In the Age of AI, Take Care of Your Heart
Perhaps you have already grown used to this rhythm.
You wake up, and another astonishing agent application has appeared. Large language models are updating by the day and by the night; the giants of technology have the accelerator pressed to the floor.
Amid this gathering momentum and technological rush, what do you feel: the thrill of being carried forward, the dizziness of too much to take in, or a sense of weightlessness, with nothing firm to hold on to?
On the first day of school, Principal Gong Yaodong of the Secondary School Division took the lead in playing with AI. He walked onto the stage wearing Quark AI glasses, with the teleprompter projected onto his lenses.
At this unmistakably tech-infused opening ceremony, however, he offered a different reminder:
In an age when AI is gathering force, students, take good care of your heart.
Dear Yungu students, have you ever had a moment like this?
After two hours of short videos, you put down your phone and suddenly feel hollow, unable to say what you just spent all that time doing?
When homework presents a problem you cannot solve, your first response is not to think, but to reach for your phone and search for the answer?
You see others grinding away, so you grind too. Yet late at night you find yourself wondering: What exactly am I working so hard for?
If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone.
This is what I call "weightlessness": your feet are not on the ground; you are not sure where you are or where you are headed.
In the age of AI, this sense of weightlessness has become stronger.
When AI seems able to do everything, we become less sure what we ourselves should do.
When AI can answer everything, we become reluctant to think.
When AI can generate countless "perfect" things, we start to wonder: What value does an imperfect person like me still have?
Today, I want to talk with you about what, in this age, we can truly anchor ourselves in and rely on.
Among all life on Earth, human beings are the species most adept at using tools. Over time, our relationship with tools, or machines, has moved from partnership toward competition. We now find ourselves racing against them in three dimensions: physical strength, intellectual power, and the strength of the heart.
First, physical strength.
Robotic arms can work around the clock. Unitree Robotics' robots went from yangge folk dancing last year to backflips this year. In the race of purely physical skill, humans are gradually losing the advantage.
Next, intellectual power.
Qwen can read an entire library in seconds. AlphaFold has predicted the structure of nearly every known protein. In computation and storage, activities we used to associate with the mind, AI is surpassing us at an exponential speed.
So what is left to us?
The answer is: the strength of the heart.
In physical strength, we have lost to machines. In intellectual power, we are losing to algorithms.
But the strength of the heart - our values, character, convictions, courage, love, and responsibility - all the things that define who I am - will always belong to us.
Physical strength keeps us alive, like the battery level of a silicon-based organism. Intellectual power represents logic and deduction, like the algorithms of AI. But the strength of the heart represents meaning. It is what makes us, as carbon-based beings, unique and irreplaceable.
AI can help you calculate the optimal answer, but it cannot feel for you what that answer means for your life.
Before GPS, before mobile navigation, even before the compass was invented, sailors crossing the sea found their direction by the North Star.
Among all the stars, the North Star appears fixed. However fierce the waves at sea, once you find it, you know which way to go. It is not the brightest star in the sky, but in a storm, it is the fixed point that guides us forward.
Artificial intelligence and great-power competition are coming toward us like a tsunami. They will become the storms of our age. We urgently need to find our own North Star.
That North Star is not inside any chip or processor. It lives deep within your heart. And the strength of the heart has six dimensions.
First, seek truth.
Professor Cui Weicheng, Chair Professor of Deep-Sea Technology at Westlake University and the first deputy chief designer of the Jiaolong manned submersible, came to Yungu before the New Year. His work has moved from solid mechanics to civil engineering, from composite materials to naval architecture, from human-occupied deep-sea exploration to bionic fish. He said, "If the country needs it, I will do it. If I do not know how, I will learn from scratch."
Today, AI can answer the questions you do not know and explain the concepts you do not understand.
But the words "if I do not know, I will learn" can never be completed by AI on your behalf. The heart's power to seek truth is the desire to keep asking questions even when answers are within easy reach.
Second, choose goodness.
Yungu Grade 8 students Tan Yuqi, Zhou Xinyu, Lin Yuheng, Shi Zixi, Zhang Yichen and others, in the "Beauty of the Disciplines" project, inspired everyone around them with their passion.
AI can do what they did. But when AI does it, no one is lit up from within. The heart's power to choose goodness is the ability to let your passion and light illuminate another person, and to let warmth pass from one person to the next.
Third, cherish beauty.
At this January's Winter Concert, I saw teachers and students from the Yungu Orchestra, together with musicians from our community, play Eastern melodies on Western instruments.
AI can synthesize music that is more perfect. But it will never be moved by the meeting of cultures. It will never have tears in its eyes because of applause from the audience.
Teachers:
If, outside the classroom window, the sky is filled with a sunset blazing with color, pause the lesson for a moment, and let the beauty of heaven and earth move us.
Students:
If you pass a street musician lost in the act of playing, stop and listen; do not withhold your appreciation.
Fourth, be brave.
At the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, Chinese 1500m speed skater Ning Zhongyan had to face the American prodigy Jordan Stolz. Stolz had won all five World Cup races and was nicknamed "the man from the moon" - so strong he seemed barely human. Ning, meanwhile, had often finished with silver, so netizens jokingly called him "the cashier," a pun on always collecting silver.
If it were you, what would you do? Would you accept your fate?
Ning Zhongyan did not. He set a picture of the gold medal as his phone wallpaper and went to Japan to train alone for a full year without going home. On February 19, he broke the Olympic record and won Asia's first gold medal in this event in its 102-year Olympic history.
That is courage: to persevere to the end and defeat an opponent you have never defeated before.
AI can analyze every piece of data, but it cannot give you the courage to hold on just a little longer. The power of courage is to step onto the field even when you know you may lose; to face an opponent who seems unbeatable and still believe you can climb over that mountain.
Professor Luo Xiang once said that courage is the rarest quality in human beings. If one day fate pushes you to a moment that requires courage, he hopes you will be as brave as you imagine yourself to be.
Fifth, take responsibility.
More than a thousand years ago, Qian Liu, King of Wuyue - yes, the figure behind the story in the winter-break hit drama Taiping Nian, and Wuyue was based right here in Hangzhou - wrote in the Qian Family Instructions: "Do not pursue what benefits only yourself; pursue what benefits all under heaven." His descendant Qian Hongchu, facing the gradually unifying Northern Song dynasty in the Central Plains, chose to surrender his territory to the Song, allowing Chinese cultural continuity to remain strong in Jiangnan and sparing millions from the suffering of war. A thousand years later, another descendant of the Qian family, Qian Xuesen, resolutely gave up the generous opportunities available to him in the United States and returned to a China that was then poor and undeveloped, devoting his talents to the country.
When personal gain comes into conflict with a larger calling, what will you choose? AI can help you analyze pros and cons, but it cannot shoulder responsibility for you.
During the winter break, through a reading project organized by Pre10 student Wang Gefei and others, I finished The Worlds I See, the memoir by American AI scientist Fei-Fei Li. I would like to share with you something she wrote about AI: "I once saw artificial intelligence as pure science. Today, I see AI as a responsibility - one shared by all of us."
For a long time, artificial intelligence has pursued scientific rigor. Now, it must also be guided by human values. To make AI more human-centered, I believe, is precisely the responsibility that you, the students who will shape the future, must take on.
Sixth, find happiness.
Many Yungu students are already tempering the strength of their hearts through action:
Pre10 students Zhu Zichen and Zhang Chenjia advanced with courage to the global finals of the Oxford Schools' Debating Competition; Grade 7 student Wang Zini keeps up her daily vocabulary check-ins; Grade 12 student Zheng Xixuan has completed 350 hours of community service, and Pan Yuting earned undergraduate admission to HKU's School of Innovation amid intense competition; Grade 11 student Shao Erya has been deeply involved in the Master Architect Program; Grade 9 student Zhang Yihe invented "desktop volleyball," sparking a love of sport among his peers. Pre10 students Wang Gefei and Zhang Chenjia have led others in sustained daily reading check-ins, and Grade 10 student Mao Yixuan, after winning a global gold medal in biology, took the initiative to review and reflect, using the result as a starting point for continuous improvement. Happiness is hidden in daily perseverance.
I believe you, too, had a full and meaningful holiday, rich with many beautiful experiences, and that you felt deep happiness in moments of reunion with your family.
The power of happiness is to notice your small steps of progress in the long stretch of ordinary days; to enjoy the process even when the goal is far away; and to become your best self in love and trust.
Now I would also like to share one of my own happy moments. Yesterday morning, Mr. Jack Ma, founder of Yungu School, Mr. Joe Tsai, Chairman of Alibaba Group, and many influential Alibaba colleagues came to campus to visit our teachers and discuss AI and the future development of the school. Speaking about AI, Mr. Ma said:
"The future is not about asking children to compete with AI in computation and memory. It is about helping children preserve their curiosity, learn empathy and responsibility, and develop the capacity to experience the world deeply. Curiosity, imagination, creativity, judgment, and aesthetic sensibility are the true abilities education must give children in the age of AI."
Yes.
AI can help you search for knowledge, but it cannot generate your desire to seek truth.
AI can help you optimize a plan, but it cannot summon courage for you.
AI can help you analyze pros and cons, but it cannot shoulder responsibility for you.
AI can help you calculate gains and losses, but it cannot practice goodness on your behalf.
AI can help you generate images, but it cannot feel beauty for you.
AI can keep running without pause, but it cannot experience happiness for you.
All of this is the strength of the heart. The power of the heart.
Yungu's educational goal is to cultivate "innovators for social good."
What does "social good" mean? It means not only making yourself better, but also making the world around you better because of who you are. This is what the ancients meant by "building the greater self and accomplishing greater things": rising above the gains and losses of the smaller self, and finding your place within a larger frame of meaning.
To become innovators for social good - this is our North Star at Yungu, the light deep within our hearts.
If you look up in the gymnasium, you will see the calligraphy of Grade 6 student Zhao Chenhe: "Set your ambitions high as the clouds; keep your heart open as the valley."
These eight Chinese characters help us remember the six dimensions of the strength of the heart:
"Set your ambitions high as the clouds" speaks to the exploration of truth, the breakthrough of courage, and the commitment of responsibility.
"Keep your heart open as the valley" speaks to the generosity of goodness, the perception of beauty, and the experience of happiness.
Students, I do not know what the world of the future will become. I do not know how far AI will evolve. But I do know one thing: when algorithms try to control what you should see, what you should think, and what you should do, guard your heart.
In a virtual age, remain real.
In the torrent of algorithms, remain humane.
In the face of powerful opponents, never give up.
In the long ordinary days, find meaning.
May you begin, this spring, to listen to the voice within.
May you temper the strongest possible heart,
find your own North Star,
and then bravely light up this world.
Thank you, and I wish you progress in the new semester.
