Tsinghua University Launches Virtual Personas (as students)
On June 15th, the Computer Department of Tsinghua University held a press conference on the results of “Hua Zhibing”. As the first original virtual student in China, Hua Zhibing will enter the Computer Department of Tsinghua University. She will start her studies and research career at Tsinghua University from Professor Tang Jie of Tsinghua University from now on.
Unlike ordinary virtual digital people, Hua Zhibing has continuous learning ability, can gradually “grow up” and constantly “learn” the modes implied in data, including text, vision, images, videos, etc., just like human beings can constantly learn behavior patterns from what they experience around them. Over time, Hua Zhibing’s new abilities for new scenes will be organically integrated into his own model, thus becoming smarter and smarter.
The team members Tang Jie, Jia Jia, Huang Minlie and Liu Zhiyuan introduced Hua Zhibing’s technical background and future plans from their own research fields. Tang Jie introduced the arrival of the third generation of artificial intelligence and the birth background of Hua Zhibing; Jia introduced the cutting-edge progress of human-computer interaction technology and virtual digital human technology, and showed Hua Zhibing’s expression and voice; Huang Minlie introduced the research progress of dialogue technology and potential application scenarios in virtual people; Liu Zhiyuan demonstrated the research and technical support of Hua Zhibing’s bottom layer – a very large-scale artificial intelligence pre-training model.
At present, AI is moving from the era of perceptual intelligence to the era of cognitive intelligence. As early as 2016, Zhang cymbal, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University, put forward the prototype of the “third generation artificial intelligence system”, and officially released the theoretical framework system of the “third generation artificial intelligence” at the end of 2018. Its core idea is to establish an interpretable and robust AI theory and Methods; Develop safe, reliable, credible and scalable AI technology; Promote AI innovation and application. In 2019, Joshua Bengio, the winner of the Turing Award, pointed out that deep learning should be based on perception and develop in the direction of cognitive-based logical reasoning and knowledge expression, which coincides with the idea of the third generation AI proposed by Academician Zhang Yi.
This is also the background of the era when Hua Zhibing was born. Nowadays, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and 5G technology, the prelude to human-computer coexistence has begun, and digital human technology is gradually being applied in various scenarios. We hope that Hua Zhibing can rely on a large model. In the face of different learning stages and application scenarios, instead retraining the model, but enriching and enhancing the model in turn. For example, in his freshman year, he can do poetry, draw and write music; in his sophomore year, he can do math and Chinese problems. We expect that Hua Zhibing can surpass human beings in many cognitive intelligences in the future. He can not only recognize images, write poems, draw, answer mathematical questions, but also program, write code and do web pages. Maybe then, she can graduate. For her, this will also be a very difficult cognitive process. Tang Jie said.
Of course, in addition to learning knowledge and skills, Hua Zhibing is also a growing girl. Hua Zhibing’s “teachers” hope that she can also improve her emotional intelligence more. Perhaps in the future, when people communicate with Hua Zhibing, she can not only answer questions, but also communicate and interact naturally and happily like real friends and family members. These are also the capabilities and qualities that digital people are expected to have.
Hua Zhibing is jointly trained by the Computer Department of Tsinghua University, Beijing Zhiyuan Research Institute, Zhipu AI and Xiaobing Company. As an important member of the ecological system on the “Wudao” super-large-scale AI model, Huazhibing is also a joint embodiment of the technical strength of Tsinghua University, Zhiyuan, Zhipu and Xiaobing.
Relying on Zhiyuan’s “Wudao 2.0”, Zhipu AI data and knowledge two-wheel drive AI framework, and Xiaobing’s world-leading AI dialogue Q&A complete framework, Hua Zhibing can not only write poems and music, generate pictures, but also have a certain ability of reasoning and emotional interaction, which makes her much different from ordinary virtual characters.
