Chinese scientist creates world's first AI 'child'

The baby girl, affectionately named Little Girl, or Tong Tong in Chinese, was unveiled at the International General Artificial Intelligence Technology Exhibition held in Beijing on January 28-29, sponsored by the Beijing General Artificial Intelligence Institute (BIGAI), according to the Beijing Daily .

Staff introduce Dong Dong at the exhibition. (Photo: Beijing Daily)

Unlike the large language models common in AI, Dong Dong can proactively perform tasks independently, from exploring her surroundings to cleaning her room and wiping up stains. She has her own emotions and intelligence, a high capacity for self-learning, and an open and clean personality.

At the exhibition, Dong Dong freely interacts with visitors. If someone spills milk, Dong Dong will find a towel and clean it up herself. She fixes a crooked picture frame herself. If a frame is too high for Dong Dong to reach, she will find a stool so she can reach the frame without human help.

“Dong Dong possesses intelligence, trying to absorb and understand the common sense taught by humans. She can distinguish right from wrong and express her attitude in various situations,” BIGAI said in the introductory video.

Based on general artificial intelligence standards and individual test tasks, Dong Dong exhibits behavior and abilities similar to a 3-4 year old child. Through exploration and interaction with humans, she continuously improves her skills, knowledge, and values.

Visitors interact with Dong Dong at the exhibition. (Photo: BIGAI)

One of the key aspects of general intelligence is to possess human-like social understanding and common sense. In addition, an AI entity needs to promote unique values, not only be able to complete a wide range of tasks but also independently define new tasks.

“To move towards general AI, we must create entities that can understand the real world and possess a variety of skills,” said BIGAI Director Zhu Songchun.

Zhu, who spent 28 years studying, living and working in the United States, left his position at the University of California in 2020 to return to China to found BIGAI. A world-renowned scholar in the field of artificial intelligence, Zhu’s research interests include general AI, computer vision, autonomous robots and many other areas.

The scientist has received the Young Investigator Award from the US Naval Research Laboratory and the Marr Prize from the International Conference on Computer Vision, one of the highest awards for research papers in the field.

He also served as Chair of the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Associate Director of the Senior Membership Evaluation Committee of the IEEE Computer Society.

Hua Yu (Source: SCMP, Beijing Daily)

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