MIT and Rutgers team up with China's leader in voice recognition

4-4-2017    Rutgers Business School and iFlytek, a China-based information technology company, have jointly established a Big Data Laboratory with an initial endowment of $1 million from iFlytek for a five-year period. The Lab aims to support iFlytek’s technological development, application and popularization of the big data field, and further deepen industry-university cooperation.

  Based in Anhui province, iFlytek is one of China’s leading software enterprises dedicated to the research of intelligent speech and language technologies. The company is also involved with the development of software and chip products, the provision of speech information services, and integration of e-government systems. iFlytek has 70 percent of China's speech technology market. https://www.business.rutgers.edu/news/chinas-iflytek-partners-rutgers-big-data-lab

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Voice assistants in the shape of a robot girl use iFlytek’s technology to greet and direct visitors.

9-14-2017  

Why 500 Million People in China Are Talking to This AI

iFlytek’s voice recognition technology is everywhere in China, and that’s what’s making it   smarter every day    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608841/why-500-million-people-in-china-are-talking-to-this-ai/

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2-28-2018  Under direction of the Politburo, the State Council formalized roles and responsibilities for AI development in September 2017 through the establishment of the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan Implementation Office (AIDP Implementation Office), led by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), with 15 other agencies participating.  The responsibility of the MOST-led office is to coordinate inter-ministry implementation of the AIDP, including large-scale AI-related science and technology (S&T) megaprojects, and to lead interaction with major private sector players.  That public-private coordination is crucial, given the leading role played by large Internet firms in the development of most already-deployed AI applications.  MOST was designated the lead on China’s AIDP given its role in earlier S&T programs related to AI. It has overseen large development projects such as the 863 and 973 Programs—focused on applied and basic research, respectively—which have produced progress on some of the technologies underlying AI. MOST is a relatively small ministry within China, with a smaller number of subordinate or associated industry organizations or state owned enterprises, but it controls most central government R&D funding, has asserted itself in the AI arena, and will continue to be an important player going forward. ...

  The venture capital world in China and Silicon Valley has poured money into Chinese AI startups, with the volume of deals ramping up in early 2017 and continuing throughout last year.  CB Insights estimates that China was the recipient of 48 percent of equity fund investments in AI in 2017, compared to 38 percent for the United States. There are now at least 30 Chinese AI startups which have received at least RMB 100 million (USD $15.8 million), and they cover a range of AI applications, from facial and voice recognition to natural language processing, and from AI-powered robotics and drones to financial applications and niche AI semiconductors....

   In addition to siting new AI labs in the United States and recruiting from U.S. universities and companies, big Chinese AI players are looking for other ways to grow the talent pool. Alibaba has already started part of what is planned as a $15 billion investment in the DAMO Academy (Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, Outlook) that will have a heavy AI focus and be headed by CTO Jeff Zhang.  The initiative will consist of labs in seven cities in major high-tech zones including Hangzhou, Beijing, Singapore, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley and the Seattle area.  The collaborative effort will include University of California Berkeley’s RISE Lab and major U.S. universities including MIT, Princeton and Harvard join Peking University, Zhejiang University and others on the advisory board.   Machine learning, imaging processing, natural language processing, and quantum computing will all be in the mix.  
   In addition, recognizing that much of the world’s AI expertise lies within the private sector and seeking innovative solutions to the lack of trained faculty, China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) in February launched an AI talent training program for Chinese university teachers and students.  The initiative is to be jointly sponsored by the MOE, the AI venture capital firm Sinovation, and Peking University.  https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/digichina/blog/riding-wave-full-steam-ahead/
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6-15-2018    Alongside Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, iFlyTek is one of four companies designated by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to develop open platforms for AI technologies.  Their researchers will collaborate with MIT;s CSAIL on several projects in fundamental AI and related areas, including computer vision, speech-to-text systems, and human-computer interaction….

  CSAIL Director Daniela Rus, the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. “Some of the biggest challenges of the 21st century concern developing the science and engineering of intelligence and finding ways to better harness the strengths of both human and artificial intelligence.  I am looking forward to the advances that will come from the collaboration between MIT CSAIL and iFlyTek.”  http://news.mit.edu/2018/csail-launches-five-year-collaboration-with-iflytek-0615

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4-9-2019    Intel said it plans to invest $117 million in 14 startups, many of which are focused on “creating powerful artificial intelligence platforms.”  One of the startups Landing AI was founded by deep learning expert Andrew Ng, who helped build A.I. systems at Google and Baidu (headquartered in Beijing's Haidian district, one of the largest AI and internet companies in the world).….

Other tech companies that have A.I. research centers in Asia include Google (Beijing), Microsoft (Shanghai), and Amazon Web Services (Shanghai)….

Apple named Ian Goodfellow as its director of machine learning for its special projects group. Goodfellow, previously a Google senior staff research scientist, is widely respected in the A.I. community for his work on generative adversarial networks, or GANs, which is an A.I. technique used to create realistic, but fake images, among other tasks.  http://fortune.com/2019/04/09/eye-on-ai-china-artificial-intelligence/

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 6-12-2019     MIT last year announced a five-year agreement under which iFlytek would help underwrite three research projects at the university’s renowned Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAI). The projects relate to AI in health care; speech recognition; and what CSAIL described in its announcement as creating “more human-like AI.”…

  Government procurement databases contain 31 other documents naming iFlytek Intelligent Information Technology or a previous name for the same company as a supplier of voiceprint-related products or services to 25 police departments in China and the Ministry of Public Security between 2014 and 2018.  Most documents were from police departments in Anhui, the province in eastern China where iFlytek is based.      Eight police departments and the Ministry of Public Security confirmed that they had used or were still using iFlytek voiceprint-related technology; nine could not be reached or referred the requests to other departments that could not be reached; five said they were unaware or unclear about such contracts; and three declined to comment.  Gao Kang, a police official in Jixi County, Anhui province, confirmed that his department had purchased iFlytek voiceprint collection equipment in 2015 and was still using it. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-mit-tech-insight/risky-partner-top-u-s-universities-took-funds-from-chinese-firm-tied-to-xinjiang-security-idUSKCN1TE04M

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