Service, Guangzhou, December 3 (Reporter Cai Minjie) Artificial intelligence (AI) has brought about more changes in recent years than in the past few decades. But at the same time, the explosive growth of AI has also triggered multiple challenges such as employment impact and data security. How to release the vitality of technological innovation while building a secure line of defense has become a global consensus proposition.

The "2025 Congdu International Forum" opened in Guangzhou on the 2nd. A parallel forum on "Artificial Intelligence: Seeking the Balance of Innovation, Security and Governance" was held on the same day. Former heads of state, scholars and industry leaders from multiple countries and regions gathered together to exchange in-depth opinions on core issues such as opportunities and challenges brought about by the iteration of AI technology, talent training, ethical and safety risks.

On the balance between technological development and social value, many guests gave their own thoughts. Laura Chinchilla, former President of Costa Rica, said via video link that the ultimate goal of AI innovation is to solve complex social problems. Technological development must keep pace with regulatory progress and achieve an organic balance between innovation vitality and safety bottom line by building an inclusive governance framework. Michelle Bachelet, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, focused on the issue of gender equality in AI ethics, calling for the full inclusion of diverse perspectives in the technology development process to effectively prevent the erosion of human rights caused by algorithmic discrimination.

"From the early Go model to today's medical diagnosis applications, AI has gradually surpassed humans in terms of automation and complex task processing, but technology can never replace human emotions and judgment." Former Latvian President Vaila Vikai-Freiberga looked back on the development of AI from the perspective of cognitive science and emphasized that while AI creates economic returns, it also triggers deep thinking about "what is the value of human beings". How to make good use of technological power to serve human development has become a key proposition at the moment.

This view was echoed by President Natalie de Gaulle. She further made suggestions from the perspective of talent training, believing that the younger generation should strengthen AI awareness and critical thinking education so that they can have stronger technical adaptability and independent judgment capabilities, and be mentally and technically prepared to deal with unknown AI scenarios in the future. "At the same time, we must pay more attention to irreplaceable human skills," she added. "Human-based interactive abilities such as empathy and communication cannot be replaced by AI, and their social value needs to be fully emphasized."

Data is the "lifeline" of AI, and its cross-border flow, privacy protection and sovereignty management have become core issues in global governance. Former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar pointed out that we should learn from global cooperation experience in energy, nuclear energy and other fields to promote the establishment of joint supervision mechanisms in the field of AI by various countries to ensure that every country has a say. He believes that the EU's AI Bill provides a good model for global AI governance. Countries need to work together to balance innovative development and security risks to achieve responsible application of AI technology.

Xue Lan, dean of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University, put forward suggestions from the perspective of risk prevention and control. He pointed out that the three major risks brought by AI, including malicious use, instability and employment impact, are global and need to be jointly addressed through international cooperation. To this end, he called for the establishment of a global artificial intelligence (AGI) resource pool and credibility assessment mechanism to promote the implementation of relevant security working mechanisms; in the long term, it is also necessary to conduct feasibility studies on the United Nations artificial intelligence body and explore effective ways to build specialized agencies to assist the United Nations in promoting global AI governance.

Education reform in the AI ​​era has become another important topic of concern to the forum. Tang Tao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that contemporary higher education needs to focus on cultivating students' interdisciplinary abilities and promote the deep integration of AI with social sciences, art and modern media. At the same time, it must adhere to humanistic values ​​and help students grow into world citizens with a global vision and ethical awareness. He specifically mentioned that the new university where he works is actively reforming the curriculum system, teaching methods and evaluation mechanisms to guide students to use AI "smartly and wisely" to ensure that AI always exists as a tool to serve society and is not limited to satisfying personal convenience.

Ni Mingxuan, the founding president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), shared the school’s exploration of educational innovation. He believes that technological development is always ahead of policy supervision, and universities should take the initiative to assume the dual responsibilities of talent training and technological innovation, accelerate the commercialization of AI by deepening industry-university-research cooperation, and at the same time strengthen ethics education to build a solid line of defense against technology abuse. (over)