About bringing Humanity to Technology, supporting Vietnam incredible potential — Stunning speech of a Mathematician politician.
Hello the internet. I’m Djoann Fal, 3 years ago I relocated from Europe to discover & contribute building the next Silicon Valley in Asia and create my company. I’m writing from Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, which I had a chance today to follow a government delegation visiting the Vietnamese technology scene. Aside of the incredibly fast growing technology ecosystem emerging in Vietnam that me and my partners are trying to map out here, I have been mentally stunned today with the dimension of an inspiring speech given by one of the delegates, Cedric Villani, medalled mathematician and politician on stage today. I wanted to share it with you, internet audience, at this really represent the opportunities of being part of the Silicon Valley of Vietnam. And for those in the room who missed the traduction, here it is :
“Dear Friends, I would start by mentioning one of the ways in which Vietnam has been involved in my scientific career.
Actually, it was for one of the most important dates of my career, 19 August 2010: The day I received my Fields Medal, and in my company, another French, also a Vietnamese national: Ngô Bao Châu. I think everyone here knows him, as in addition to the fact that we were 2 Frenchies to win this medal, (that increased tremendously the enthusiasm in France), the fact that he is the first Vietnamese mathematician to receive a distinction of this caliber has made him instantly a national hero of Vietnam.
The most important thing to emphasize is that Ngô spent most of his training in Vietnam, and it was only at the end of high school that he came to France. And certainly he benefited from the extraordinary French higher education institutions, but he had already been prepared by the extraordinary Vietnamese educational systems.
And the fact that Ngo has embarked on the most delicate, abstract and conceptual mathematical domain is also to show that mathematics in Vietnam developed according to a scientific research level of great abstraction with French mathematicians who even during the years of war came here to teach. We think especially of people like Alexander Grothendieck — Who gave readings on category theory in the forests of Hanoi while the city was being bombed, to protest against the Vietnam War).
In 2015, I came with Ngo in Vietnam, it was my first time in this country to give lectures in Hanoi but also in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City to welcome researchers from all over the world. I remember in particular the public lecture that Ngo and I gave us in Hanoi. The conference center was under attack, it was amazing to see so many young people so motivated to hear the latest mathematical discoveries. I came back to France saying, “I have to review all my maths knowledge again!” I am not ready for the potential of Vietnam.
And indeed, few years later I see here today that there is a country in which not only is there a very large technology community thriving here, but also a society that evolves with a great appetite for modernity, but also an appetite for science that is considerable, AND an education that has nothing to envy to the world best educations in the matter. With students of the international level, results in international comparisons that are remarkable.
These kinds of things, a few years ago, we could still think that they were disjointed topics. On the one hand the sciences, on the other hand, the economy. But today we are all well aware of how it can be linked, in the development of the economy, in the development of technology, in high tech, but also materializing with this tech community around the world.
Because certain subjects, that only a few years ago were regarded as wacky dreams of idealistic mathematicians busy in discovering the ultimate secrets of the logic and the comprehension of the world: today they are subjects on which the governments beat and private companies put billions on the table for economic purpose.
So what has happened in the meantime? There was a change that was not expected. For example, artificial intelligence.
The first time I heard about it, I was reading the work of Douglas Hofstadter, who, for example, was trying to unravel the secrets of the human brain, with some esoteric languages, with endless games of opening and closing parentheses. The key word was logic, understanding to replicate human intelligence.
Today for “artificial intelligence”, the specialists of the time do not find this direction anymore. It is no longer the goal of learning to reproduce human mind & understanding. “Artificial intelligence” as we see it today is here to accomplish tasks in a very effective way, with a clear, productive, economical result in sight. One big part of this shift is the realization that there are many tasks that can be accomplished without much intelligence. On the basis of many examples many statistics, many pragmatisms that are developed in the experimentation.
20 years ago, the artificial intelligence seemed something abstract, idealistic that we shared with everyone. Today we are at the pinnacle of the biggest influence struggles, attracting the best experts, working on the most powerful computers, to attract the best users data sets that will allow us to perform tasks such as automated medical diagnostics, automatic face recognition, automatic driving vehicles, drones, and even boats, or whatever you want.
And then, while technology seemed to be an activity reserved for scientists — it became an activity that today speaks to everyone, which develops in particular in the use of algorithms, of scientists, engineers and all the people who implement this new economic adventure of automation.
Today it’s a subject that we talk about everywhere in politics, science, engineering, and business activities.
Now, it must be understood what it means for those who, like many of you, represent a busy economic tech community. A community focused day to day on moving forward building the future. A community at the confluence of different cultures: French, Vietnamese. Being here in Vietnam with a such culture mix gives you opportunities to develop that are not the same as if you had stayed in France. Different opportunities, different people to test different applications of these new, high technologies. You are at the edge, at the beginning of something original, something that will be part of an extraordinary, personal, or collective adventure. Extraordinary encounters between people, between cultures, between nations, between the present and the future, between what we can do today and what humanity will be able to do tomorrow.
I wish you all great adventures on this subject which is at the confluence of so many things, time, today and tomorrow.”
Translated from the recorded livestream from Đức Hạ Duong (Officience CEO) — available here.
