Doctor Yi Xiaoyuan in a Wheelchair: After 9 Years of Studying, I Graduated From Tsinghua University
Contents:IJCAI-SAIA YES was held in Shanghai from July 5 to 7. At this grand event that brought together young scholars and academic masters in the field of AI, we had the honor of interviewing Dr. Yi Xiaoyuan from Tsinghua University.
"A Tsinghua student in a wheelchair has graduated." This topic topped the Weibo hot search list in early July. The protagonist is our guest of this interview - Yi Xiaoyuan.
At the IJCAI-SAIA YES conference, Xiaoyuan Yi gave a presentation titled "Text Style Transfer Based on Learning Instance Latent Space", introducing a new method for automatic text style transfer:
By using the flow model, a stronger style signal is constructed based on multiple style instances to enhance the style accuracy of the converted text and achieve a better balance between the two indicators of style and content.
This method is suitable for semi-supervised training, making it possible to further improve the conversion effect by using a small amount of parallel data.
At the same time, it can effectively avoid the negative impact of decoupling complexity on experimental results, and also achieve consistency in text content retention and style accuracy after style conversion.
I don’t use Weibo, I don’t want to be famous, I save my time for scientific research
Yi Xiaoyuan was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 6, and was given a critical illness notice at the age of 11, and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since.At the age of 21, he was admitted to the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University as an undergraduate student of 2012. With the company and care of his mother, he has now spent 9 years studying at Tsinghua and successfully completed his doctoral studies.
During his PhD studies, Yi Xiaoyuan studied at the THUNLP Lab of Tsinghua University, under the tutelage of Professor Sun Maosong.During my doctoral studies, I mainly researched automatic text generation.
Despite his physical disability, Yi Xiaoyuan has achieved fruitful scientific research results.He has published more than 10 papers in top NLP/AI academic conferences such as AAAI, IJCAI, ACL, EMNLP, as well as important domestic journals and conferences such as CCL and Journal of Chinese Information Sciences.
But the popularity on the Internet does not seem to have any impact on Yi Xiaoyuan's life. When asked, "What does it feel like to be on the hot search on Weibo?"Yi Xiaoyuan admitted, "I don't use Weibo and I don't read it."
In fact, this is not the first time that Yi Xiaoyuan has rejected the "opportunity to become famous" on social networks. In order to focus on scientific research during his doctoral studies, he has repeatedly rejected invitations to cultural or entertainment programs.For him, the most important thing is to devote time to scientific research.
Learn from Sun Maosong and create AI poet Jiuge
Human intelligence includes many aspects, such as logical reasoning ability and language intelligence. The former corresponds to activities such as Go, and its application in the field of AI can be seen in AlphaGo;Language intelligence involves human creativity, and text generation is a representative behavior of it.
Yi Xiaoyuan, a poetry lover who often wrote poetry during undergraduate studies, came up with an idea.Can machines have their own creativity like humans? What are the limits of machines' textual creativity?This also became his research direction during his doctoral studies.
In 2017, under the guidance of Professor Sun Maosong, Yi Xiaoyuan developed the AI Chinese poetry writing system "Jiuge".userJust enter sentences, paragraphs or keywords to automatically generate poems of different genres such as quatrains, acrostics, regulated verse, and ci.
Jiuge used the latest deep learning technology at the time, combined with multiple models designed specifically for poetry generation.Trained on more than 800,000 ancient poems.At the same time, Jiuge also supports multi-modal input, multi-style and multi-genre poetry generation, and human-computer interactive creation.
Although Jiuge has no restrictions on the speed and quantity of creation, and occasionally produces some amazing works, in Yi Xiaoyuan's opinion, the emergence of good works may be a matter of probability.Jiuge is still at the level of a third-rate amateur poet.The vast majority of poems created still have gaps in chapter structure and coherence compared to works created by humans.
Yi Xiaoyuan believes that AI and humans should complement each other, promote each other, and progress together.
Take Jiuge as an example. Although humans are currently the teachers, using the excellent literary works accumulated over thousands of years to teach machines, with the advancement of technology and the update of algorithms,The results of machine creation will get better and better.
Machines occasionally produce eye-catching works, which inspire and motivate human creators to create more and better works, which can then be used to improve model performance.This is a mutually reinforcing relationship.
My first paper was submitted 4 times and rejected 4 times. The reviewers’ comments are the most valuable.
Like many doctoral students,Yi Xiaoyuan's research during his doctoral studies was not all smooth sailing.
When I submitted my first paper, it was rejected 4 times in a row, and it was not accepted until the 5th time.This process lasted for more than a year, almost two years. Yi Xiaoyuan admitted that he was under tremendous psychological pressure at the time.
Yi Xiaoyuan, who had suffered from illness since childhood, did not give up easily this time. He became more courageous with each setback, and the more he failed, the more he wanted to challenge again.Finally, with the help of his supervisor and laboratory classmates, Yi Xiaoyuan's first paper during his doctoral studies was included in CoNLL 2018.
Yi Xiaoyuan's first PhD paper was included in CoNLL 2018
Afterwards, when reflecting on this incident, Yi Xiaoyuan frankly said, "Don't be afraid of having your paper rejected." He felt that if a paper is rejected multiple times,butIt means that the article must have many obvious shortcomings.At this time, you should reflect extensively and absorb the reviewers' valuable opinions.
In addition, you must have your own judgment. If a paper is submitted just to make up the numbers, it is normal not to be included.
But if you are very confident in your work,So don’t hesitate and get discouraged because of repeated rejections.Continue to improve the paper according to the reviewers' comments and submit it again. Regardless of whether the paper is included or not, you will gain something.
To my juniors: Quick questions and answers from experienced people
When he entered college, Xiaoyuan ranked only 69th in his grade due to his weak foundation. After unremitting efforts, his grades rose to 31st in his sophomore year and 9th in his junior year.In 2015, he received the Tsinghua University Undergraduate Special Scholarship (only 10 people each year).
But doctoral studies are very different from undergraduate studies. The problems encountered in undergraduate studies and the courses required to study have clear paths.During the doctoral stage, you have to rely entirely on your own exploration. Sometimes you get lost, and sometimes you can't see the results of your hard work.In this regard, Yi Xiaoyuan gave some "suggestions" from someone who has experienced it.
Q1: What preparations do I need to make before studying for a doctorate?
Scientific research is not as cool and glamorous as we imagine. The actual scientific research process often faces many difficulties and can be very boring.
Therefore, for those who want to study for a doctorate,I recommend you to do an internship in a laboratory during your undergraduate studies.You can also experience the real scientific research process by doing odd jobs.
There are all kinds of difficulties in doctoral studies, such as not being able to think of a research direction or a method of argumentation, or unsatisfactory experimental results, or rejection of papers. To overcome these academic difficulties,You need to have a deep love and strong belief in your research direction.
Since you have chosen scientific research, you must be mentally prepared.Academic rewards are more about spiritual rewards and social recognition, not necessarily wealth and fame.
Q2: How to determine the topic?
Read as many papers as possible and keep up with the latest technology in the industry. Think more when choosing a topic and communicate more with classmates and tutors.Share your ideas.
Experienced mentors have a keen sense of the general direction and can make relatively reliable judgments about your choices based on their thinking.
Q3: How to avoid the same questions? How to deal with the same questions?
Before choosing a topic or conducting an experiment, make sure that the topic you want to study meets one of the following two conditions:
1. No one else can think of it, but you can. If you come up with an idea on the spur of the moment, it is likely that others will also think of it.
2. Although everyone has thought of it, only you have the ability to do it.
In case of a collision,You can first carefully read the papers with the same topic.Check whether the other party has thought of the details you have thought of, and whether the other party's research method has many shortcomings. If the answer is yes, then the topic can be further improved.
Q4: How to select top conferences when submitting papers?
Each summit has its own characteristics.Try to flexibly adjust the paper according to the preferences of different top conferences.
For example, ACL focuses more on analysis, ideas, and results, while IJCAI is more comprehensive, focusing more on results and methods, and the methods must be cooler. Before submitting a paper, you should make your own judgment and then "submit it to their preferences."
Q5: What is the most important quality for a PhD student?
The most important qualities for young scholars are exploration and persistence.
The essence of scientific research is exploration, and exploration will inevitably lead to failures and no results in the short term. Therefore, do not be discouraged by failure.
This is also the fun of scientific research: making many new attempts and trying many new methods.Don't be afraid of this research just because it is unprecedented and you have never been exposed to it. You must try more when studying for a doctorate.
Persistence is also very important for writing and publishing papers.Before you get started, you must think clearly about the direction you choose and evaluate the significance and implementation methods of this research.
Even if you encounter various difficulties during the process and the experimental results are not good, don't give up easily.Because there may be many reasons for the poor results, we must address them one by one in a targeted manner and we will eventually be able to achieve the result.
Q6: What kind of support do you hope society, family, and school will give to young scholars?
From a social perspective,I hope to give more support and understanding to young people entering the academic circle.
They have invested a lot of time and energy, but some basic subjects such as mathematics and physics may not produce results in the short term. At this time, they should be given more opportunities and time.
From a family perspective, I hope that family members can be more understanding and tolerant of young scholars, and that PhD students should not stay away from home for the entire year just to do scientific research.Young people should communicate more with their families.
Schools should provide more support to young scholars in terms of systems and funding.
Q7: What learning resources are recommended?
Study papers canTo access arXiv,Pay attention to the latest papers and research trends in the industry;Google Scholar It will also automatically recommend based on personal research direction and interests;You can also pay attention to the list of included papers of each top conference.Filter and read by research direction or abstract.
For book reading, some basic books are recommended, such as Bengio's "Deep Learning", Professor Zong Chengqing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' "Statistical Natural Language Processing", and "Natural Language Processing Based on Deep Learning" co-authored by Professor Deng Li and Professor Liu Yang of Tsinghua THUNLP Laboratory.
Accessibility promoter in Tsinghua University
As a member of a special group, Yi Xiaoyuan has always hoped to combine his research interests with barrier-free public welfare.
During his doctoral studies, he organized and participated in many barrier-free public welfare interactions on the Tsinghua campus.
In 2016, Tsinghua University established the Tsinghua University Student Accessible Development Research Society, and Yi Xiaoyuan is the founder and second president of the society.
During his tenure as president, Yi Xiaoyuan organized the club to conduct a number of research, proposals, and publicity work on campus, mainly from the aspects of laws and regulations, relevant systems, and people's consciousness and ideas, and invited students to sit in wheelchairs and wear eye masks.Spread and promote the concept of barrier-free and enhance everyone's awareness of barrier-free.
Since the establishment of the association 6 years ago,The number of members has also grown from 3/4 at the beginning to 150 today.The efforts of Yi Xiaoyuan and his classmates in the club have brought about very significant improvements to Tsinghua University's barrier-free facilities.
The school has made many repairs to the barrier-free facilities on campus. Currently, Tsinghua’s main teaching buildings are equipped with barrier-free toilets, and many old teaching buildings have been renovated to be barrier-free, with the addition of barrier-free elevators and barrier-free ramps.
Students' awareness of barrier-free accessibility has also been enhanced, greatly reducing the occurrence of bicycles blocking barrier-free ramps.
Yi Xiaoyuan, who graduated with a doctorate, hopes to combine what he has learned in the future.Do something to use technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
In Yi Xiaoyuan's view, the promotion and popularization of barrier-free facilities and concepts are also necessary outside Tsinghua University. Only in this way can we jointly create a more inclusive and complete social environment.