Author | Liu Yu Geng Ting
Image | Courtesy of the organizer
A new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is in the ascendant, and the new crown epidemic, climate change, energy security, food shortages and other common problems facing the world are common problems facing the world.
Global issues require global collaboration. To cope with the common challenge of human destiny, it is all the more necessary for the global scientific and technological community to strengthen high-level open cooperation and provide systematic and high-quality solutions. This is the unanimous consensus of the experts attending the "Open Science" keynote meeting of the World's Top Scientists Forum.
"Open Science: Building an Open Innovation Ecosystem" is also the annual theme of this forum, with a view to bringing together the world's top scientific forces, facing major global problems and challenges, and seeking scientific answers through open exchanges and discussions.
Wan Gang:
Call for cross-border synergy and advocate the spirit of openness
Wan Gang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, focused on the theme of "science, technology and innovation oriented to globalization", and elaborated on the opportunities, challenges and missions commonly faced by all countries in the world today, taking China's artificial intelligence development, cross-border synergy trend and green and low-carbon practice as the starting point.
Artificial intelligence has become a key driver of industrial change. Wan Gang said that artificial intelligence is developing from single technology to integrated technology, from single intelligence to group intelligence, and from data-driven to scene traction. In order to accelerate the systematic breakthrough of a new generation of artificial intelligence, he suggested that first of all, we must promote the continuous progress of the development level of artificial intelligence, and solve the knowledge integration of multi-source heterogeneous data structure, cross-domain knowledge graph, causal reasoning, and independent learning through the combination of brain-like science and cognitive theory in basic research. Second, we must lay out and build new infrastructure, attach importance to the ethical research of artificial intelligence and the popularization of science, and strive to eliminate the knowledge gap, the digital gap, and the intelligence gap. He particularly emphasized that it is necessary to strengthen high-level open cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence, actively integrate into the international artificial intelligence innovation ecology, and participate in the global research and development application of artificial intelligence and the division of labor in the industry.
Cross-border synergy has become an inevitable trend in the development of science and technology. As an expert in the new energy automobile industry, Wan Gang said for example, the intelligence of the car itself is limited and will be affected by the environment, and the vehicle-road collaboration technology represented by intelligent networking can solve this problem. The fusion of vehicle road information can provide cognitive intelligence beyond the perceptual field of vision for autonomous driving, beyond the perceptual limitations of bicycle intelligence, and avoid behavioral conflicts between cars and cars. In addition, vehicle-road collaboration can improve the safety of automatic driving while also effectively reducing the cost of additional sensors in vehicles.
In addition, cross-border collaboration will also drive the system reform of drive systems, power electronics, and electrical architectures, and the electronic and electrical architecture of electric vehicle control based on intelligent control systems and 5G high-speed networks will move from distributed architecture to cross-domain centralized architecture, which can solve the problem of chip shortage in the long run.
Green and low carbon has become the common mission of global scientific and technological innovation. Wan Gang said that "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality" will be a broad and profound economic and social systemic change. The scientific and technological community should further consolidate the consensus on development, jointly take green and low carbon as an important "constraint" for global industrial development and ecological civilization construction, and accelerate the improvement of scientific and technological levels and industrial restructuring.
In the field of new energy vehicles, from January to August this year, the global sales of new energy vehicles reached a new high, exceeding 3.8 million units, an increase of 184.8% year-on-year. Wan Gang believes that from the perspective of the proportion of emissions in the whole life cycle of automobiles, although the carbon emissions in the use of new energy vehicles have been greatly reduced, the proportion of carbon emissions in the manufacturing stage will increase. He suggested that more attention should be paid to reducing carbon emissions from the manufacturing and recycling processes of parts and materials that are carbon-efficient throughout the life cycle. It is necessary to promote the transformation of the whole industrial chain and the whole life cycle to carbon neutrality through low carbonization of new energy vehicle energy supply, low carbonization of material supply, low carbonization of production processes, and low carbonization of transportation and travel.
"China's scientific and technological community actively advocates the spirit and concept of open science without borders, barrier-free and non-discrimination, takes inclusive innovation as the guide, and undertakes the mission of common development of open science." Wan Gang calls on the global scientific and technological community to jointly advocate the spirit and concept of open science without borders, barrier-free and non-discrimination, and to work together to build a community with a shared future for mankind with high-level open cooperation and effective actions.
Michael Levitt:
The success of basic research also has a recipe
Is basic research like buying lottery tickets, and being able to make important results is just a lucky thing? For Michael Levitt, vice president of the World Association of Top Scientists and winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, there is also a code for the success of basic research. "Outside cambridge in the UK, there is a well-known laboratory, the UK Molecular Biology Laboratory, where 28 Nobel laureates were born, including me." Michael Levitt said that the laboratory's Nobel Prize "recipe" has a total of 5 elements: with sufficient funding, each team can receive stable support of $1.6 million per year; there is no obvious bureaucracy in management, free material supply, advanced equipment and computer technology; small teams, usually about 5 people; always facing strong pressure from peers, the standard of measuring their own excellence is always the next best paper; there is no concept of hierarchy, and students are as confident as Nobel laureates.
In fact, in addition to external factors, the inheritance of basic research requires considerable personal factors. Michael Levitt, for example, said that for his pioneering achievements in protein crystallography, the British biologist Perutz was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. After Perutz first used X-ray diffraction for structural biology research, one of his doctoral students, Crick, used this method to discover the dna double helix structure, for which he won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. "Perutz could have signed Crick's paper, but he didn't take the credit of the young scientists, which is a good story in the history of science." Michael Levitt said, "I like a quote from Peruts – truth is always the winner. ”
John Hopecroft:
Science communication needs to evolve with the times
In the view of John Hopecroft, winner of the 1986 Turing Prize, in addition to the exchange between scientists, the communication between scientists and the public, that is, the dissemination of science, is also very important. "But science communication also needs to change the way it does and keep up with the times."
Academic conferences and publications have always been an important way for scientists to obtain scientific information, which makes Hopcroft feel that science communication can also be achieved through publications, and the only thing to pay attention to is to find influential publications. Once, for the importance of science popularization for the education of 1-3-year-old children and brain development, he sought excellent writers to write for them. But friends in the publishing world told him, "You're so stupid about that!" Now more than half of people don't read books or newspapers at all. It also made Hopcroft realize that finding the right way to spread social media might be more effective than publications.
"Another issue to focus on is talent development." Hopcroft found that China's population is 4-5 times that of the United States, but there are more Doctoral talents in the United States than in China. This is because undergraduate education in China cannot produce talents who meet the requirements for doctorates. He believes that this is because Chinese universities pay too much attention to improving international prestige, including indicators such as research funding and the number of papers, and ignore the improvement of undergraduate teaching quality.
"The focus of education is not what the teacher says, but what the student remembers and whether it can be applied in practice." Hopcroft suggested that in addition to scientific research, undergraduate education should be included in the evaluation system of university teachers, and more energy should be spent on courseware updates, teacher-student interaction, and student classroom participation.
In fact, not only China, but also the global education system and talent training have similar problems, hopcroft hopes that the world will work together to change this phenomenon.