Have you heard of AlphaGo? It is the computer program that defeated the world champion in 2016. The pusher, Aja Huang, senior researcher at DeepMind, is from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, NTNU. On Dec. 27th, Aja Huang came back to NTNU and met with President Chang Kuo En and his professors. Later, Aja shared his experience with NTNU students at Gongguan campus.
In addition to President Chang, Vice President Wu Cheng Chih, Sung Yao Ting, Prof. Lin Shun Shii, and Chairman Berlin Chen all attended the meeting. They talked about the Artificial Intelligence industry and their experience at school. It was a delightful morning.
Aja encouraged students to grab the opportunity to ask questions at the beginning of his talk. In the talk, Aja encouraged students to ask questions. He said that Taiwanese students are as good as students from other countries, but they are less likely to ask questions or chat with other people. It's probably because that they are worried about their English ability, which is really a pity.
According to Huang, he often chats with outstanding professionals met in seminars or international competition. He would even email them for further discussion. From time to time, he would learn from these experts and gain ideas and techniques that he wouldn't have thought of. On the other hand, his classmates often talk with Chinese speaking people.
Huang emphasized the importance of communication and team spirit 'AlphaGo is the result of teamwork. It's impossible for one person to design AlphaGo alone. He suggested the students to learn how to communicate with people when still at school. As long as you are willing to put the effort, artificial intelligence is actually not that hard.
When speaking of the discussed topic 'Will artificial intelligence replace human?', Huang said that AI will change the structure of many industries so he would recommend everyone to learn some basic knowledge about it.