A big academic conference for AI took place early Autumn in Nanjing, a city of innovation. Top scientists, scholars and industrial leaders of AI-based fields gathered in the city for in-depth exchanges on the theme of Empowering Every Thing.

CCAI 2020 was held on August 29-30 at Sino-Singapore Nanjing Eco Hi-tech Island (Nanjing).

Like its previous sessions, CCAI 2020 featured high standards, strong panels, big issues and new perspectives. Its panel forum, four side events and six sub-forums attracted a number of level-A scientists and entrepreneurs. A streaming live online channel of the conference was accessible to tens of thousands of visitors.

CCAI2020 believes that breakthroughs in scientific research pave the way for technological innovation. It is committed to grasping the development trend and dynamics of AI by sharing latest academic achievement. 

From Nanjing to the future

The conference was presided over by Professor Zhihua ZHOU, the chief of Department of Computer Science and Technology of Nanjing University, and Dean of School of AI of Nanjing University, ACM/AAAI/IEEE/AAAS/IAPR/CAAI Fellow, and foreign academician of Acadamia Europaea.

Professor Zhihua ZHOU

Academician Qionghai DAI said in the opening speech that Nanjing is a fertile land for integrated development of research and application. It is a city of rich history, industrial resources, and creative minds.

CCAI 2020 is an opportunity for synergy to form among governments, the industry, research institutes and users. It also showcased great progress Nanjing has achieved over the past years in the field of AI.

Mr. Chunsheng XU, vice chairman of Jiangsu Association of Science and Technology, said in his speech that Nanjing deserves the trust of holding CCAI2020, a well-established event, as the city becomes more attractive for the AI industry. CCAI 2020 also was a window for Nanjing and Jiangsu Province to display to the AI circle in China its strength as a high-value platform.

Mr.Aiguo LIANG, deputy head of Party committee of Jianye District of Nanjing, said that the CCAI 2020 brings together top AI scientists and industry elites across the world. The conference will help build an innovative highland of AI for the Jianye District.

Mr.Bo YANG, Deputy Governor of Jianye District, introduced the development, industries and business environment of the Sino-Singapore Nanjing Eco Hi-tech Island.

Focusing on breakthroughs in theoretical research, Professor Jieping YE at University of Michigan, vice president of DIDI, and chief of AI Labs of DIDI, gave his speech on 29 August. Mr. Qiang YANG, AAAI/ACM/IEEE/CAAI Fellow, the Chief AI Officer of Webank, and Honorary Vice Chairman of CAAI, delivered his speech on 30 August.

Professor Yoshua Bengio at University of Montreal, Canada, winner of the 2018 Turing Award, and director of the Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (Mila) was well-recognized as a pioneer of deep learning. His speech was DeepLearning:from System 1 to System 2.

Dr. Bengio believes that machine learning saw rapid development over the past decade because of deep learning which is changing the society.

He introduced the consciousness/attention model. It uses only limited pieces of information and variables to understand the world and predict the future.

“The Latest Development of Federated Learning” by Professor Qiang YANG.

It showed the breakthroughs in AI theory and innovation in intelligence service over the past two years at WeBank. He further explained in detail three possible applications that are horizontal federated learning, vertical federated learning and federated transfer learning.

The essence of the federated learning, as said by YANG, is solving shared problems and protecting privacy without sending data out.

Academician Dai Qionghai’s sharing: "Artificial Intelligence: Algorithms, Computing Power, Interactions"

He made in-depth analysis of key issues facing the development of AI. He also suggested bring about revolutionary AI technology with the help of brain and cognitive sciences. This may make possible an "AI body" that can interact with the environment and humans.

DAI argued that a key issue in the future was to establish a new test system for AI as early Turing test fails to keep up with the development of AI.

On the morning of the 30th, Professor Yolanda Gil,  chairman of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Deputy Director of Scientific Research of the Institute of Information Science of the University of Southern California, and ACM/AAAI Fellow  delivered his speech: Thoughtful Artificial Intelligence: Forging A New Partnership for Data Science and Scientific Discovery. He shared his thoughts on breakthroughs in intelligence abilities of machine leaning thinking, and understanding.

Zhou Ming, deputy dean of Microsoft Research Asia, shared latest development of Microsoft Research in the field of AI. His speech, "The Progress of Pre-training Models in Multi-language and Multi-modal Tasks", introduced new solutions to train multi-language and multi-modal models flexibly and effectively under the condition of large data volume, deep models and large-scale application Next.

Mr. Tian Qi’The, chief AI scientist of Huawei Cloud, Chair Professor of Yangtze River Scholars of the Ministry of Education, and IEEE Fellows, introduced Huawei’s vision in the field of artificial intelligence. His presentation, "Universal Vision: Exploration, Practice and Precipitation", reported Huawei’s research plans and developments concerning computer vision.

Professor Chen Xiaoping, director and professor of the Robotics Laboratory of the University of Science and Technology of China, delivered a speech of "70 Years of Turing Hypothesis: Two Types of AI and Closed Challenges". He proposed two solutions to thinking-violence and training. The one is discrimination Standard-closedness not only provides theoretical support for large-scale industrial applications of artificial intelligence, but also provides researchers with a new thinking direction.

Six Featured Forums focusing on Industrial Upgrading

On the afternoon of the 29th, the Forum on Intelligence Transportation, the Forum on Intelligent Prevention against Epidemic, the Forum on Future Technology and Enabling Industry Upgrading, and the Forum on Human and Machine Intelligence were held. The forums aimed to upgrade industrial intelligence. Top researchers in various fields and innovators introduced their unique resources and achievement across the industrial chain. They also discuss the problems in theoretical research and business practice. The forums expected to accelerate the transformation and application of technological achievements. It is believed that all participating parts could together to promote the effective integration of AI with the real Economy and service sector, as well as help deploy large-scale application.

The Forum on Intelligence Transportation

The Forum on Intelligent Prevention against Epidemic

The Forum on Future Technology and Enabling Industry Upgrading

The Forum on Human and Machine Intelligence

On the afternoon of the 30th, the Forum on Intelligence Perception and Interaction and the Forum on Young Scientists

At the Forum on Intelligent Perception and Interaction, experts discussed how can machine intelligence serve for human based on perception and interaction in a human-centered world.

Experts shared their insights on computer vision, natural language processing, and pattern recognition.

During the Forum on Young Scientist, young talents of AI introduced their achievements in various fields.

Forum on Intelligent Perception and Interaction

Forum on Young Scientist

Brainstorm on the Future of AI

What we can learn from the development of AI?

How can we grasp the next period of AI?

How to bring about more innovation and coordinated development between research and application?

Let's come to the key-note forum.

The forum is presided over by Mr. Chenglin LIU, Deputy Director of Institute of Automation of CAS, Vice Chairman of CAAI, and IAPR/IEEE/CAAI Fellow.

Experts and industrial leaders looked back to the development of AI over the past years and envisioned a new stage of AI empowering everything. They drafted a blue print for development covering sectors of technological road map, business models, and social responsibility.

At the same time, four side events were held, the first Reading a Book, CAAI Academic Exchange for Young Scientists · A Guideline to AI Research, Enterprise-driven Innovation: AI Open Source Summit and the Online Forum on Industrial Internet Empowers Industry Transformation.

Book-reading Meeting

As a top academic conference, CCAI 2020 was an inclusive platform for gathering academic wisdom, promoting development of the industry. Here, participants could update their knowledge of what they interested in or their professions.

Beyond Borders

CCAI 2020 wrapped up.

We obviously saw the passion of participants.

We believe that CCAI 2020, a top AI conference featuring forward-thinking and empowering everything, will promote the development of the Eco Hi-tech Island, as well as the AI industry in Nanjing.

The official website of CCAI: http://ccai.caai.cn/