Interview with Chen Tianqiao: Throw money at an AI researcher sitting on a cold bench

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is empowering all walks of life, making a battle for talent inevitable. As a frontier brain science field of high global attention, it not only attracts a lot of capital investment, but also has extremely high requirements for cross-talent.

Chen Tianqiao, founder of the Tianqiao Brain Science Research Institute (tcci), recently said in an exclusive interview with the first financial reporter through remote video connection that China has many top talents in the field of artificial intelligence, and some of them have been poached by high salaries in industries such as automatic driving, but there are many outstanding AI talents doing research in universities and universities in obscurity. "We want to find these lonely people and invite them to join brain science research, and I'm willing to pay for the income difference between them and their corporate counterparts."

Musk has brought more attention to brain-computer interfaces

In 2016, Chen Tianqiao launched a $1 billion funding project for brain science worldwide, and he announced a $100 million basic research grant at the California Institute of Technology in the United States and a 500 million yuan clinical research in brain science in China. The projects that have been announced so far include the Frontier Laboratory of Applied Neurotechnology at Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University and the Artificial Intelligence Mental Health Laboratory of Shanghai Mental Health Center.

"We expect to fund a number of projects in China in the future, which is a bit like buying a horse bone." Chen Tianqiao told the first financial reporter. He also said that half of the remaining $800 million or so will be invested in basic research and the other half to support clinical research.

Chen Tianqiao revealed to the first financial reporter that he is looking for excellent artificial intelligence talents through all channels to attract them to the field of brain science. To that end, TCCI has supported more than 40 global academic conferences on brain science this year.

At the beginning of the establishment of TCCI, Chen Tianqiao envisioned being able to "solve the mysteries of the human brain" through a large investment in basic research. In the interview, Chen Tianqiao admitted that the mysteries of the brain are too complicated, and he does not have a medical background, and the process of understanding the basic research of brain science will be quite long. "It's not that we can't do anything about it." Chen Tianqiao told the first financial reporter, "With the help of artificial intelligence, we can accelerate the clinical transformation of brain research and support brain science research with the latest technical means." ”

Artificial intelligence technology has played a huge role in brain-computer interfaces, the frontiers of brain science in recent years. The technology has gained more attention especially after Tesla CEO Elon Musk founded Neuralink. Professor Richard andersen, supported by Chen Tianqiao at the California Institute of Technology, is engaged in brain-computer interface applications, such as being able to rely on electrode signals to allow a person to play the piano through his mind.

This year, Neuralink released a number of eye-catching research results such as allowing monkeys to play video games with their minds, which Chen Tianqiao also paid great attention to. However, he believes that what Musk has achieved is not a new technology, and Chinese researchers can even surpass it to some extent.

"In the laboratory of applied neurotechnology, there are brain-computer interface technologies including flexible cortex and deep electrodes, deep brain stimulation (dbs), and noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (tms), where magnetic signals stimulate brain nerves through the skull to intervene to solve problems such as depression, and ultrasound to regulate the brain." Chen Tianqiao explained to the first financial reporter.

He emphasized: "It is not a new technology to insert electrodes into the human brain and let it control people's emotions or actions." "Chen Tianqiao believes that Musk has used his publicity to attract the attention of ordinary people to the existing technology of brain-computer interface." Musk's breakthrough lies in his increase in the number of channels, the accuracy of the electrodes, and the development of a minimally invasive surgical implantation system. Chen Tianqiao told the first financial reporter, "But this is a quantitative change, not a qualitative change." ”

Give researchers more time

Chen Tianqiao told the first financial reporter: "Unlike basic research that requires long-term investment, artificial intelligence technology is more conducive to human beings to solve immediate problems. ”

Chen Tianqiao said that China has obvious advantages in clinical research. "Our first funding project in China was in collaboration with the Zhou Liangfu Foundation and Huashan Hospital to discover mining tools to explore the brain." Chen Tianqiao told the first financial reporter, "Now we have set up an artificial intelligence laboratory, which we hope to provide a map for excavating mining tools." ”

Chen Tianqiao revealed that he invested tens of millions of yuan in Tao Hu, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to develop invasive flexible brain-computer interface electrode research. "Other investors listened to Tao Hu and said that it would take 10 years to make consumer-grade products, so they wouldn't invest, and I told Tao Hu that I would give you 20 years to do it." Chen Tianqiao said, "As long as the money is spent purposefully, even if it is spent quickly, I am willing to provide continuous support." ”

In addition to brain-computer interfaces, Chen Tianqiao is also interested in artificial intelligence for capturing human physiological characteristics. Tcci's newly supported Artificial Intelligence and Mental Health Laboratory will conduct data analysis through artificial intelligence to capture the behavior of the population and identify corresponding cognitive problems through model training and calculation. These physiological characteristic data include respiratory rate, heart rate, gait, etc.

He told first financial reporters that in China, the number of people with mental disorders is about 240 million, but we do not have enough psychiatrists to diagnose and treat. This requires studying an objectively trained model to achieve a standardized level of diagnostics. "Our goal is to turn local data into overall data, short-term data into long-term data, subjective data into objective data, and a small amount of data into all data." Chen Tianqiao said.

However, as people talk more about data privacy protection, the use of artificial intelligence to analyze human physiological big data also faces ethical challenges. In this regard, Chen Tianqiao told the first financial reporter: "This issue is what we have been studying, and I spend ten hours a week discussing issues with experts, the most of which is data privacy protection." Full respect for the country's legal policies is the minimum, and the so-called breakthrough research cannot be done at the expense of ethics, which we are fundamentally opposed to. ”

He believes that within the scope of compliance with policies, regulations and ethics, privacy issues can be solved through technology and strategy. For example, in terms of technology, AI sensors can be combined to judge behavior.