Year-end Review from Berggruen China Center

Sent by the The Berggruen Research Center, Peking University:

The year has been challenging but not without inspiration. The Center’s first book, Intelligence and Wisdom: AI Meets Chinese Philosophers, was published by CITIC Press Group in February and has sold over 6300 copies. In March, while promoting the book, we moved all the Centers activities online. We hosted two workshops on “AI Narratives in China”, a collaboration with Cambridge Universitys Leverhulme Center, which explores the effects of local culture and historical narratives on the reception of AI in China. We also held three closed-door workshops for our “Facial Recognition and Privacy” program, which focuses on how facial recognition policies can best reflect cultural values and social practices. The Berggruen Seminar series was relaunched online in July, and we have since hosted four events: “Confucian Common Sense Meets the AI Revolution”, “What Should Care Robots Care About?”, “Digital Personality”, and “AI, Emotion, and Ethics”.

We also launched a new online public program, the Global Thinkers series, which featured Jared Diamond at its inaugural event on risk management in coping with the global pandemic.

In October, the Center launched a new online product, Ruin, which brings together translated articles from Berggruen Institute’s journal Noema and other original contributions sourced locally. We hope that Ruin becomes a public square for creative thinkers where innovative ideas are recognized, debated, enriched, and propagated. We also launched an account on video platform Bilibili, attracting more than 40,000 views over three live streamed events.

The Center welcomed a new cohort of Fellows this year: Bai Shunong, Professor of Biology at Peking University; Duan Weiwen, Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Hao Jingfang, science fiction author and researcher; and Lu Qiaoying and Sabastian Sunday Grève, Assistant Professors at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking University.

过去一年中,固然新冠疫情为我们的工作和生活带来诸多挑战,我们却在危机中看到了发展的新机会。中心第一个出版项目《智能与智慧:人工智能遇见中国哲学家》一书由中信出版社出版,目前售出6300多册。伴随此书的推广活动,我们将所有活动转移到线上。与剑桥大学利弗休姆未来智能中心合作的“中国人工智能叙事“系列已经举办两次工作坊,分别从“中国古代经典对人工智能叙事的影响”和“中国科幻中的人工智能叙事”探索人工智能在中国的本地化解释。 “人脸识别与隐私”项目汇集哲学家、社会学家、法律专家和来自人工智能领军企业的研究人员,旨在对面部识别行为、政策如何最大限度地反映文化价值与社会实践进行探讨。“博古睿讲座”系列自7月在线上恢复,目前已举办四期:“儒家常识遇上人工智能革命”、“COVID-19与护理机器人”、“数字人格:人与人工智能之间的天使/幽灵”以及“AI是无心的吗?智能机器与情感道德”。

此外,我们联合财新传媒推出在线公共项目“界思想家系列”,并有幸邀请贾雷德·戴蒙德(Jared Diamond)主讲了以“全球疫情和危机管理”为主题的首场对话。

10月,中心推出了新的线上内容产品“n”,发布博古睿研究院刊物Noema的优质译文,以及国内外思想家、博古睿学者的原创文章。“睿n”观照“变革时代新思想”, 我们希望“n”成为思想者的交流平台。为了让更多人参与主题讨论,中心开通了视频内容平台哔哩哔哩账户,内容丰富,开通以来的三次直播讲座吸引大概4万人次观看。

中心在年中还迎来了新一批博古睿学者,他们是北京大学教授白书农、中国社会科学院研究员段伟文、科幻作家和研究者郝景芳,以及北京大学哲学系助理教授陆俏颖和王小塞。

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