China Association for Science and Technology （CAST）set its theme of the year 2018 as "Inheritance, Innovation and Development". The Chinese association for artificial intelligence (CAAI) will further implement the spirit of the CAST and promote the work pattern, process reengineering and organizational restructuring of the association through the "three-wheel" drive (Think tanks, academics, popular science), "three modernizations" linkage (Internationalization, Informatization and Synergy), and "three-dimensional" cohesion(Organizational outward expansion, vertical and horizontal integration, active network).

On March 29, the CAAI Think Tank Preparatory Meeting was successfully held in Beijing. More than 20 experts and scholars, including Chairman of CAAI, Academician LI Deyi of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Academician DAI Qionghai of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, attended the meeting and had a heated and fruitful discussion on the preparation and construction of artificial intelligence think tanks.

Academician LI Deyi emphasized that the preparation of AI think tank project is the key task of the association in 2018. Starting the project of think tank construction needs to find and absorb the top scientific and technological workers, top staff and top entrepreneurs in the field of artificial intelligence in the whole country and even in the whole world, so as to jointly build a think tank. On the basis of five secondary disciplines condensed in the first-level disciplines demonstration report, six professional direction think tanks, Brain Cognition Basis, Machine Perception and Pattern Recognition, Natural Language Processing and Understanding, Knowledge Engineering, Robot and Intelligent System, are established,     responding to the strategic needs of the benchmarking countries, the advanced level of the world and the expectations of scientists and technicians, so as to build a top academic exchange platform with foresight, strategy and academics and a high-end innovation think tank with international influence, to form the requirements of the academic frontier strategic report, and to promote the construction of high-level think tanks for scientific and technological innovation.

At the meeting, six directions of think tanks have been standardized. Leading experts of think tanks in Brain Cognition Foundation, Machine Perception and Pattern Recognition, Natural Language Processing and Understanding, Knowledge Engineering, Robots and Intelligent Systems were established successively, leading the research direction and formulating standards and norms, serving for the construction of CAAI think tanks and guiding AI activities which set an example for building "smart society" and improving the ability to serve scientific and technological workers.

The construction of academic think tanks carried out amid the conference responded to the requirement of developing characteristic brand activities in the work spirit of the theme year of the CAST and followed the law of development of scientific and technological groups, a way to benchmark the first-class international organizations. It was conducive to promoting the reform of internal governance structure and mode, and constantly improving the ability of the society to develop and serve scientific and technological workers. More importantly, it explored the institutional mechanism and path measures for innovation and unity to lead scientists and technicians in the field of artificial intelligence to devote themselves to the construction of an innovative country and serve the development of a modern economic system.

CAAI, as the only association in the field of artificial intelligence, has the advantage of " geographical conditions" and coincides with the opportunity of " climatic conditions " for the vigorous development of artificial intelligence. Learning how to play a greater role in " human conditions " is an important part of guiding the future work of the society. The construction of CAAI think tanks was an important measure to build the "people" of the scientific and technological innovation think tank of the CAST, so as to promote the strategic support, international influence and mass organization, and realize a new leap forward in the development of CAAI.