At the recent 2017 Annual Meeting of Chinese AI Industry held in SIP, the experts, scholars and enterprise representatives reached a consensus that inter-disciplinary talents are in high and urgent demand in the AI era, when artificial intelligence (AI) is widely applied in both production and living.

Wang Xinyu, general manager of Suzhou EAVISION Robotics Co Ltd, gave an example concerning application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in farming. He explained that the UAV developers must be proficient in AI and knowledgeable about agricultural science that covers climate, soil, topography, crops and pesticides to ensure a high adaptability of the UAVs to variable conditions.

Nearly all the attendees agree that education needs a revolution to meet the new demands.

"Education ranks the second among the sectors most influenced by AI development," said Li Deyi, board chairman of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence and academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
"The current education concepts and teaching approaches need changes, because they can no longer satisfy the future demands for talents," said Xi Youmin, executive president of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU).