Why is ChatGPT becoming a sensation all over the world? What are the key technical challenges of the Metaverse? What is the status quo of AI industry development in Zhejiang Province and how to further execute the application of AI technology? On February 7, Zhejiang Lab's "Panel with the CPPCC Members" held the first discussion in 2023. Representatives of the national, provincial, municipal and district CPPCC members, heads of relevant government departments, and representatives of scientists and entrepreneurs spoke, exchanged ideas, and had a brainstorm on the theme of "accelerating the application of AI, emancipate productivity, and solve the problem of talent shortage". On the meeting, we saw a panorama of the development of AI technology in Zhejiang.

"AIGC (AI Generated Content) is the key technical challenge of the Metaverse, while ChatGPT has achieved revolutionary progress in the field of content creation. It will completely change the way of human-computer interaction." BAO Hujun, a CPPCC member and Vice President of ZJ Lab started with ChatGPT to introduce the connotation, characteristics, and key technology realization of the Metaverse to the participants.

"The metaverse is an important direction for future social development. The current metaverse is like the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s. It is essentially a vision that needs to be realized through the integration of many technologies." BAO Hujun said that the metaverse is a shared space with a new social system built by digital technology which can virtualize or realize the integration and interaction of virtuality and reality. It is the fusion of physical space, virtual space, social space, and robot space. It involves practically the entire information technology system including network environment, virtual-real interaction interface, data processing, authentication mechanism, and content production. In the future, the improvement of productivity, immersive social interaction, entertainment, training and collaborative work, wide-area immersive teaching, education and training, and the product design, production, marketing and experience with the integration of virtuality and reality will all be killer apps of the metaverse.

GENG Weidong, Director of Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and Fine Arts of ZJ Lab, demonstrated the applications of AI painting and semantic-driven audio-visual content generation developed by his team. QIU Peng, an engineering expert at ZJ Lab's Research Center for Intelligent Computing Software, introduced the research progress of ZJ Alkaid intelligent computing operating system and some practical application examples of AI for Science starting from the underlying computational power support of AIGC.

On the panel, entrepreneurs from related fields such as AI, digital culture, robotics, and big data introduced the application of AI in their respective industries. Stop large-scale instruments from being locked and idle in small rooms, allow AI talents to flow among enterprises, strengthen the sharing of resources such as algorithms, computational power, and data, and strengthen the integration and innovation among different sectors of government, industry, academia, and research institutes... The collision and merging of disparate ideas of entrepreneurs and scientists sparked new ideas under the guidance of "openness, sharing and cooperation".

ZHENG Caifa, a member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang CPPCC Committee and Deputy Director-General of the Working Committee, said that on this special discussion, with joint discussions among representatives from the government, industry, academia and research institutes, and the interaction of CPPCC members at the national, provincial, municipal, and district levels, we had achieved great results and saw the positioning and function of "Panel with the CPPCC Members".

WU Qing, Deputy Director-General of the Education, Science, Health and Sports Committee of the Provincial Political Consultative Conference and Deputy Director-General of the Science Technology Department of Zhejiang Province, said that the Panel with CPPCC members of ZJ Lab had built a high-level platform for joint efforts. He also recommended that the Lab further considers how to share software and hardware technologies with the public to empower small and medium-sized enterprises, and jointly promote the provincial CPPCC work and scientific and technological work to a new level.

LI Yongwei, Chief Engineer of the Economy and Information Technology Department of Zhejiang, summarized and analyzed the development of AI and the status quo of machine replacing human in Zhejiang Province. FAN Jiuyang, Deputy Director of the talent market at the Department of Human Resources and Social Security, introduced the demand for talents in Zhejiang's talent market. YUAN Jixin, a CPPCC member, a liaison of the Panel, and the Vice President of ZJ Lab, presided over this discussion.

"The rise of AI technologies such as ChatGPT has provided us with new paradigms and references to improve productivity and solve problems such as talent shortages. In the future, ZJ Lab will continue to give priority to scientific research to tackle the key research projects and promote the in-depth integration of AI technology and the real economy to serve national demands and local economic and social development," YUAN Jixin said.