Japan’s Toshiba Invests US$321 Million to Set Up New R&D Centre for AI
Japanese electronics giant Toshiba announced the investment of US$321 million to set up a new AI centre.
Category: Asia
Chinese AI Company Xiao-i Sues Apple Siri for US$1.4 Billion
Chinese AI company Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology filed a US$1.4 billion patent infringement lawsuit against Apple.
AI Generator Learns to ‘Draw’ Like Cartoonist Lee Mal-Nyeon in Just 10 Hours
A Seoul National University Master’s student and developer has trained a face generating model to transfer normal face photographs into cartoon images in the distinctive style of Lee Mal-nyeon.
Chinese AI Startup SenseTime considers IPO on STAR Market
Chinese AI start-up SenseTime is considering IPO on Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market.
Alibaba Cloud Deploys Three New Super Data Centre, to Invest US$28 Billion in Infrastructure
Alibaba Cloud wraps up the deployment three data centres in Nantong, Hangzhou, and Ulanqab city, plans to add over one million servers to expedite regional infrastructure development.
Preferred Networks Releases PFRL Deep Reinforcement Learning Library for PyTorch Users
PFRL succeeds ChainerRL as comprehensive library with cutting-edge deep reinforcement learning algorithms and features.
Asia China Computer Vision & Graphics Health Machine Learning & Data Science Research Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology
About Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
SIAT aims to enhance the innovative capacity of the equipment manufacturing and service industries in the Guangdong-Hong Kong region, promote the development of emerging industries possessing their own proprietary intellectual property, and become a world-class industrial research institute.
China’s Semiconductor Boom: 72 Chip Companies Receive CN ¥26.7 Billion in 2020
According to Chinese media Zhidongxi, from the second quarter of this year to July 23, public record shows 77 semiconductor-related financing activities in China.
SIAT Researchers Propose Novel Correction Method for Gas Sensor Drift Problem
Researchers developed a subspace learning-based domain adaptation method, which could potentially alleviate the gas sensor drift problem.
Alibaba and Accenture Report Share Insights on Post-COVID AI Development in China
On July 27, 2020, Alibaba Cloud Research Center and Accenture jointly launched the “The Penetrative and Explosive Power of AI Dividend” white paper, as part of the “China Enterprise 2020” series report.
Chinese Search Specialist Sogou Receives Tencent Buyout Offer
Chinese tech giant Tencent has proposed to acquire all of the Sogou’s outstanding ordinary shares for a cash price of US$9 per share.
Meet ByteDance AI’s Xiaomingbot: World’s First Multilingual and Multimodal AI News Agent
Researchers from ByteDance AILab and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have introduced Xiaomingbot, a multilingual and multimodal news reporter.
India | Sundar Pichai: Google Invests USD 10 Billion in India’s Digital Transformation
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the set up of a 10 billion dollar “Google for India Digitization Fund” to help accelerate India’s digital economy.
Korea | South Korea Introduces AI to Facilitate Post-Car Accident Insurance Claims
South Korea government plans to introduce AI car insurance services next year to speed up post-accident handling.
$4 Billion of Google’s New India Tech Fund Goes to Telecom Company Jio
Google is investing USD 4 billion in India’s Jio platforms, a subsidiary of conglomerate Reliance Group, to create affordable smartphones for the Indian market.
TuSimple Partners with Navistar to Mass Produce L4 Driverless Trucks by 2024
China’s self-driving truck company TuSimple forges strategic partnership with US truck manufacturer Navistar to jointly develop L4 driverless trucks, striving for mass production by 2024.
Fujitsu Develops World’s First AI technology to Accurately Capture Characteristics of High-Dimensional Data Without Labeled Training Data
Fujitsu has developed the world’s first AI technology that accurately captures the characteristics of high-dimensional data without labeled training data.
SIAT Researchers Propose Novel Deep Learning Method for Positron Emission Tomography
Researchers developed a novel deep learning method that reconstructs PET images using a cascading back-projection neural network (bpNet).
Chinese AI Chip Maker Cambricon Share Price Surges 350% on IPO Debut, Raising US $369 million
Cambricon Technologies, one of China’s AI chip giant founded in 2016, has raised US $369 million in IPO at the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market.
Popular Microsoft Chatbot XiaoIce Gains Independence as a New Company Led by Di Li and Harry Shum
Microsoft announced it would spin off its chatbot business XiaoIce, with all associated technologies licensed to a newly formed independent company.
Microsoft Will Divest XiaoIce as an Independent Business
Microsoft today announced it will divest its XiaoIce business into an independent company, with Harry Shum appointed as the Chairman of the board.
Nature Paper Puts An Eye on China’s New Generation of AI
The paper looks at the New Generation Artificial Intelligence (NGAI) Development Plan of China (2015– 2030), which was published in 2017 as a blueprint for the rapid construction of a complete Chinese AI ecosystem.
Is Your Business Ready for the ‘Second Wave’? Lessons from the Chinese AI Industry’s Fight Against COVID-19
Synced presents 13 comprehensive case studies and 74 use cases in five main application scenarios to demonstrate how AI has assisted and can continue to assist in efforts to roll back COVID-19.
Introducing Paddle Quantum: How Baidu’s Deep Learning Platform PaddlePaddle Empowers Quantum Computing
Paddle Quantum is developed based on Baidu’s deep learning platform PaddlePaddle, which has become the first and unique deep learning platform in China that supports quantum machine learning.
Japanese Unicorn Preferred Networks Releases First PyTorch Library
Japanese artificial intelligence startup Preferred Networks (PFN) today debuted its PyTorch library pytorch-pfn-extras (PPE).
New Baidu Algorithms Boost mRNA Vaccine Development for SARS-COV-2
LinearDesign, an efficient algorithm for optimized mRNA sequence design.
Fujitsu Verifies AI Technology to Predict Vessel Collision Risks in Marine Traffic Control, Improves Maritime Safety
Fujitsu Limited announced the results of a joint field trial with the Japan Coast Guard to predict vessel collisions with AI technology
Physical Distancing Boosts AI-Powered Online Education in China
Many artificial intelligent education institutions are offering free online courses and accounts to students.
China’s Autonomous Delivery Vehicles Navigate the Coronavirus Outbreak
In autonomous food and medicine delivery and beyond, the increasingly mature AI industry is actively engaged in countering the COVID-19 outbreak.
Beijing Self-Driving Vehicle Road Tests Topped One Million Km in 2019
A recent report suggests China has picked up speed, with Beijing emerging as a new self-driving vehicle hot spot.
100M Masks/Day: Automated Production Lines Work Overtime to Stop COVID-19 Spread
Pushed by the coronavirus outbreak, in early March 2020 China’s face mask production hit 110 percent capacity, with daily output exceeding 100 million masks according to state agency statistics.
Battling the Coronavirus: Alibaba and Baidu AI Accelerate Vaccine and Drug R&D
The crucial step now is to develop matching vaccines and drugs to uproot its existence, and China’s big tech companies have stepped up to help.
IBM and China’s Digital Bank WeBank Jointly Held Workshop on Federated Learning
IBM and China’s leading digital bank WeBank jointly organized “Workshop on Federated Learning and Analytics (FL-IBM’20)” at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
Baidu Open-Sources RNA Prediction Algorithm for 2019 Novel Coronavirus
The tool can significantly accelerate the prediction time of a virus’s RNA secondary structure, affording frontline researchers an opportunity to better understand the virus and develop targeting vaccines in a time of crisis.
Robot Arms Selling Huawei Phones in New Unmanned Store
In a scene that looks like it came from a science fiction movie, a pair of robot arms twist and turn overhead as they serve shoppers in Huawei’s new SOTA staffless Wuhan Optics Valley retail outlet.
China’s Financial Services Industry Is Banking on AI
The banking industry was the biggest investor in AI-related applications, accounting for 70 percent of all market purchases.
AI Struts Down the Japanese Fashion Runway
Although Japan’s declining and aging population has done little to stimulate the domestic fashion industry, AI is getting very positive reviews from the country’s still massive JP¥9 trillion (US$83 billion) apparel market.
Huawei’s TinyBERT Is 7X Smaller and 9X Faster Than BERT
Researchers from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab have introduced TinyBERT, a smaller and faster version of Google’s popular large-scale pre-trained language processing model BERT.
ARM and Qualcomm Will Continue to Supply Huawei Despite US Ban
Chinese news outlet Caixin is reporting that UK-based chip designer ARM confirmed on Wednesday it will continue to license its chip design architecture to Chinese tech giant Huawei and the company’s chip unit HiSilicon Technologies despite a US trade ban.
Alibaba’s New AI Chip Can Process Nearly 80K Images Per Second
At the Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) Apsara Conference 2019, Pingtouge unveiled its first AI dedicated processor for cloud-based large-scale AI inferencing. The Hanguang 800 is the first semiconductor product in Alibaba’s 20-year history.