The agreement-signingceremony of Artificial Intelligence (High School Edition), the text bookedited by Prof. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, Turing Award winner, Academician ofChinese Academy of Sciences and Dean of IIIS, was officially held in FITbuilding, January 7, 2020. Prof. Yao, Prof. John Hopcroft, Turing Award winner,and Mr. Junfeng Zong, president of Tsinghua University Press, attended theceremony and delivered speeches. The ceremony was hosted by Prof. Longbo Huang,Associate Editor of the textbook and Director of AI Class of IIIS.

AI has seen impressive advances over the past decade worldwide andhas an increasing impact on the society as a whole. It is true that the breadthof the talents across AI will lay the foundations for large-scale growth inthis field. Therefore, in the Notice of the State Council on Printing andDistributing New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan issuedin 2017, it pointed out that the national intelligent education project shouldbe implemented, and courses related to AI should be set up in primary andsecondary schools.In2017 Edition of Information Technology Curriculum Standard for General HighSchools, the Ministry of Education added AI as a curriculum module to theinformation technology curriculum in 2018.

In his speech, Prof. Yao said that thepublication of this textbook is a positive response to the call of thestate.  The intention of compiling this textbook, Prof. Yao mentioned, wasto help high school students acquire correct concepts of AI in the stage ofscientific enlightenment, which is also a question that China and the world areexploring. Prof. Yao believed “we have the responsibility to solve ittogether”.

Prof. John Hopcroft, ForeignAcademician of Chinese Academy of sciences, thought highly of the textbook ashaving a "fundamental impact" on China's education. He said that theworld was changing in a fundamental way, and AI was a big driver of this change.It’s important to educate the next generation talent to understand and preparethem for the future work.

Mr. Junfeng Zongbelieved that the textbook would be a milestone in the education of AI,which is of great significance to enhance the links between high school anduniversity teaching and promote the national intelligent education project.

Artificial Intelligence (High SchoolEdition) was compiled by IIIS AI team under the general editorship of Prof.Yao and it will be officially published and issued by Tsinghua University Pressin September 2020. Based on a complete review of AI curriculum of Yao class andAI class, the editorial team selected eight core basic modules of AI, includingsearch, machine learning, linear regression, decision tree, neural network,computer vision, natural language processing and reinforcement learning. What’smore, the book will also be accompanied by exclusive website resources toprovide programming help and advanced challenge content. The editorial teamhopes that this book will enable high school students to master the corefoundation and principles of AI, and to think and analyze in a scientific way,so as to embrace the era of AI.

TheEditorial Board Members of Artificial Intelligence (High School Edition):

Editor-in-Chief:Andrew Chi-Chih Yao

AssociateEditor: Longbo Huang

EditorialBoard Members:  Yang Gao, Jian Li, Xiongfeng Ma, Wenfei Wu, Yi Wu, YangYuan, Chongjie Zhang

(ByXialei Zhou and Shuai Sun)