In the keynote speech, Qian Yingyi expressed his views on artificial intelligence and education reform. He believes that the development of economy and science and technology urgently requires us to reform the existing education system and methods.
We equate education with knowledge, so we limit education to knowledge. Teachers impart knowledge, students acquire knowledge, and the college entrance examination is also a test of knowledge. Knowledge seems to be the whole content of education.
Qian Yingyi: Can the education of innovative talents only rely on knowledge accumulation? My answer is no.
But I am definitely not denying the usefulness of knowledge, but saying that it is not enough to stay at the knowledge level. This problem is more serious today than ever before.
Why? I think there are two basic reasons: First, the development stage of China's economy has undergone major changes. In short, it is more driven by innovation from the past development mode. The driving force of innovation depends on creative talents, and creative talents are not what we usually think of as good students. This is the first basic reason. We are at different stages of development.
The second reason is the development and progress of technology, especially the development of artificial intelligence (AI) which has been hotly discussed recently. Although we can't see the influence of artificial intelligence at present. But one thing is clear, that is, we already know that artificial intelligence works through machine learning and deep learning, and an important part of this learning process is image recognition, that is, a lot of recognition and memory of existing knowledge. In this way, we can replace or even surpass those who learn by rote and do a lot of problems to master knowledge.
And rote learning and doing a lot of problems are the usual practices of the students we are cultivating at present. Therefore, it is very likely that in the future, artificial intelligence will first replace the advantages of cultivating students under our education system, that is, the accumulation of existing knowledge. This is my judgment, which is related to the development of science and technology.
There are some reports these two days. On June 7, the artificial intelligence robot took the math test of the college entrance examination. It is reported that there are two machines, full score 150. Their grades were 134 and 105 respectively, and it only took 10 minutes and 22 minutes respectively. But this is really just the beginning. It is said that the goal of people who do artificial intelligence is that machines can take all the college entrance examinations in 2020, and now they just start with mathematics.
Therefore, the above two points, one is the stage of economic development, and the other is the momentum of scientific and technological development, which makes us realize the urgency of reforming the existing education system and methods.
This is not only based on the judgment of affirming the advantages of existing education and its contribution to past economic development, but also based on the judgment of future economic development and scientific and technological development trend.
In learning, we should do innovative education, national education should also change, the times are developing, and education should follow the trend.