On June 19, the "Open: Digital Literacy in the Era of Artificial Intelligence" event, hosted by the National Digital Literacy and Skills Training Base and organized by Tencent Research Institute and Tencent Academy, was successfully held in Shenzhen. As artificial intelligence technology ushered in new breakthroughs and indicated that digital technology will bring greater changes to society, the question of "what kind of digital literacy should be used to meet the era of artificial intelligence" has once again become a hot spot for people. At this event, guests from all walks of life gathered together to introduce Tencent's digital literacy practice and deeply discussed cutting-edge topics in the field of digital literacy.
Yang Jian, head of Tencent's National Digital Literacy and Skills Training Base and general counsel of Tencent Research Institute, delivered a speech at the meeting. Zhang Yujin, Senior Operation Manager of Tencent IEG User Platform Department, Wang Jianfei, Senior Researcher of Tencent Research Institute, and Ling Yun, Director of Tencent Youth Technology Learning Center, shared wonderful theme sharing respectively. In the roundtable discussion, Yin Limei, Director of the Digital Economy Research Office of the Information Policy Institute of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, Professor Shen Linlin, Director of the Institute of Computer Vision of Shenzhen University, Zhang Haibo, Deputy Director of the Media and Education Working Committee of China Youth Palace Association, Ma Yanxin, Secretary-General of the Education Legislation Research Base (jointly built by the Ministry of Education and South China Normal University) and other guests shared their understanding and prospects for digital literacy. The meeting was chaired by Lu Shiyu, Senior Researcher of Tencent Research Institute.
"Open" thinking: Digital literacy in the age of AI will be more cutting-edge and challenging
"Shenzhen's summer is sometimes rainy, sometimes clear, and fickle, which happens to be similar to the recent new breakthrough in artificial intelligence to bring us feelings." In the opening session of the event, Yang Jian, head of Tencent's National Digital Literacy and Skills Training Base and general advisor of Tencent Research Institute, used the weather as a metaphor to describe the "uncertainty" brought by artificial intelligence technology. He pointed out that in this context, there is a greater need for digital literacy to deal with the complex challenges brought by digital technologies such as artificial intelligence.
"The evolution of the connotation of digital literacy can be divided into four stages: first, the online protection of minors in the 1.0 stage; the second is the development of adolescents in the 2.0 stage; the third is the improvement of digital literacy and skills of the whole people in the 3.0 stage; and the fourth is the digital literacy in the era of artificial intelligence in the 4.0 stage." Yang Jian believes that these four stages show increasingly complex characteristics, and digital literacy in the era of artificial intelligence will be more cutting-edge and challenging.
He pointed out that the recent AIGC application represented by ChatGPT has brought huge imagination space, and in colleagues who can be directly transformed into productivity, it has also inspired people to think about a series of questions: Is AIGC bringing equal rights after the technical threshold is lowered, or is it a new two-level differentiation and "digital divide" with a higher technical threshold? At the same time, combined with the perspective of global scientific and technological competition, we must also consider cutting-edge issues such as the efficiency revolution, cost revolution and interaction revolution brought by AIGC, as well as the way we respond to global competition. Yang Jian said that the topic of AIGC is more complex and challenging than the issues of juvenile protection and digital ageing caused by previous digital technologies.
"From the perspective of innovation cycle and popularization speed, the impact of new technologies on society has become more and more profound and far beyond expectations." Yang Jian introduced that Tencent Research Institute has long been concerned about the development and response of cutting-edge digital technologies, and the Tencent Digital Literacy and Skills Training Base was jointly awarded by 13 ministries and commissions of the Cyberspace Administration of China in March this year, and jointly applied and operated by multiple teams within Tencent. He said that using the keyword "open" as the theme of the event conveyed an expectation - it was expected that the participants and all sectors of society would open their minds and pay attention to the opportunities and challenges of digital technology, as well as cutting-edge topics such as digital literacy and skill upgrading for all.
Diversified practice: Promote youth education and "new farmer" training and innovation with the help of science and technology
In the keynote speech session of the event, the three guests shared the active exploration of Tencent Digital Literacy and Skills Training Base in the field of digital literacy and skills training.
Zhang Yujin, Senior Operations Manager of Tencent IEG User Platform Department and Head of National Youth Artificial Intelligence Dream Camp, said that since 2019, Tencent's uninsured team has been exploring how to use game technology to help teenagers improve their scientific literacy, and has incubated the Tencent Dingding platform and Tencent's Future Classroom project.
Zhang Yujin pointed out that before the project, the team's research found that there were multiple difficulties in improving the digital literacy of young people across the country in terms of facilities, teachers, courses, and learning exports. Therefore, Tencent has developed the Tencent Dingding platform based on game technology, and developed ten self-developed programming learning laboratories to meet the learning needs of different school ages and programming languages in elementary, junior and advanced schools. Among them, with the three major game technology characteristics of "high simulation", "low energy consumption" and "strong AI", Tencent Dingding launched a "virtual simulation lab" in 2022 to help teenagers, schools and educational units get rid of hardware shackles, and the low-end computers of the Win7 system can access and learn cutting-edge robot programming knowledge. The laboratory was the first to land in Guangzhou, entering more than 1,400 schools in the city, benefiting nearly one million teachers and students, and the relevant popularization results were also selected as the top ten livelihood events in Guangzhou in 2022.
Tencent Dingding has also created the "National Youth Artificial Intelligence Dream Camp" brand activity, bringing systematic courses, training and competition opportunities for young people across the country, especially teachers and students in underdeveloped areas. At present, it has been implemented in more than 12,000 schools in more than 30 provincial-level administrative units across the country, and the cumulative number of courses has exceeded 2.4 million. Zhang Yujin introduced: "In the context of the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, this project actively supports the landing and popularization of artificial intelligence education solutions. ”
In September 2021, Tencent Growth Guardian, Tencent Games and Tencent SSV launched the "Double 100 Intellect and Physical" program, which creates online + offline "future classrooms" and "future sports fields" for urban and rural children from the two dimensions of technology and sports, giving full play to the technological and product power of Tencent Games and exploring the possibility of gamified learning. The future classroom mainly uses online and offline integration to help improve the scientific literacy of teachers and students. Up to now, it has landed 36 schools across the country, covering 14 provinces, municipalities directly under the central government and autonomous regions, offering more than 9,066 hours of science and technology courses, covering 295,000 junior high school students; it has also created a "future classroom" mini program for national science and technology innovation teachers to exchange and share, and a total of 84,100 science and technology innovation teachers across the country have shared education daily and scientific and technological innovation dry goods on the mini program.
Zhang Yujin said: "We hope that through our efforts, we will help improve the scientific literacy of urban and rural children and help them move towards a better future." ”
Wang Jianfei, Senior Researcher of Tencent Research Institute, shared his practice of using live e-commerce training to help "new farmers" improve their digital literacy. He first introduced the observation of the development status of rural e-commerce, believing that the current rural e-commerce has a good infrastructure, but there is still a lot of room for growth. On e-commerce platforms, individual new farmers have less success selling their own goods, and people mainly buy goods from top anchors or second- and third-level suppliers who make influential brands.
What is preventing new farmers from doing e-commerce? "Through interviews, we found that it is not because of the poor digital literacy of users in townships, but the threshold for opening an online store is very high." Wang Jianfei introduced that due to the complexity of opening stores, "new farmers" often hope to have college student partnerships, and the lack of talents in the county has led to a vicious circle of e-commerce development: local industries cannot develop, college students are difficult to return to local employment, college students as people with high digital literacy do not go back, and local industries cannot develop.
Wang Jianfei said that based on this situation, last year, Tencent's southwest headquarters, Tencent Research Institute and WeChat jointly launched the "New Agricultural Tools" program in three counties of Chongqing to help new farmers who did not have in-depth practice of live streaming to use short video tools, and practiced the "three-step" method of offline training + online escort + local fission: the first step, offline training; The second step is to accompany the running online, and the special escort teacher will give the skills guidance of live streaming and bring goods, and establish contact between students; The third step is to cultivate local small MCNs or anchor leaders to play fission and driving effects.
"We conducted a pilot in three counties and cities, cultivating a total of 150 trainees, one of the star trainees is He Caiming, his sales exceeded 20 million at the end of 2022, two-thirds of his revenue came from live streaming goods, because live streaming reduced intermediate links, and the profit per pair of shoes increased by 25%." Wang Jianfei said that this year's new agricultural tool project team will also adjust this model to explore the effect of the project better.
Ling Yun, Director of Tencent Youth Technology Learning Center, introduced the team's exploration in the past 7 years. She introduced that Tencent Youth Science and Technology Learning Center is a professional team under Tencent's human resources system that provides a platform for young people to learn and develop technology, and uses Tencent's resources and strength in human resources, multi-industry formats, cutting-edge technologies and products to create a spiraling training model of "learning-training-fighting" for teenagers. Among them, the "Tencent Mini Goose Series" is oriented to the future, through project research, holiday camps, interactive exhibitions and corporate internships and other modes to help teenagers practice interdisciplinary practice and comprehensive quality improvement, teenagers use digital IP, WeChat mini programs, music and video and other tools to create a variety of original works, express their thinking on cultural inheritance, rural development, aging and other real society, so that Internet technology, tools, data to help teenagers' small ideas and big dreams.
"The emergence of ChatGPT at the beginning of this year has accelerated the development of technology, but also caused a lot of social discussions," Lingyun pointed out, "Children's sensitivity to technological changes is not weaker than ours, and coexistence with AI will penetrate into all walks of life they will engage in in the future." In order to let children understand the technical principles and the logic of human-computer cooperation, we have developed an artificial intelligence learning product to help children understand AI principles and get started with AI practice easily with gamified AIBot competition and AI classic algorithm interactive learning projects. Lingyun introduced that this product gives full play to Tencent's advantages in interactivity, visualization, gamification, etc., supports national-level whitelist events and provincial and municipal events and activities, provides school teachers with classroom teaching tools and high-quality content, and opens the first door of professionalism for more young people who will develop in the direction of engineering practice talents in the future.
Ling Yun said that in the world's top scientific research field, young talents and talented young people have always been precious and valuable talents, and it is also our mission to actively provide professional training soil and cutting-edge practical opportunities, and cultivate and reserve top-notch innovative talents for the country. The center, together with Tencent's security, quantum, and AI cutting-edge laboratories, led by a team of Tencent scientists, led China's top science and technology teenagers in the computer field to challenge high-precision topics, and the "Spark Project" youth group has achieved extraordinary results in industry competitions, patents, academic papers, and professional white papers. In the field of national strategic security, Spark students have created a number of first cases for high school students in the Safety World Cup, National Strong Net Cup, and GeekPwn.
"We hope to use the technology product platform to help innovation in science and technology education, and help improve the digital literacy of young people with innovative talent training programs." She said, "Chinese teenagers, the future is promising. ”
Embracing the Future: Digital Literacy Research Is Not a "Career of Rising and Widow"
In the roundtable session, guests from different fields such as policy research, education, science and technology, and law discussed their understanding and prospects of digital literacy from diverse perspectives.
How to understand the core of digital literacy? In response to this problem, Yin Limei, director of the Digital Economy Research Office of the Information Policy Institute of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, elaborated her understanding. She believes that digital literacy and skills are everyone's adaptability and creativity to digitalization, and everyone's ability to apply, use and control digital technology. "Literacy" and "skills" pay equal attention to one or the other, "literacy" emphasizes the comprehensive quality heritage, and "skills" pay more attention to the ability to apply digital technology in the work. The Action Plan for Improving Digital Literacy for All mentions four major application scenarios, including how to use technology to enjoy a more convenient and high-quality life, learn and work more efficiently, and even make some very breakthrough innovations.
Yin Limei said that the compilation of the Action Plan for Improving Digital Literacy for All considers the human life cycle, and the cultivation of digital literacy should cover every group, and no one should be less. In the future, it is hoped that the platform of the National Digital Literacy and Skills Training Base can reach more groups and give them the opportunity to receive training and experience through various resources of the base. She said: "The first is to build around resources to provide a large number of high-quality social training resources to the society; The second is to strengthen the construction of teachers and volunteer teams; In addition, a series of activities are designed, whether it is training activities or exhibitions, experiential projects, public welfare projects, etc. These are the key work directions that the base will consider in the next step. ”
Zhang Haibo, editor-in-chief of the country's first set of network literacy textbooks to enter the national basic education curriculum and executive deputy director of the Media and Education Working Committee of the China Youth Palace Association, refined the triple meaning of youth digital literacy on the basis of rich front-line work in youth education - there are three understandings of "246". He said that to explain digital literacy in 2 words is to "make good use", that is, to make good use of technology and use it to do good deeds; Explaining digital literacy in 4 words is to "seek benefits and avoid disadvantages", that is, to recognize the two sides of technology and the "double-edged sword" function; To explain digital literacy in 6 words, it is necessary to ensure the safety, health and civilization of digital technology.
"In the face of digital technology represented by artificial intelligence, the same is true," Zhang Haibo said, "First, we need to ensure that technology is safe for individuals, second, we need to ensure that the content can promote the healthy physical and mental development of adolescents, and third, we must ensure that the society built by technology is civilized, whether it is a network society, a digital society or an artificial intelligence society, the civilization of human communication is the bottom line." He also pointed out that in the process of digital literacy and skill improvement, we should not be promoted by the preconceived stereotype that adults are superior to children, but should have an equal mentality and vision with children. Zhang Haibo's participatory digital literacy education practice for children shows that children are more willing to try new things, they often learn to master digital literacy faster than adults, and in many cases children feed back the elderly.
Ma Yanxin, researcher at the Law School of South China Normal University, director of the Research Center for Digital Government and Digital Economy Rule of Law, and secretary-general of the Education Legislation Research Base (jointly built by the Ministry of Education and South China Normal University), pointed out that in the era of artificial intelligence, there should be two understandings of digital literacy: one is "the ability to deal with the complexity of this world", in the era of artificial intelligence, we need to re-understand the changing and complex world, teach children to distinguish what is true and what is false, and more important than the output of the results is to face the constantly changing and complex society. They can choose the right tools. At least at this stage, value judgment is still the last competitive advantage and position of human beings, including judgment on value conflict, aesthetic judgment, subjective judgment, etc.
"The core of digital literacy and upskilling is all people." Using "digital Cantonese cuisine" as an example, Ma Yanxin pointed out that even in the past, we thought that digital literacy was playing an increasingly important role in the most traditional fields that relied on the inheritance of masters. At the same time, he found in his practical research that the digital literacy and skills of fathers in most families are far weaker than those of teenagers, and lack the ability to tutor teenagers. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a social incubation environment for the next generation of digital literacy and skills improvement through the digital literacy and skill improvement of the whole people, especially adults.
Source: China Youth Network
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