On December 11, Professor Tao Xianping, a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Nanjing University, gave a lecture to the students of Kuang Yaming Honors School and the Top-Ranking Class, and the title was “A Glimpse of Artificial Intelligence (AI).”

He introduced in detail the history and the current situation of this hot topic, as well as China’s contributions, key military applications, and the nature and future of AI. Tao’s solid knowledge, vivid and concrete cases, and rich video and picture materials impressed the students. The whole lecture was relaxed but compact, and the students found the four open topics assigned by Professor Tao reflecting the depth of knowledge and ideas.

Professor Tao analyzed the development process of Alpha GO and pointed out that increasingly AI demonstrates an overwhelming advantage over humans, thus catching the student attention, and he introduced the research object of “intelligence” in four aspects: definition of AI, Turing Test, research objectives and differences between strong and weak AI.

By summarizing the history of the discipline and the background of today’s technology, Tao pointed out that AI research has entered a new and learning-oriented era and introduced the principles of search and neural network learning algorithms. In the course of the presentation, he used various classic cases to make the knowledge easy to understand.

In the second and third parts, Tao used abundant information, documents and personal experiences to tell students about China’s AI development strategies, initiatives and achievements, as well as the related research by Tao and his team based on the DARPA CODE plan in the United States. He also called for students to pay attention to and participate in the development of the AI industry.

The fourth part of the lecture was the nature and future of AI. Tao analyzed all computing tasks including AI and proposed that its essence is to reveal phenomena precisely, foresee the future and discover laws of things through logic and statistical invariance. However, he pointed out that today’s AI is lacking in robustness and interpretability and is therefore faced with various challenges.

As a closing remark, Professor Tao re-emphasized the far-reaching significance of AI and the need for researchers to be cautious about technical and ethical issues, and thanked colleagues and peers who had provided him with materials. The lecture ended with a round of applause.