At the Frontiers of General Artificial Intelligence Technology Exhibition in Beijing, a virtual robot toddler called Tong Tong was revealed. Developed by the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI), Tong Tong is not a physical robot, but a virtual one. Visitors at the exhibition saw how Tong Tong interacted and adapted to her environment – autonomously correcting a skewed picture frame or cleaning up spills, indicating her ability to carry out human intentions without direct support.
Furthermore, unlike traditional AI models, Tong Tong can assign tasks ourselves, engage in self-learning, and display a range of emotions. According to a BIGAI video, she is capable of comprehending human common sense, differentiating right from wrong, and expressing her attitudes in various situations.
China aims to produce thousands of such autonomous robots by 2025 and considers this more disruptive than the internet or smartphones. Zhu Songchun, the director of BIGAI, noted that creating AI entities that can understand the real world and have a wide skill range is crucial. Zhu, a renowned AI scholar, left a professorship position at UCLA to establish BIGAI.
The exhibition also featured the Tong Test, an innovative AI assessment platform created by Zhu. The test evaluates AI abilities across five dimensions: vision, language, cognition, emotion, and learning and incorporates a comprehensive value system. Zhu highlighted that for AI to blend seamlessly into human environments, it must learn and execute tasks in complicated settings, driven by values and a comprehension of causality. He also stressed their research’s focus on ensuring a more efficient and secure integration of robotic AI applications into our natural environments.
