Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Youth AI Carnival 2024
On Saturday, November 9th, 2024, I went to the 2024 Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Youth Artificial Intelligence Competition and AI Tech Carnival on a cloudy day. I went out of my home right after attending a college information session. Taking something to eat, I rushed through the door at ten past eight o’clock. My intuition and my understanding of the metro system smoothly led me to the Exhibition Center in Futian, and when I finally got to the International Exhibition Center in Baoan Fuyong, it was almost eleven o’clock. At that moment, I felt as if I went back to when I was young when I was confused by Waterlands Resort (海上田园), Sea World (海上世界), and the Green World (青青世界). At first, I was a little annoyed and blamed myself for not checking the information correctly – my home is very close to the correct location. Soon, I discovered how expensive it was to get a taxi from Futian to Fuyong, and I determined to take the subway back again.
Nov 9th, 2024
2024 Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Youth Artificial Intelligence Competition and AI Tech Carnival
The experience was still meaningful because that was my first time taking the subway and going to the Exhibition Center in Futian. I thought, perhaps this is a city walk opportunity in my busy application season. I started observing the buildings around me and sensed the odor and my surroundings. I lived in Futian long ago, and revisiting here gave me a different feeling. Shenzhen’s development is strikingly fast, especially since it is a city with many tech companies. I tried to sense my position in this urban city. While feeling a little detached from the skyscrapers, the music in my ear[1] made me feel like I was a wanderer in a legendary place – where I stepped on was previously marsh or ocean. Suddenly, everything I knew about Shenzhen connected with me. I wouldn’t consider myself a person interested in STEM, but now I think – that perhaps AI and coding would be the language and typing skills of the future, and Shenzhen offers an environment for these progressions to flourish.
Talking back on my journey in the carnival, I found everything is young, like my impression of Shenzhen. The Exhibition Center is as new as the number 20 metro line going to it, so as the students at this carnival, the youngest student was only in kindergarten level. Many booths were companies providing various courses incorporated with AI technologies. Many companies offer English courses and other STEM-related courses. Two of the booths were even aviation schools, where students can participate in their courses to bridge the related career or attend their weekend courses to learn to fly planes/helicopters. Different corporations, including China Unicom, provided VR technologies. On the stage, there was a panel discussion about innovative education and how to fuse different skills into the curriculum. These events seemed to match my imagination – this fair is about a future language. The analogy may not be accurate since a language is not defined as I observe. However, I sensed from this carnival the emphasis on communication without barriers using a series of skills, such as English and coding skills.
At the carnival, there were many students from Hong Kong primary or middle schools. This was my first time attending a collaborative activity between students who lived using different primary languages. One principal in the panel mentioned that their school required students to acquire three languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. However, people’s living habits and social tendencies may still differ because they speak different languages. However, I observed that in the (fun) competitions offered by the organizers, students from other schools communicated to complete a specific challenge. Before that, they were with their family or classmates. Through doing the same challenge, I saw they started communicating, even though the process was less smooth.
Walking around in the exhibition hall, I discovered many companies are using new business strategies and developing new products that fit people’s needs. Previously, we learned about the possible future world in Great Works WORLD and that our imagined future is often less likely to meet the actual future. In this event, I discovered that it might be because the market was constantly tracking the needs of the majority of customers. What happened in the novels and other art forms were often romanticized futures full of risks and adventures. I feel that people are constantly balancing between the ideal life and the real needs.
Coming to this carnival opened my thinking and view of the world around me, which was beyond my expectations. When I saw children experiencing the VR world on the game chairs, I thought of the scene in the movie Ready Player One. The film is set in the near future in 2045, making it another sci-fi movie about the plausible future. The movie is very political and quite unrealistic, considering the real world in the movie is also very different compared to our current world. However, what will happen in the future and what will be the effects of our lives will usually be unknown. From this event, I found that many children and their parents are interested in AI and coding-related skills. The previous me liked the idea of progressing AI technologies less, but now, it seems an essential component in our future.
[1] Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes
