Wang Ning: We’ve come to Tongtong’s town again. “Tongtong” is six years old.
"Tongtong" created by Zhu Songchun's team is not only a digital image, but also the world's first general artificial intelligence agent with value-driven and embodied growth as its core. Its mental level is equivalent to that of a five- or six-year-old child, and every time it grows, it explores the path for the transformation of the AI research paradigm.
Zhu Songchun, 57 years old, is a dual-employed professor at Peking University and Tsinghua University and the director of the Beijing Institute of General Artificial Intelligence. He has been conducting academic research in the field of artificial intelligence for more than thirty years. In the past five years, the birth of "Tongtong" began with his core exploration: establishing a heart for machines. He believes that in order to achieve a qualitative change in artificial intelligence from "completing specific tasks" to "understanding the human world", it is necessary to get rid of dependence on massive data and instead build a cognitive architecture with causal reasoning and self-awareness.
Wang Ning: Most people think that as long as you give it enough data to know all life scenarios or give it enough information, it seems that it can learn.
Zhu Songchun: Weak physical interaction and weak social interaction can be solved through big data, but for strong interaction, such as making glutinous rice balls, what does the sensor of the robot look like? How should the hand movements be done to collect this data? This is not easy to implement by default data as before. Because the experience of our communication process is different every time, when it enters thousands of households and industries, the magnitude of this scene will be too great.
Zhu Songchun: As a general intelligent agent, we actually do not do a lot of data training, so we have taken a technical route driven by cognition and value causality.
In 2010, Zhu Songchun was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2011, during the Fukushima nuclear leakage incident, Japanese robots were unable to complete core tasks due to lack of autonomous intelligence, which inspired him to start thinking about the limitations of traditional AI research paths.
After seeing the limitations of the traditional artificial intelligence route, Zhu Songchun began to turn to general artificial intelligence research that is closer to human cognition. In 2020, he ended his overseas life and returned to China to take the lead in preparing for the establishment of the Beijing Institute of General Artificial Intelligence.
Zhu Songchun: We were thinking about whether we could build an AI baby, and later we called it “Tongtong” and regarded it as a representative of one of the roads leading to AGI.
Wang Ning: What exactly is the concept of general artificial intelligence? There is a difference between artificial intelligence and general artificial intelligence.
Zhu Songchun: There are differences. First, it has to complete unlimited tasks. Second, it has autonomy and self, and it is not something you say or do. Third, it must be driven by one's own inner value, and it must have original intention and value.
In order to let "Tongtong" truly grow up, Zhu Songchun and his team built a realistic 3D virtual world for it, allowing it to explore the world like a human child in a highly simulated physical and social environment, learn basic life skills and social skills, and develop cognition and mind at the same time.
Zhu Songchun: We refer to developmental psychology and children’s growth scales. From the age of 1 to 3, children basically learn embodied physical intelligence, which is to rummage through boxes, run around, and knock things over.
Zhu Songchun: After the age of 3 or 4, you start to learn social intelligence. It knows that you are unhappy and hate it. It needs to control itself and cannot yell or run around casually. This is when social intelligence begins to appear, and it knows how you see it. This training is social intelligence, which means that based on its cognitive architecture, it should map your feelings into its head, so that it can think from your perspective.
Wang Ning: But as a robot, you have to cultivate it and train it to produce such instincts.
Zhu Songchun: On the surface, this is called training, but in reality, there must be a structure in its head to train it. Therefore, the first step in social intelligence is that it needs to know what you are thinking, and it will begin to recognize the value of others. Another step is our common interests. When we open a company, how will the interests be distributed? We have common interests, shares, and the construction of a common value system for the country, nation, and mankind. On this basis, we assign various levels of value to it.
Zhu Songchun: Only after assigning value, everything will have its own values. Therefore, the process of training "Tongtong" is the same as the moral education we teach children, which is to build children's values and constantly upgrade them.
Now "Tongtong"'s mind has grown to the level of a six-year-old child. Its activity space has gradually expanded from a small house to a complete virtual town. In the virtual town, Tongtong will encounter some unexpected situations. At this moment, someone asks it to help find a cat feeder, and at the same time someone asks it to do other things.
Technical staff: In fact, "Tongtong" has the task management ability. When we have different tasks, it will sort according to the importance and priority of the problem and its own value to choose what it should do.
When "Tongtong" learns to say "no", it means that it is no longer just a program that passively executes instructions, but an intelligent agent with independent will and value judgment. Zhu Songchun believes that the hallmark of general artificial intelligence is the ability to complete unlimited tasks, the ability to make independent decisions, and is driven by inner values rather than passively executing instructions. "Tongtong" shows the "childhood" of general artificial intelligence.
Zhu Songchun: When it comes to the safety of artificial intelligence, we hope that its value system will be safe during the shaping process of "Tongtong". So what kind of value system is safe? A very important thing – it must be kind and have a basic conscience. At the same time, it must have a so-called cognitive immune system and a value immune system. It does not accept some values or these things. In essence, I realize that it is ultimately a cultural competition.
In the global artificial intelligence competition, hardware such as computing power and electricity are important competitive factors. However, Zhu Songchun believes that it is not only these external conditions that determine the future, but also the battle to build the underlying intelligent architecture from the source with conscience and value immunity as the core. Such an intelligent architecture can prevent AI from becoming a "bottomless tool" and build an alignment of AI safety and ethics from the underlying architecture.
Zhu Songchun’s relationship with artificial intelligence began in the 1980s. At that time, he was studying as an undergraduate in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Science and Technology of China. At a time when many people did not know what AI was, he established general intelligence as the direction of his exploration.
Zhu Songchun: My entry point is mainly academic curiosity and appeal. I think this is so interesting. I have to define and think about so many problems and realize them. I can realize the world's first general artificial intelligence. Life is so short, and it is so great that this can be done.
Having worked in this field for many years, Zhu Songchun realized that general artificial intelligence has left the laboratory and is the atomic bomb of the future information space and the winner in competition with major powers. As a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, he focuses on original architecture, AI security governance, and talent cultivation. He also hopes that the growing "Tongtong" will be able to enter thousands of households and integrate into thousands of industries in the future.
Zhu Songchun: "Tongtong" is actually a brain. Hubei and central and western Chongqing need it very much. We combine the advantages of Beijing's scientific and technological innovation with their advantages of industrial innovation, and promote the application of these in the real economy, which I think is another huge advantage of China, such as emergency management and medical care. We have an intelligent agent factory dedicated to building this kind of platform. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, we will further form a large platform to help them build such intelligent agents.
Wang Ning: In the future, we can see "Tongtong" who are emergency managers, "Tongtong" who are doctors, and "Tongtong" who are housekeepers?
Zhu Songchun: Yes, thousands of industries and households need to do this step by step.
Producer丨Liu Bin Shen Gongfu
