On December 22th and 23th, the 6th CAAI-AIDL, themed Natural Language Processing(NLP), hosted by the Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence(CAAI) and organized by the Youth Work Committee(YWC) was held in Shenzhen. Zhang Tong, Director of Tencent AI Laboratory, and Liu Bing, the distinguished professor of the University of Illinois at Chicago as well as AAAI/ACM/IEEE Fellow, served as academic directors. There were over ten prestigious scholars and experts in the field of natural language understanding as invited speakers. Liu Hong, professor at Peking University, vice director of CAAI, CAAI Fellow，who delivered a speech during the workshop.

The 6th CAAI-AIDL.

Liu Hong, vice director of CAAI, delivered a speech during the workshop.

Liu Hong, vice director of CAAI and Secretary General WangWeining awarded endorsement to academic directors ZhangTong and LiuBing respectively.

The research and application of NLP has prevailed in both academia and industry in the past two years. Many AI companies have raised this technology to the strategic level. With the development of NLP, search engines will be more accurate, machine translation will be more practical, chat robots will understand human beings better, and machine customer service will be more efficient. Therefore, it is necessary and practical to set up the course of NLP.

Adhering to the goal of making study serve the practical purpose as well as extending knowledge together with practice, experts explained it from both macro perspective and micro point of view, focusing on frontier practical directions of NLP—from technical theory to application practice in an all-round aspect. They presented the connotation and development of NLP as well as the latest achievements and foreseeable challenges, helping students grasp the latest research trends and application results, so as to improve their cognitive level and autonomy in respect of learning, scientific research, practice and innovation.

ZhangTong, Director of Tencent AI Laboratory(L) as well as Liu Bing, Distinguished Professor of the University of Illinois at Chicago , AAAI/ACM/IEEE Fellow(R), presided over the two-day workshops respectively.

On the morning of the 22nd, Zhang Tong，served as the academic director and lecturer host. Che Wanxiang, Professor of Computer Science School of Harbin Institute of Technology(HIT), explained Structural Prediction in Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing; Wei Furu, Senior Research Manager of Natural Language Computing Group of Microsoft Asian Research Institute, introduced Natural Language Reading Comprehension; Xiao Yanghua, Professor of Fudan University, and Liu Yang, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Technology Department of Tsinghua University, respectively elaborated Language Understanding with Knowledge Graph and Machine Translation with Deep Learning.

Che Wanxiang, Wei Furu, Xiao Yang, Liu Yang, and Xu Ruifeng, Professor of Computer Science and Technology School of HIT(Shenzhen), Secretary-General of CAAI YWC; Lu Qin, Interim Director of  Computer Science Department of Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Huang Jinhui, Vice President of Engineering College of Foreign Affairs at The Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as Professor of Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, and Director of Science and Technology Innovation Center—all of them made a heated discussion on the topic of "NLP: Problems and Trends" during the Round-Table Dialogue in the afternoon.

Che Wanxiang (upper left), Wei Furu (upper right), Xiao Yanghua (lower left), Liu Yang (lower right).

The "NLP— Problems and Trends" themed Round-Table Dialogue.

On the morning of December 23rd, Liu Bing served as the academic director and host of the report. Huang Minlie, Associate Professor of Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University and Deputy Director of AI Research Institute, analyzed Key Technologies and Challenges of Natural Language Dialogue System; Wan Xiaojun, professor at the Institute of Computer Science and Technology of Peking University, introduced Technology of Machine Writing; He Xiaodong, executive vice-president and director of Deep Learning, Speech and Language Laboratory of JD AI Research Institute, expounded Multimodal Intelligence: Understanding and Expressing across Languages and Vision; Tang Jie, deputy director and associate professor of the Computer Department of Tsinghua University, winner of the National Outstanding Youth Science Fund, shared opinions about Theory and Application of Network Expressive Learning.

Liu Xiaojiang, the expert researcher at Tencent AI Lab NLP Center, served as the host of the round-table dialogue focused on "The Prospect of NLP Application in industry". Participants of the discussion included Song Ruihua, chief scientist of Microsoft Xiaobin; Wan Xiaojun, professor of Computer Science and Technology Research Institute of Peking University; Shi Shuming, director of Tencent AI Lab NLP Center, and Cao Yunbo, expert researcher of Tencent Intelligent Platform Product Department and technical director of Tencent Dingding Voice Assistant Dialogue System.

Huang Minlie (upper left), Wan Xiaojun (upper right), He Xiaodong (lower left), Tang Jie (lower right).

The Round-Table Dialogue focused on "The Prospect of NLP Application in industry"

Xu Ruifeng, Secretary-General of CAAI YWC

At last, Xu Ruifeng, Secretary-General of CAAI YWC, delivered a speech on behalf of the Committee, expressing gratitude for the support of the lecturers. He also welcomed participants to take part in the research and practice of the new generation of AI. The Association and the Committee will endeavor to provide better services to all the members.

During the two-day learning and communication, the tutors imparted and shared knowledge and ideas, benefiting over 200 learners who gave an enthusiastic response. The audience believe that they have understood the industry better as well as having deeper insight into the future trend in the strong academic and technological atmosphere. They now have a systematic grasp of the development, key technologies, application models, and business prospects of NLP. They have broadened horizons and enhancing the ability of combining learning with practice.

Group photo of the 6th CAAI-AIDL.