Young PhD promotes AI application in life

Prevent AI from causing unfortunate consequences

One of the projects that left an impression and helped Dr. Nguyen Van Son be honored with the 2024 Golden Globe Science and Technology Award organized by the Central Youth Union, is the CodeJIT research project that allows early detection of dangerous changes (also known as commits) that create security vulnerabilities in the software development process, helping developers to check and fix these commits in time when they are still new and easy to follow.

Dr. Nguyen Van Son guides students in scientific research

PHOTO: DUONG TRIEU

Experimental results show that CodeJIT achieves high accuracy in identifying dangerous commits, up to 90%, nearly 2 times better than state-of-the-art methods that do not focus on source code. This solution can be widely applied in software projects to enhance security right from the development stage and can be applied to software development organizations, especially those operating in important fields such as cybersecurity, healthcare or finance, where early and accurate software vulnerability detection is important.

Dr. Son said that the results from the CodeJIT project have helped the research team open up a new research direction, aiming to improve the quality of software developed with the support of large language models (such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek). This research direction will "open the box of artificial intelligence (AI)" by exploiting the internal state of AI models to consider thinking and intuition, and evaluate the reliability and safety of source code generated by large language models.

"It is impossible to know how humans/programmers think when writing software, but with AI we can see how it thinks, how it works, whether it meets human expectations or not, whether its results are reliable or not... From there, we can detect and prevent errors in the software that AI can create during its operation, before causing unfortunate consequences in the future," said Dr. Son.

"Popularizing AI"

Sharing about his research direction, Dr. Son shared that he and his colleagues are pursuing research on automated AI with the aim of automating the process of developing AI-based solutions. This platform will automate the process from data collection and processing, data cleaning, to building, deploying, operating and exploiting AI models. This platform can be like a virtual expert, making it easier for people to build AI-based solutions.

In particular, Dr. Son said that the project aims at a larger goal of "Popularizing AI". "We want the project to bring the benefits of AI to more people in society, especially those with little background knowledge of AI, such as small and medium enterprises or small businesses, individuals... Such people with relatively limited AI capabilities can take advantage of their own data and expertise to build AI-based solutions. From there, they can make their work easier," he said.

According to Dr. Son, an ideal that has always guided him throughout his scientific research journey is the desire to contribute to society through technology. "I believe that science and technology are not just about numbers, theories or articles, but can also bring positive changes to human life," the doctor expressed.

Thanks to his contributions to science, Dr. Son has an impressive list of achievements with a national patent; 8 scientific articles published in the most prestigious international scientific journals currently in the Q1 category; 9 articles published in international scientific conferences ranked A*.

Passing the torch to the younger generation

Talking about his journey to science and technology, Dr. Nguyen Van Son said that he studied at the University of Technology ( Hanoi National University). Right from his second year, he started his research, with the product of Document Quality Improvement Support System - DoiT. This project helped him and his research team win the second prize of the 2017 Vietnam Talent Award, as well as being widely applied in the country.

Dr. Son said that this project is being applied in many universities to review theses, dissertations, graduation theses, prevent plagiarism and improve the quality of documents. This software has also helped tens of thousands of students apply it when doing graduation projects to avoid duplication and achieve the best quality.

The success of the project created the premise, added confidence, and strong motivation for Dr. Son to pursue a career in scientific research. After graduating from university, he decided to pursue a doctoral program at the University of Texas (USA). Here, his scientific orientation turned to a new direction - researching AI and software engineering. At the same time, he soon decided to choose the path of returning home to contribute.

Therefore, as soon as he was in the US, he quickly started collaborating with domestic scientists and Vietnamese graduate students abroad to form a network of scientists. After returning home, since 2022, he and his team have had more than 20 research projects published in prestigious domestic and foreign journals.

Not only has he made many contributions to science, as a university lecturer, Dr. Son always inspires scientific research in his students.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/tien-si-tre-thuc-day-ung-dung-ai-vao-doi-song-185250612201810469.htm