On 10 July, a brain-inspired intelligence themed forum was successfully held at the Shanghai World EXPO Centre, as a part of the Fourth World Artificial Intelligence Conference.

Organized by the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-inspired Intelligence at Fudan University, the forum was comprised of a series of academic presentations, a book launch ceremony and a panel discussion, attracting approximately 200 attendees on site and an online audience of over 8000.

Focused on innovations in theory and technology of brain-inspired intelligence, the forum set out to discuss the integration of AI and neuroscience and shed a light on the future trend in this field bygathering together influential scientists, entrepreneurs, officials from government and international organization all around the globe.Prof. Michael Levitt,the Laureate of 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a member of both the American National Academy of Sciencesandthe British Royal Academy of Science, was invited to chair the forum.

In the effort to develop Artificial General Intelligence, a major open question is the degree to which current approaches will be able to produce ‘real’ and human-like understanding, or whether new directions will be needed to deal with broader aspects of vision and cognition. During his inspirational presentation,Prof. Shimon Ullman,the Professor of Computer Science and the Head of the AI CenterattheWeizmann Institute of Science, described how brain-inspired structures can provide substantial contributions towards vision systems with more human-like capability in terms of a fuller understanding of the visual environment, with minimal external supervision.

Prof. Bo Honganchored his presentation on human speech decoding and interfacing. Prof. Hong isthe Professor of Biomedical Engineeringand the Deputy Dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Tsinghua University, where he led his team to developa minimally invasive brain computer interface imbedded in skull, with a similar design of cochlear implant, translating the neural activities directly into synthesized speech or text.This novel neural interface will pave the way for a seamless link between human intelligence and machine intelligence.

Prof. Timothy Denison,the Professor of Engineering ScienceandClinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, discussed a new implantable stimulator that implements chronotherapy as a feedforward input to supplement both open-loop and closed-loop methods. This integrated algorithm allows for stimulation to be adjusted to the ultradian, circadian, and infradian patterns observed in patients through slowly-varying temporal adjustments of stimulation and algorithm sub-components, while also enabling adaption of stimulation based on immediate physiological needs such as a breakthrough seizure or change of posture. This algorithm is crucial in tailoring a more patient-specific therapy approach.

In addition to adjust physiological state, brain computer interface also plays a key role in intervening psychological behavior.Dr. Valerie Voonisthe Distinguished Investigator at Fudan University and the Senior Clinical Fellow at the Medical Research Council of the University of Cambridge. Dr. Voon’s presentation focused on interventional experimental neuropsychiatry identifying modifiable biomarkers anchored on cognitive and computational processes using multiple modalities. Shediscussed how to modify physiology and behaviour with precise stimulation time-locked to the cognitive process moving towards brain-computer interface studies, showing the capacity for brief stimulation to decrease risk taking tendencies and enhance subjective positive emotion. This theory-driven approach leads towards precision neuromodulation for neuropsychiatric disorders.

Deep learning has achieved impressive performance across a wide variety of domains in the past decade due to its ability to learn very complex functions by adding more layers and more neurons within a layer.Dr. Dacheng Tao,The President of JD Explore Academy, Fellow of Australian Academy of Science and Fellow of Royal Society of New South Wales, pointed out that despite ofthegreat success in practice, a clear understanding of the fundamentals of deep learning is still lacking. Inhistalk,he presentedhisinvestigations, initiatives and insights to the interpretation of the successful deep learning.

The roundtable discussion revolved around four topics:How will the brain research inspire the development of artificial intelligence? What can we do to translate the AI technology into applications, for instance, drug development, clinical application, brain computer interface, robotics? What will be the impact of BCI to the society in the future? And how to bridge the forefront research and industrial commercialization?

Recorded session available online:

https://online2021.worldaic.com.cn/forumdetail?uuid=15ce0aa155d8468096aaea20beb1f301