Basics of AI knowledge to be taught in schools in China

Beijing. May 4. Silkroadnews - China wants to be a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. To get there, it needs to equip pupils and high school students with basic AI knowledge, South China Morning Post reports.
China has published its first AI textbook for high school students, as the country relies on the youngest generation, even younger than college graduates, to win the world battle for talents in the AI development field.
The textbook, released in April and titled “Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence”, comes around six months after China’s State Council called for the introduction of AI-related courses in primary and secondary education, the report reads.
The lead author of the textbook is Tang Xiaoou, an information engineering professor at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. The textbook details the history of AI and some of its major applications, such as public safety systems with support for facial recognition and autonomous driving.
About 40 high schools across China, mainly in developed megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai, will be the first participants in the pilot program for teaching students the basics of AI.
AI is the simulation of human intellectual processes by machines, including learning and reasoning, as well as robotics and virtual reality. By 2022 the global value of business in the field of AI is expected to reach $3.9 trillion, the forecast says.
A recent report by the Tencent Research Institute shows the United States leading among other countries in both the number and quality of AI specialists and that China will not be able to solve the problem of shortage of talent in the near future, despite the priority given to the field since 2017. However, the number of experts in AI in China may surge to 5 million in a few years’ time, the publication reads.