AI Bull Appointed Vice President of New NTU! The popularity of artificial intelligence in colleges and universities is high, and 9 scientists from large factories have returned to academia in 3 years

Times Finance

2024-08-02 19:52Posted on the official account of Guangdong Times Finance

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01Zhou Zhihua, Dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence of Nanjing University, was promoted to vice president, mainly engaged in research in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

02 With the full wave of artificial intelligence, AI bigwigs in the industry have joined colleges and universities, setting off a wave of reflux.

03From 2021 to the present, at least 9 scientists from large factories have returned to colleges and universities from the industry, and most of them have devoted themselves to research in computer and artificial intelligence-related fields.

04On the other hand, the market demand for AI professionals is increasing, with computer science and technology and artificial intelligence ranking first and third on the popular list, respectively.

05In the next few years, the expansion of application landing positions is an inevitable trend, and the demand for pure research positions will be relatively reduced.

The above content is generated by Tencent's hybrid model and is for reference only

Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Ke Meng

Recently, according to the official website of Nanjing University, Zhou Zhihua, dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence, was promoted to vice president.

Zhihua Zhou is mainly engaged in research in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining. He is also widely known as the author of Machine Learning, an introductory Chinese textbook in the field of AI.

It is understood that Zhou Zhihua's Google Scholar has been cited more than 96,000, and he is also one of the few scholars in the field of artificial intelligence who has won the Fellow "Grand Slam".

With the wave of artificial intelligence in full swing, scholars in related fields have received more and more attention from universities. Times Finance has noticed that another more common phenomenon is that AI bigwigs in the industry have joined colleges and universities, setting off a wave of backflow.

In 3 years, 9 bigwigs left the factory

The number of cases of AI bigwigs returning to colleges and universities is increasing.

At the end of July this year, Yang Hongxia, an expert in the research and development of the original byte large model, joined the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as a professor in the Department of Computer Science. Yang Hongxia was the technical leader of the multi-modal pre-training model M6 with a trillion parameter scale of the Alibaba DAMO Academy. In March 2023, Yang Xiaoxia joined ByteDance, mainly responsible for the research and development of large models, reporting to Xiang Liang, the team leader of Byte AML and Doubao Large Model Foundation. In May 2024, it was revealed that Yang Hongxia resigned from Byte and prepared her own AI startup project.

In July last year, another AI guru, Kaiming Ho, left Facebook Research to join MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He Kaiming studied in the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University with a Ph.D. under the supervision of Tang Xiaoou, the founder of SenseTime, and joined Microsoft Research Asia after graduating with a Ph.D. degree.

In July 2022, Chen Yilun, CTO and Chief Scientist of the Autonomous Driving System of Huawei's Intelligent Vehicle Solution Business Unit, left his post to join the Intelligent Industry Research Institute (AIR) of Tsinghua University as the chief expert of AIR intelligent robots.

In the same year, Dai Jifeng, the executive research director of SenseTime and an expert in the field of computer vision, who once served as one of the four AI tigers, returned to the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University as an associate professor.

In 2021, Qi Yuan, former vice president of Ant Financial, returned to the university and joined the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Industry of Fudan University as the dean. In addition, Qi Yuan also founded a large model company Infinite Light Year, planning to build a base for self-developed 10 billion large models to build industrial applications in medical, game and education scenarios.

According to incomplete statistics from Times Finance, from 2021 to the present, at least 9 scientists from large factories have returned to colleges and universities from the industry, and most of them have devoted themselves to research in computer and artificial intelligence-related fields.

Wang Wei, who has been engaged in algorithm optimization in the Internet Research Institute, admitted to Times Finance that the Dachang Research Institute is not a paradise, and its positioning within the company is more like the rear of the business.

During her five-year tenure, Wang Wei's group has only once promoted explosive business growth with research results. "Most of the ideas are on paper, and the benefits that can actually be brought in terms of commercialization are not ideal." In Wang's view, turning to universities and startups often becomes a common choice for scientists.

On the other hand, with the AIGC setting off a new round of industrial transformation, the market demand for AI professionals is increasing, and the industrial changes are quickly transmitted to the college entrance examination major.

According to Quark's relevant data, in the 2024 graduation season, computer science and technology and artificial intelligence majors ranked first and third on the popular list, respectively. Three years ago, the popularity of artificial intelligence majors had not yet entered the top 10 on the list.

A university teacher told Times Finance that in the next few years, artificial intelligence will undoubtedly be the focus of competition among leading universities, and related courses will also become popular in colleges and universities.

AI projects of large manufacturers are beginning to pursue returns

The exodus of scientists has not stopped the enthusiasm of major technology companies to push forward with AI projects.

On May 15 this year, ByteDance's AI large model "Doubao" family was fully officially announced. Half a month later, the C-end application "Tencent Yuanbao", which relies on Tencent's hybrid model, was also officially launched.

For the AI education scenario, the once frustrated education and training company has found a second spring. Recently, Ape Tutoring's parent company, Ape Power Technology, has shown off two AI education products to go overseas, CheckMath and LeapMath, and Question AI launched by "Homework Gang" and ByteDance's "Gauth" have taken the lead in exploring the way in overseas markets.

According to the latest data from mobile app data analysis agency Sensor Tower, in April this year, Question AI and Gauth once dominated the list of free iOS downloads of educational apps in the United States. According to data from Huafu Securities, the number of users of Gauth has exceeded 200 million.

No company has stood idly by in the face of the user entrance and traffic migration that AI may trigger. Major companies are betting on the AI industry and competing for layout, and the stock prices of the seven sisters of US stocks (Apple, Nvidia, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla) continue to climb.

In this wave, Nvidia, which holds GPUs, has become the world's most competitive "shovel seller". Another chip company, AMD, is also soaring. According to its latest financial report, the company's net income in the second quarter was $2.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 115%, and the net income of AI data center chips increased by more than 881%.

Compared with the chip companies that "sell shovels", the Internet giants that continue to invest heavily have reached a new stage of demanding returns.

"After nearly ten years of deep cultivation and large-scale investment, the competition at the model level of the head company has formed a foregone conclusion, and it is difficult to open the gap again. AI entrepreneur Zhang Liang said to Times Finance.

"In the next few years, the expansion of application landing positions is an inevitable trend, and the demand for pure research positions will be relatively reduced." Wang Wei told Times Finance.

(Interviewees Zhang Liang and Wang Wei are pseudonyms.) ）

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