ZHEJIANG LAB
News  Detail
Frontier Sciences Close to Life | Over 3 Million People "Enter" ZJ Lab
Date: 2022-06-01

Will AI take the place of human?

Will machine have our emotion and mind?

How will intelligent computing change our life?

On May 26

Right before the 6th National Science and Technology Workers Day,

ZJ Lab held an open day

To bring AI technologies close to the public;

ZJ Lab's scientists

Explained AI and its today and tomorrow.

The activity was put online live

Via APPs of Xinhua News Agency, Zhejiang News,

CZTV, and Tianmu News.

Over three million people

Participated in the activity or watched it online

A dialogue that shares insights

Themed "the development of new generation AI and intelligent robotics", the open day was unveiled with the "ZJ Lecture · A Dialogue with Visitors". Hailed by his fans, Mr. PAN Yunhe, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief AI scientist of ZJ Lab, showed up with his signature smile. He said human are ushering in a new technological and industrial revolution driven by digital and intelligent technologies, which take place in the three dimensional world formed by information, physics, and the human society.


He soon turned to his all-time focus: AI 2.0. According to him, the key theories and technologies of AI 2.0 include big data intelligence, swarm intelligence, multi-media intelligence, human-machine hybrid-augmented intelligence and autonomous intelligent system, which could be applied to intelligent city, intelligent medical and intelligent manufacturing.

"However, I think the core driving forces for this round of AI development is not computing strength, algorithm or data, but deep neural network theories and models, as well as breaking-through innovations and applications such as AlphaGo and AlphaFold." As a strategic scientist, he gave suggestions on China's current AI development.

A student from Hangzhou High School told Mr. PAN that he was interested in AI but was not sure if he could hang on. He wanted to know how a scientist identifies his research subject. "Be brave on the way to AI!" Mr. PAN encouraged him, with his every word heard in the auditorium. He said every scientist has to go through this step by step. He did this, and college students would do this, too. "Stay true to your passion," said he.

President of ZJ Lab ZHU Shiqiang, with witty words, shared with the public his experience through a lecture "Robots: it's hard to be human".

His speech began with a question "Are washing machines robots?" He said robotics is an emerging and developing technology. Concepts in this area may change or, to some extent, is fuzzy or uncertain. This is quite normal. Years ago, in the foreword of a teaching material he wrote that "We've been trying to identify what we are studying — like we did in all other areas — but we never made it."

Will robots eliminate human? This is a question currently asked in science fiction films. Mr. ZHU explained that, first of all, men make robots that might have intelligence, not wisdom. Second, it is less possible that robots could create and reform like human do. Robots can never be men. They are tools. Moreover, robots are containers of human wisdom. We have the control. We control productivity. We create things. We create advanced intelligence and we control them.

Mr. ZHU talked about ZJ Lab's robotic strategy: To make robots smarter, stronger, more friendly and go further.

"In the future, robotics will continue to develop, and together with other modern technologies, it will make profound changes to the world and influence the way of our production and life," said he.

 A technology exhibition close to life

Image tactile perception technology, deep learning imaging algorithm, large-field confocal splicing... Behind these technical terms, technologies are attending our everyday life. ZJ Lab presented a number of close-to-life technical achievements that give us a better life.

"The 10 Sceneries of the West Lake are in the Xihu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province," LU Linsong read through the intelligent braille learning machine. "With this machine, the visually disabled can read." According to TAO Wentao from the Research Center for Humanoid Sensing, the digital braille perception device uses visual, hearing and sensing technologies to allow the users to touch (braille) and hear information. It is very helpful in information accessibility.

A PET/CT machine attracted visitors’ eyeballs. One of the core technologies of ZJ Lab's intelligent PET/CT medical image system is "low-dose PET imaging", which reduces 50% of radiation in body scanning and 70% of radiation in head scanning to capture clearer PET images and more accurately locate minor nidus. "Advanced algorithm makes medical imaging more precise. This technology benefits the public. It is very impressive," said ZUO Wuheng, associate professor of the Zhejiang University of Technology.

"A lonely duck flies in the afterglow. The autumn river joins the long skyline." Can AI visualize the beautiful verse? ZJ Lab's Science-art Integration Center gave an answer. Semantic and visual sense multi-media intelligence can select matching scenarios and the contents to generate the corresponding short video. "This breaking-through technology is a strong technical support for intelligent film and TV making," said senior researcher MAO Ruichen.

ZJ Lab has applied AI to culture, specifically in art.

ZJ Lab has applied AI to culture, specifically in art. Besides the French window in the Research Center for Intelligent Robotics, a piano robot Xiaoyue is playing Summer. "My work is to give the piano robots the ability to see and observe the world. Visual positioning technology allows the robot to read music scores and play them. I hope technology-art integration can bring more fun to life. I think it is a way to spiritual common prosperity." ZHONG Ling and Xiaoyue gave a concert on the charm of technology.

 A multi-discipline scientific round table

What would it be if sciences, such as breeding, astronomy, materials, gene and pharmacy, marry intelligent computing? Chief engineer ZHAO Zhifeng, chief architect of intelligent computing data reactor PAN Aimin, computing material expert ZHANG Jincang, computing breeding expert XU Xiaogang, computing astronomy expert FENG Yi, computing gene expert TANG Jin and computing pharmacy expert CHEN Guangyong of the Research Center for Intelligent Computing Platforms hosted a multi-discipline scientific round table on data reactor.

— Intelligent computing needs to address the challenges of making intelligent computing smarter, more energy-saving, and more user-friendly. There are two possible approaches: engineering technological innovation such as wide-area collaborative computing and biological inspiration such as brain-like computing. ZJ Lab's data reactor is a brand new computing device that integrates general computing clusters, intelligent supercomputer clusters and new computation and computing strength resources such as brain-like computing, optical computing, and graph processing to create a reactor operation system to allocate optimal computing resources for complicated computing tasks, and apply optimal computing methods, in order to get optimal results to support scientific research, social governance and digital economic development.

— FAST generates nearly 100TB observation data every day and about 20PB every year. The huge amount of data implies great transmission, storage and analysis challenges. Intelligent computing helps deeply process sample data on high-frequency signal from the cosmos, discover more rapid radio storms and pulsar, and explore the unknowns beyond time.

— As high as 80% of soybean are imported. It is urgent to speed up soybean breeding through computing breeding. We have built a computing breeding platform, and are working on the intelligent estimation model based on breeding knowledge base, hoping to address such challenges as low efficiency of design breeding and lack of phenotype analysis, remarkably shorten the time of breeding and identify good varieties as soon as possible. Those are the core challenges to the breeding industry.

"I had face-to-face talks with the pundit scientists, and I learned frontier knowledge. I had a direct view of the wide application of intelligent computing. This could be a push in my study," said WANG Jiayi, a student from Hangzhou High School.