Wu Zhaohui, Vice Minister of Science and Technology

■China Economic Times reporter Zhang Na

The 2024 Annual Meeting of the China Development Forum hosted by the Development Research Center of the State Council was held in Beijing on March 24. Wu Zhaohui, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, said at the symposium on artificial intelligence development and governance that at present, global artificial intelligence technological innovation is extremely active and has become a key area of concern and development for all countries. The Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of artificial intelligence and has always regarded promoting the integrated development of artificial intelligence and the economy as an important development goal. The "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" has been released and implemented, and a series of fruitful policies and measures have been implemented to meet major economic and social needs, and a good ecology in which artificial intelligence is deeply integrated with all walks of life is being formed.

Wu Zhaohui suggested that in the future, we should seize the major opportunities of artificial intelligence to reshape economic and social development and effectively respond to various risks and challenges brought by artificial intelligence. Aiming at the cutting-edge direction of artificial intelligence, accelerate the production of original and breakthrough major scientific research results, and explore the development of general artificial intelligence through multiple paths.

"Currently, artificial intelligence is at the starting point of mass technological change, and major achievements are constantly emerging. While promoting economic and social development in all aspects, it is also nurturing new major changes." Wu Zhaohui said.

He believes that artificial intelligence is moving towards a new stage of multi-intelligence integration. The implementation of large model technology represented by ChatGPT and Sora has kicked off the move towards general artificial intelligence. Large models have become the mainstream technology route and accelerated iterative evolution. The emergence of basic language large model technology, breakthrough upgrades, and new deep network architectures have emerged one after another. Multimodal large models have become the main direction of current model research. The cross-integration of multiple technology paths has accelerated the arrival of general artificial intelligence.

"Artificial intelligence is moving towards the 3.0 stage of collaboration between large and small models and rapid development of new intelligent forms." Wu Zhaohui said.

In his view, artificial intelligence will become the standard feature of the fourth industrial revolution, accelerating the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, realizing quality changes, efficiency changes and power changes, reshaping the basic reengineering of industries, and innovating production and service models. Each link will lead the development of new industrialization and provide new momentum for the development of smart economy.

In addition, he believes that artificial intelligence will trigger far-reaching changes in social development. The business model and economic form of artificial intelligence innovation are influencing and penetrating into all walks of life at an unprecedented rate, building an intelligent economic form driven by data, human-computer collaboration, cross-border integration, co-creation and sharing, and forming a new economic growth point. At the same time, artificial intelligence helps the application of major scientific discoveries and cutting-edge research and development, and intersects with biomanufacturing, brain science, clean energy, cultural creativity and other fields, and is expected to create disruptive products and industries, thereby accelerating the development of future industries.

The future has come. Wu Zhaohui said that China should firmly seize the major opportunity of artificial intelligence to reshape economic and social development and effectively respond to various risks and challenges brought by artificial intelligence. It is necessary to aim at the cutting-edge direction of artificial intelligence, accelerate the production of original and breakthrough major scientific research results, and explore the development of general artificial intelligence through multiple paths. Promote the deep integration of artificial intelligence with multiple industries, accelerate the transformation of artificial intelligence frontiers into real productivity, promote the upgrading of industrial intelligence and the innovation of disruptive technologies, thereby giving birth to new industries, new models, and new momentum, and building new growth points in the future.

However, he reminded that at present, the development of artificial intelligence is unstoppable. While seizing the major opportunity of artificial intelligence to reshape economic and social development, we must also effectively respond to various security risks and challenges brought by large-scale cross-border applications of artificial intelligence. Emerging technologies represented by deep-level large models can cheaply generate erroneous descriptions of character events, reduce the public's overall trust in real information, thereby causing cognitive chaos and impacting the original social and living order. Problems such as misuse and abuse of artificial intelligence, privacy disclosure, and improper use of artificial intelligence products will also distort value, thus violating ethics, undermining fairness and justice, leading to ethical anomie, and causing deep-seated ethical and moral issues.

In Wu Zhaohui's view, artificial intelligence may surpass humans in some fields and will also threaten the common interests of mankind. How to coexist with this and better benefit human society while maintaining it safe and controllable has become a major challenge faced by the entire global society.

He suggested that we should continue to deepen artificial intelligence security governance. Actively prevent risks, strengthen artificial intelligence data security and privacy protection, accelerate the construction of an inclusive and prudent governance mechanism, improve artificial intelligence ethical norms, and work together to promote artificial intelligence governance.

Wu Zhaohui further pointed out that artificial intelligence should be used as an important tool and means to solve global problems, continuously deepen cooperation in global sustainable development in addressing climate change, reducing poverty, protecting biodiversity, etc., and jointly carry out technology research and development and product development, deepen global artificial intelligence governance and cooperation, and build a global, regional, and multi-level artificial intelligence governance cooperation platform and mechanism. Work together to form international governance rules with broad consensus.

"We hope to work together with countries around the world to jointly explore the boundaries of artificial intelligence, share innovation results, and jointly manage risks and challenges, so as to win a better future." Wu Zhaohui said.