(Yicai) June 7 -- Fudan University, a prestigious university in Shanghai, will debut at least 100 courses related to artificial intelligence starting this fall semester amid China's growing demand for AI professionals.

The university's AI-BEST system targets all undergraduate and postgraduate students, Yicai learned.

China’s demand for AI professionals in 2030 will be six times that of 2022, according to a report from McKinsey. Since the setup of the first AI major in 2018, almost 540 domestic universities have registered AI majors for undergraduate students.

Fudan's AI-BEST system has different kinds of courses. Basic courses focus on mathematical fundamentals and programming, model training, scenario development, as well as AI ethics. Secondly, essential courses are tied to certain majors while subject courses are interdisciplinary with other majors such as science and engineering, as well as medicine. Finally, thematic courses focus on specific application scenarios regarding socio-economic or industrial development.

The new generation of AI has become a driving force for great technological leaps, industrial optimization and upgrading, as well as an overall surge in productivity, Professor Chen Yan said. The system reflects the university’s vision of the AI roadmap, taking the lead in innovation in vertical fields and keeping up with the latest progress in large language models to support AI empowerment across various sectors, Chen added.

The aim of the courses is to build up students’ independent creativity and to teach them how to resolve practical issues, Qiu Xipeng, a professor in charge of Fudan’s ChatGPT-like MOSS model who will be teaching essential courses.

Besides Fudan University, other Chinese universities including Beijing's Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have established schools of AI to respond to the changing industrial landscape and labor market.

Editor: Emmi Laine