Chinese Ministry of Education, Sinovation, and Peking U Join Hands to Train AI Talents

In Beijing today, China’s Ministry of Education, Sinovation AI Lab, and Peking University jointly announced the Global AI Talent Training Program for Chinese Universities. The program will include tutorships from Turing Award winner John E. Hopcroft, Deep Learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, and Sinovation CEO Kai-Fu Lee.

The program has its origins in a February meeting between Kai-Fu Lee, officials from China’s Ministry of Education, and computer scientists from more than 50 Chinese universities.

There are two components, the DeeCamp Student Boot Camp and a Teacher Training Program. In the explorational phase, the program will select 100 teachers and 300 students from top CS-heavy Chinese high schools to test teaching methods. The bigger plan is to educate at least 500 teachers and 5,000 students over five years.

In addition, the Ministry of Education plans to set up the China-US University AI Talents Cooperation Training Program to provide Chinese students with AI scholarships for US colleges and universities.

In July 2017, the State Council issued the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan and listed “accelerating the education of top-notch AI talents” as a primary task, emphasizing the importance of “improving the artificial intelligence education system, strengthening talent reserve and echelon building, and occupying the AI highland in China.”

Today’s announcement provides a framework with the international experience and expertise required to take on that task.