On October 31st, at the “TEC2018 Education Innovation Conference,” Yu Minhong, chairman of New Oriental, delivered a keynote speech on “Opportunities and Development of AI Education.” He believes that the real revolution in the field of education in China in the future is not the AI revolution, but the subversive revolution after the combination of the internet, AI and blockchain technology.
At the beginning of his speech, Yu Minhong pointed out that the training field in China is full of anxiety. Behind this are two reasons: one is the uncertainty of Chinese policies, and the other is that all commercial applications must be added with AI, even though many companies have not invested much in AI technology. He said that half of the second anxiety is self-imagined because everyone is not interested in traditional education. But if there is no discussion on traditional ideas, how to apply AI to education is a headache.
In terms of AI, Yu Minhong elaborated from a technical and application level. Some companies do not have enough data now, but they are afraid that their data will be taken away by large companies when they cooperate with large companies. In this regard, he believes that if the data is not large enough, then the data has no value for you. So if a company’s data is very small, it actually needs to be raised in the middle of this big company’s forest because new things will appear when thousands of data are combined.
“After you join a large data platform, can you share these data? Whether it’s through artificial intelligence or other researches, can you enjoy the data results produced at the same time? If these two problems are solved, your data can be merged.”
When talking about AI investment, Yu Minhong said: “Only when you truly realize how to improve students’ scores and how to improve teachers’ standards can your entire business system become healthier. Because no matter how much AI investment is made in the future, it may not necessarily replace teachers. Will AI be better than teachers in lectures in the future? Will there be such a day? There will definitely be one. But before this day arrives, we still need to use teachers. Therefore, improving teachers’ face-to-face teaching level has become our core point.”
When it comes to facing capital attitudes, Yu Minhong believes that you should not quickly cater to the capital market because the capital market looks good or bad for you. The education field is a field where slow work produces fine work. Capital is profit-seeking. Therefore, he expressed concern about educational institutions that have received relatively large investments.
Finally he said: “The real revolution in the field of education in China in the future is not an AI revolution. It is a subversive revolution after combining internet, AI and blockchain technology. This is what we can look forward to.”