Dr. You Yuan Chun (游源淳)
AI pioneer, Founder of Integrative Narratology, An interdisciplinary professor spanning more than a dozen academic fields won one best scientist award and two best researcher awards within one month in early 2024.
Founder of Integrative Narratology Intelligent Storytelling Co., Ltd.
BIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY
Born in 1944 in China, YOU’s academic legacy is deeply rooted in a distinguished career. He earned his Ph.D. with a focus on fractal sets and fractal dimensions from Michigan State University in 1976. After a fruitful academic journey, YOU retired from National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan around 16 years ago. His significant roles include deputy director of the computer center, founder and program chair of the Knowledge Society Program in the Center for General Education at National Sun Yat-Sen University.
Prior to these roles, YOU held key positions such as research fellow of the National Science Council, concurrently as director of the computer center at Hsinchu Science Park Administration, chairman of the Department of Industrial Management and Technology at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, director of the Graduate Institute of Industrial Management at National Cheng Kung University, and adjunct associate researcher at the Institute of Information Science at Academia Sinica.
Post-retirement, YOU continued to contribute to academia as an adjunct distinguished professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Harbin Institute of Technology in China.
Professor You have proactively advanced computerization across both public and private sectors as well as industrial production automation. His endeavor made substantial contributions to Taiwan’s economic development. As a result, he was honored with inclusion in the Who’s Who of the Republic of China in 1977. During his tenure at National Cheng Kung University and as the director of the Institute of Industrial Management, he advocated the crucial integration of theoretical knowledge with practice. Leveraging his expertise in information theory, management information systems, and decision support systems, he actively fosters collaboration between the industrial and educational sectors.
While working part-time at the Institute of Information Science at Academia Sinica, YOU once promoted artificial intelligence research in Taiwan’s academic community, working together with the esteemed academician of Academia Sinica Fu king-sun who is renowned as the “father of pattern recognition”. YOU played a pivotal role in advancing artificial intelligence research in Taiwan’s academic sphere.
In addition to his AI expertise, his Industrial management expertise is also valued by the government. When Taiwan Executive Yuan initiated Taiwan four major industrial automation project in 1981. He was appointed as project leader of plastics industry automation project.
YOU is frequently invited to prominent roles such as guest speaker, invited speaker, panel session chair, and program committee member for both domestic and international academic conferences. Additionally, he has organized several national conferences, served as conference chair. In addition to his conference roles, his involvement extends to serving as a review committee member for journals, a consultant and principal investigator of projects in both the public and private sectors. This multifaceted engagement underscores his broad impact and influence in various professional realms.
In 2001, at the World Science and Technology Park Construction and Development Exchange Conference in Beijing, YOU was invited as guest speaker together with famous mainland economists Wu Jinglian(吴敬琏), He Zuoxiu(何祚庥,also a re-known physicist), former Director General of the International Society of Science and Technology Parks, Luis Sanz, and former Director of Software Technology Parks of India, BV Naidu at the opening ceremony. YOU’s speech was insights on cross-strait software park collaboration to accelerate software internationalization. You and Naidu had exchanged valuable opinions for the prospective of future software development in Taiwan and India, during the two days journey of China Science and Technology Park. Subsequently, he became a sought-after guide in major science parks, contributing significantly to the technological and economic development of mainland China. His frequent interviews by major TV stations and newspapers, notably CCTV, further highlight YOU’s influential role in shaping and promoting advancements in technology and economic development across the Taiwan Strait.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Artificial Intelligence, Expert System, Computational Linguistics, Multi-Modal Larger Language model, Knowledge Graph, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Engineering, Knowledge Economy, Knowledge Society, Management Information Systems, Decision Support System, Information Theory, Complexity, Fractal Mathematics, Integrative Narratology, Philosophy of Consciousness, Conscious Science, Narrative Communication, and Cognitive Science.
Summary of accomplishments
More than four decades ago, I recognized the profound significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for humanity. My visionary outlook at that time surpassed the contemporary state of AI development. This revelation sparked a lifelong commitment to AI-related research, lead me to launch a pioneering narrative discipline titled “Integrative Narratology”. In recognition of my significant contributions of AI-related research and this ground breaking discipline I founded recently, I am honored to receive the Best Researcher Award at the 9th South Asia Education Award-24 Virtual Ceremony on 28 January 2024. The physical award distribution ceremony is scheduled for 10 March 2024 in Hyderabad, India in collaboration with 8th Indian World Film Festival-24. Less than 5 days from this Virtual Ceremony, I am honored again to receive the best scientist award from Record Owner on 1 February 2024. That means a world record was also set in my groundbreaking discipline.
Integrative narratology is a digital storytelling discipline that amalgamating diverse narrative theories, mathematics, philosophy, cognitive science, complexity science, humanities and arts, as well as digital technologies, including AI and the Metaverse. It represents a holistic approach to storytelling and serves as a promising path towards achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
During the 1970s and 1980s, the AI landscape was dominated by expert systems. I actively contributed to this era, developing several expert systems and publishing many AI-related papers on expert systems and knowledge management.
The primary aim of AI transcends specific tasks, delving into the understanding and emulation of human narrative intricacies encompassing speech, behavior, and thought. The ultimate goal is to enhance AI’s narrative proficiency to match human capabilities. As we navigate the 21st century, marked by the digital narrative era, traditional 20th-century narrative theories become obsolete. Integrative narratology is developed to address this problem.
The birth of integrative narratology was officially announced in its inaugural paper presented on October 15, 2023, during the 7th International Conference on E-Society, E-Education and E-Technology (2023 ESET). I had the honor of being invited as the chair of the Innovations in Education Technology session, a testament to the impact of this ground breaking discipline. This paper will be included in IEEE Xplore and indexed by Ei Compendex, Scopus.
This initial paper of Integrative Narratology proposed an integrated narrative conceptual framework(Fig. 1) and crafted a holistic framework termed the integrated narrative system (INS). The integrated narrative conceptual framework is intricately woven across five narrative dimensions: science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and humanities. Rooted in diverse theoretical foundations, it draws from philosophy, cognitive science, traditional narratology theory, and mathematical realms, including entropy, fractals, and graph theory. This multi-dimensional approach enables a holistic understanding of narrative structures.
At its core, INS integrates cutting-edge technologies to propel its five narrative dimensions. The metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI), and computational cognition form the backbone of its technological prowess, fostering an immersive and intelligent narrative experience.
The development of INS finds its origins in the seminal paper “Expert System for Model Management,”(Fig. 2), I presented at the 1986 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This foundational work and the conceptual framework, coupled with the latest advancements in expert systems and AI technologies, shape the holistic framework of INS(Fig. 3). The convergence of theoretical depth and technological innovation positions INS as a dynamic framework poised at the intersection of narrative and advanced technologies.
In a dialogue of Gary Marcus and the father of linguistic Noam Chomsky at a Web Summit, in conversation with Jeremy Kahn from Fortune in March 2023. Chomsky said GPT is not a language and doesn’t understand language. Marcus thought it’s short sighted that will wind up with a technology that actually has a kind of short road ahead, isn’t gonna last as long as people think. They both found out that the system is deficiency, and agreed that it can’t think and don’t understand the world. Gary Marcus also had a debate with one of the AI godfather Yoshua Bengio on December 23, 2019 about what’s the best way forward for AI? Which is actually a longstanding debate between symbolic AI and connectionist AI.
To bridge this ongoing debate between symbolic AI and connectionist AI, I have integrated these two mainstreams of AI through INS, by combining multi-modal larger language model(MLLM) and knowledge graph, along with various reasoning mechanisms in my hybrid expert system(HES). Furthermore, the model management of my hybrid expert system can integrate diverse models, including mathematical, statistical, simulation, business and financial models, as well as various language models, multi-modal LLM, and specific-purpose models or apps. This holistic integration positions my INS as a promising path towards AGI.
At the core of INS is Hybrid Artificial Intelligence (HAI), which is divided into HES and MLLM. HES consists of a Connectionist Expert System(CES) and a Formalism Expert System(FES). CES has the learning capability to automate the Knowledge Base construction through the use of training examples. The reasoning mechanism of CES includes Bayesian network reasoning, graph neural network reasoning and information network reasoning. FES’s symbolic and logical inference engines include rule-based reasoning, frame-based reasoning, case-based reasoning, commonsense reasoning, and fuzzy logic reasoning etc.
Building upon the foundation laid in the initial paper on Integrative Narratology, I have authored several Chinese papers focusing on advancing the theory and practice of integrative narratology recently, as evidenced in the attached publications. This endeavors propel Integrative Narratology toward becoming a comprehensive discipline that nurtures interdisciplinary literacy bridging the realms of science and humanities, and empower individuals with this interdisciplinary literacy, enabling them to transcend AGI while it is reaching its peak base on the INS framework.