Tech companies partner with universities to train the next wave of talent

Academics and industry experts called for new training formats for talent in the artificial intelligence field to better fit with the latest industry shifts and development trends as AI-backed industry applications increase steadily.

There is an increasing trend of integration between industry applications and artificial intelligence, said Baidu Chief Technology Officer Wang Haifeng. On the other hand, it's becoming easier for developers to build AI-based applications with ready-to-use modules.

A dozen of small and medium developers were given an innovation breakthrough award for their AI applications based on the deep-learning platform. The awards were delivered by Ni Qianlong, vice president of the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology and Baidu's Vice President Wu Tian at Baidu's deep-learning developer conference, titled Wave Summit.

"We welcome industry experts and engineers to become lecturers at our university to help with the training of AI talent," Xie Shaorong, dean at the School of Computer Engineering and Science at Shanghai University, said during a panel discussion at the summit.

Baidu's open-source deep-learning platform PaddlePaddle announced it has brought together over 4 million developers and accumulated more than 476,000 deep learning models to fuel domestic AI development.

"Combining research and academic studies with real product design and coding processes to help students gain hands-on experience is also essential for AI companies' partnerships with colleges," commented Zhou Aimin, deputy director of the Institute of AI Education and vice dean at the School of Computer Science and Technology at East China Normal University.

Luo Xinmin, vice dean at the School of Information and Communications Engineering of Xi'an Jiaotong University, said it has started to collaborate with tech giants like Baidu, Huawei, ZTE and 360 to educate college students and has built curricula and training programs specific to the field.

This July, Baidu's PaddlePaddle unveiled its public technology sharing platform in the Pudong New Area to empower local research institutions.

It aims to establish at least 15 such deep learning application sharing centers in the future through partnerships with regional government authorities to co-build AI models and tools and utilize the newest and best practices to attract more developers from all types of industries.