HKBU Hosts Annual Christmas Lecture by Dr Harry Shum on “A Gentle Introduction to AI Creation”

World-renowned artificial intelligence expert Dr Harry Shum, recipient of the honorary doctorate in Science from HKBU in 2020, delivered a talk on “A Gentle Introduction to AI Creation” at the HKBU Annual Christmas Lecture on 21 December 2021.

The lecture drew an audience of over 120 academic and research staff, students and alumni, with the honourable presence of three Emeritus Presidents, Dr Daniel Tse, Prof Ng Ching Fai and Prof Roland Chin.

In the Lecture, Dr Shum talked about the recent development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning, which has made AI creation an exciting cross-disciplinary research area with many practical application scenarios. He then introduced three principles of AI creation and discussed the full pipeline of the AI creation process, from creating to rendering to packing.

To explain how AI learnt from human creators and the relationship between AI creators and human creators, Dr Shum shared a number of AI creation examples, including poems, paintings and music, and pose some challenges about IP protection.  He also shared a video of Hua Zhibing, China’s first virtual student powered by a deep-learning model developed by Tsinghua University to demonstrate the power of AI creation and how China has been making strides in the field of AI technology.

Dr Shum’s lecture was well received by alumni, colleagues and students, and aroused many intriguing questions about the way forward for AI creation, such as emotional and consciousness development.

Please click here to view the online photo album.

The lecture drew an audience of over 120 academic and research staff, students and alumni on the university campus.

The lecture had the honourable presence of three Emeritus Presidents, Dr Daniel Tse (2nd from right), Prof Ng Ching Fai (1st from right) and Prof Roland Chin (2nd from left).

Prof Alexander Wai, President and Vice-Chancellor, delivered a welcoming remark.

Prof Yike Guo, Vice-President (Research and Development), delivered a closing remark and thanked the participants for joining the HKBU Annual Christmas Lecture.

Dr Harry Shum introduced the principle of AI creation from various perspectives.

Dr Harry Shum introduced the principle of AI creations from various perspectives.

Prof Johnny Poon, Associate Vice-President (Interdisciplinary Research), hosted the Q&A session at the HKBU Annual Christmas Lecture "A Gentle Introduction to AI Creation”

Prof Yike Guo (right), Vice President (Research and Development), presented a souvenir to Dr Harry Shum (left).

About Dr Harry Shum

Dr Shum was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2017 and the Royal Academy of Engineering of the UK in 2018. He is an IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow for his contributions to computer vision and computer graphics. He was conferred a Doctor of Science, honoris causa, in HKBU in 2020.  For more about the speaker, please visit https://www.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/about/honlist/2020_hondoc_HarryShum.jsp