2023 Government Work Report Renews Focus on Sci-Tech Innovation

The Government Work Report, delivered to the 14th National People’s Congress on Sunday, has underlined the significant progress made in scientific and technological innovation over the past five years, reaffirming the leading role of technological innovation.

In an exclusive interview with China.org.cn, Shen Yang, a professor from Tsinghua University specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), big data and the metaverse, shared his insights into technological fields China should concentrate on for successful sci-tech evolution.

In addition to current technological focuses, Shen noted that China should also heed the development of green energy, AI-enabled content generation, the metaverse, androids and quantum computing in the future.

According to Shen, AI-enabled automatic content generation serves as a revolution for human thought, the metaverse involves the three-dimensional virtual world and human-computer interaction, and androids can be used to replace manual labor, which are all advanced areas where early developments should be made.

Shen then proposed several measures to secure better advances in these areas, including making algorithms open source, stopping the monopolizing of computing power, and utilizing data in a sound, balanced manner.

“Today’s knowledge generation is not completely closed-off like it used to be,” Shen explained. “Especially in terms of research, the collective power should be leveraged and the role of marginal groups should be given to play.”

Shen stressed that cooperation between government, enterprises, universities, research institutes and end-users is necessary to put these recommendations into practice.