2017's most exciting new academy - damo

damo- 15 billion dollar intercity investment by jack ma
-help us track sighting
future of ai - one of his main scouts jerry yang - see committee 100 interviews
back from future of industrial revolution 4 - see also wef hub san franscisco
future of big data small
future of cloud
future of internet of things , fablab suopercities ...

-all if these fut\ures could  empower education to co-create youth livelihoods of sustainabklluth generation or the opposite

jack has announced first intercity hubs of damo include hangzhou,l west coast usa, israel, fussia - you tell us isabella@unacknowledgedgiant.com

TMALL GLOBAL THROWS BEACH BASH FOR CHINA’S YOUNG CONSUMERS

LIBABA’S DAMO ACADEMY HIRES PROMINENT COMPUTER SCIENTIST MARIO SZEGEDY
CHRISTINE CHOU | JANUARY 17, 2018

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Alibaba said Wednesday that Hungarian-American computer scientist Mario Szegedy will join its DAMO Academy’s quantum computing lab.

The appointment is the first of a prominent computer scientist to DAMO, since Alibaba launched the global research institute in October last year. DAMO is a linchpin to Alibaba’s ongoing efforts to broaden its technological expertise beyond e-commerce.

A former researcher at Bell Labs and AT&T Research, Szegedy is a two-time recipient of the Godel Prize, winning the prestigious computer science award in 2001 and 2005. His works helped lay the foundation for research in computational complexity, streaming algorithms and quantum computing.

Based in Bellevue, Washington, the former Rutgers University professor will report to the director of Alibaba Cloud Quantum Laboratory (AQL), Yaoyun Shi. Shi’s remit is to assemble a team of world-class scientists and engineers for the company’s first research lab dedicated to realizing the revolutionary potential of quantum information technologies, such as exponentially larger processing capacity and faster machine learning. Within the growing team, Szegedy will lead research projects for quantum algorithms, especially their applications tied to machine learning and optimization problems, said Shi.

“Szegedy is an ingenious problem solver who craves to see his work having real-world impact,” said Shi, adding that more top scientists are expected to join AQL as Alibaba continues its talent hunt worldwide. AQL has openings in experimental and theoretical physics, computational sciences and software engineering.

“It is my dream to integrate all sorts of sciences and technologies together,” said Szegedy, explaining that this is what drives him to explore disciplines like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and quantum computing. “Sciences are so intertwined—and technology develops so quickly—that we should be able to [better] exchange information and learn from each other.”

Szegedy said DAMO Academy aims to integrate science with industry, speeding up the information exchange between them. In that collaborative environment, any useful information scientists discover could be immediately applied to real-life problems, he said, “I am all for [that]. I think it’s very much in line with what I believe.”

Mario Szegedy is a two-time recipient of the Godel Prize. Before joining Alibaba, he served as a professor at Rutgers University and a researcher of Bell Labs.

Quantum computing tackles problems that are too complex and intractible in nature for classical computing systems to handle. Its development could potentially bring real-world breakthroughs in everything from AI to the discovery of new materials, drugs and chemical-reaction pathways.

Classical computers encode information in a binary system, in which each “bit” represents either a 1 or 0, like the on-off state of a transistor. But quantum computers instead work with quantum bits or “qubits,” which can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. That quality, researchers believe, can allow quantum computing to process a massive amount of information simultaneously and perform certain tasks exponentially faster than today’s computers.

“When we look at the terrestrial evolution, we see things have sequence. For instance, higher life requires oxygen—which was produced by plants in the first place—so, in the beginning, there were only plants and anaerobic beings. So, maybe we are just arriving at a turning point, when technology allows us to make this incredible leap of constructing something that nature has never had: a quantum computer,” said Szegedy.

Szegedy is the latest high-profile recruit in Alibaba’s hiring drive for top scientists, following recent additions acoustical engineer Jinwei Feng, quantum information scientist Yaoyun Shi, leading researcher at Alibaba A.I. Labs Gang Wang, and Xiaofeng Ren, former senior principal scientist at Amazon.

Meanwhile, Chinese talent has been gravitating towards careers back at home, as the fast-growing market offers plenty of opportunities for venture capital and cutting-edge research.

According to a 2017 survey conducted by think tank Center for China and Globalization and jobs site Zhaopin.com, the number of graduates returning from overseas – mainly from the U.S. – jumped to 432,500 in 2016, up 22 percent from 2013. Alibaba has been among Chinese tech corporations expanding its research labs across the world, to draw research and development talent based outside of China.

Alibaba launched DAMO Academy last year, together with a commitment to invest RMB 100 billion ($US15 billion) on future-oriented technologies over the next three years. DAMO laboratories will be opened in seven cities around the world: Beijing and Hangzhou in China; San Mateo and Bellevue in the U.S.; Moscow, Russia; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Singapore.

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baidu ai update oct 2018

Our use of AI to strengthen Baidu's core business is also generating new use cases and opening Baidu up to exciting new markets, such as AI as a Service. We are seeing AI extend beyond the Internet into everyday life and this presents Baidu with large new market opportunities in the 2C, 2B, and 2G markets.

Let's begin Q3 with search and feed. In core search, top 1 now compresses of over 40% of our search queries. And video search is becoming ever more popular with daily queries in the tens of millions, doubling from last year.

This AI-powered feature not only differentiates Baidu's search experience, but also enable us to introduce features like Smart Answer or Smart Screen. For example, a user of Huawei, OPPO, or Vivo smartphones with Baidu AI may take a photo of a plant or a pet. And the phone screen will return the card with information about the (05:20) in the photo. Smart Answer can also identify and provide information about celebrities, points of interest, and so forth.

IDC recently reported that smartphones' shipments in China declined 11% year over year in the first half of this year, making it more difficult for less frequented apps to continue traffic acquisition from app pre-installations.

Mini Programs have become a new source of traffic without requiring merchants to have native apps. We launched the invite-only phase of our Smart Mini Program in July and monthly active users ramped up quickly, surpassing 100 million in September. We have received favorable feedback from users, developers, and our network partners. And program registration was open to the public at the end of September.

We are on track to open source our Smart Mini Programs, which enable apps to join our Host, Union, and (06:38) Smart Mini Programs. Our Smart Mini Program open approach, by design, makes the information in Baidu's Smart Mini Program network searchable.

Moving on to Baidu Apps. In September, average daily active users of Baidu App reached 151 million, up 19% year over year, and time spent on Feed grow 68% year over year. In the two short years that we launched the Baidu Feed, we have added 276 MCNs and over 1.5 million content publishers, up from 1 million two quarters ago.

Twin-engine search plus feed offerings, coupled with unmatched AI-powered recommendation technology deep inside of our massive user base, makes Baidu Apps a compelling offering. A twin-engine apps not only provides better user experience but also generates better unit economics.

Excluding iQIYI, Baidu distributes over 2 billion video views per day. The strong demand for video content on Baidu's platform places us in a good position to offer more variety of video feed. We are replicating the Baidu Apps formula to develop video-only feed apps. For example, we began experimenting with Haokan this year, and in September, Haokan reached a DAU of 12 million.

According to QuestMobile, Haokan was the fastest-growing apps from June to September among all mobile apps in China, with a DAU of more than 5 million.

On monetization, the strong traffic growth of our feed, as well as video traffic are contributing to Baidu's revenue growth. In addition, our industry-leading use of AI to power ad monetization as dynamic ads, mobile action ads, and optimized cost per click, continues to position Baidu as a compelling source of performance-based traffic.

Baidu is pushing the boundary of innovation with cutting-edge technologies to better meet our customers' needs. For example, using blockchain and visual search to combat fake goods and generate more revenue for our customers.

Hairy crabs from the Yangcheng Lake in Jiangsu Province apprised four-season delicacy in China. This year, we worked to build hairy crabs fisheries from the Yangcheng Lake to set up a Smart Mini Program to enable consumers to verify product authenticity via the Baidu App.

Blockchain ensures a tag or a cart's uniqueness, while visual search provides a matching reading to ensure that the product was not switched. The combination of the two technologies have significant commercial value for merchants of big ticket items sold online.

Baidu has made significant strides to proactively improve the quality of healthcare information, and consumers are increasingly dependent on Baidu for healthcare-related services. We are developing a search solution to organize healthcare information into a structured format, so that users can more easily compare services across healthcare providers.

Our solution will verify the identity of licensed medical institutions and use AI to monitor the information quality on the landing pages, as well linked to such structured data instead of third-party websites. Although, these efforts to improve user experience may impact our revenue in the near-term as users get used to the new information structure, we believe they will ultimately lead to better traffic conversion for healthcare providers.

Turning to DuerOS, Baidu's voice assistant. DuerOS continues to gain traction as we focus on user experience, such as improving natural language processing, which enables endless conversation, and building out DuerOS scale ecosystem. We have seen people across China, from Tier-1 to lower-tier cities, from toddlers to senior citizen, use DuerOS-powered devices to perform or search, watch videos, listen to music, make video calls, and control IoT devices in their homes.

In September, DuerOS installed base reached 141 million, up from 100 million in July, and voice queries on DuerOS continued its rapid rise, surpassing 800 million times, which roughly doubled every quarter for the past seven quarters.

DuerOS skills store now has a community of over 24,000 developers and over 800 skills available, such as education, cooking, and game genres such as VIPKID, Cooking Recipes and Digital Pets, respectively.

DuerOS partners continue to expand from TVs to smart meters to smart watches. In addition to homes, DuerOS also expanding its partnership in the IoV environment. For example, UCAR, better known as Shenzhou Zuche, a car rental and ride-hailing service provider, will be installing DuerOS on its fleet of new vehicles.

Turning to Apollo. We are gaining valuable experience in commercial operations with Level 4 vehicles. The Xiamen King Long produced Apolong, Apollo-based fully autonomous minibus, is currently running in over 10 locations throughout China. We are learning that end customers are requesting to purchase wholesale annual maintenance plans, and that the passengers are willing to pay for a ride on the Apolong minibuses. For example, Guangzhou's sunflower garden charges RMB 20 a ride for adults and RMB 10 for children.

Smart city utilizing AI to improve urban living presents Baidu with a great opportunity to serve the 2G market and bring Baidu AI to everyday lives.

The municipality of Changsha have just signed with us to be the first municipality in China to test robot taxi and our connected road solution, powered by Apollo. We are also in discussions with Beijing and Shanghai, whose population is almost equivalent of three New York cities to provide AI-powered city management solutions to help with urban safety, traffic congestion, and public parking, leveraging Baidu Brain, Baidu Cloud, and autonomous driving technologies to improve urban living.

Turning to ABC Cloud. Baidu Cloud continue to grow robustly, and recently recognized by third-party market research firm, Analysys, as the fastest-growing and among the top three most technologically advanced cloud service providers in China. And Baidu ABC Cloud Summit in Shanghai last month, we announced new enterprise solutions with advanced AI capabilities to serve the transportation, education, and financial services industries.

Our AI as a Service approach aims to help customers increase productivity and improve operational efficiency. For example, a top Chinese telco choose Baidu's ABC Cloud with AI as a Service to power their call center. Baidu Cloud was chosen for our differentiated AI technology in speech recognition, natural language processing, and knowledge graph, enabling endless conversation and sparing customers the tedious experience of IVR menus.

Using Baidu's enterprise AI solution, the call center saw dramatic improvement in customer service quality, with average call time falling 70%, and Baidu's AI solution handling millions of calls per month. At Baidu World in Beijing tomorrow, we will share many more case studies illustrating Baidu's enterprise AI solutions now serving over one dozen industries.

Turning to iQIYI. In the third quarter, iQIYI added a record 13.5 million subscribers, reaching a total of 80.7 million subscribers, driven by top-quality content and blockbuster originals like Story of Yanxi Palace. iQIYI continues to rank number one across reach and in engagement metrics in the third quarter, according to third-party market research firms.

Also during the quarter, iQIYI co-launched a hybrid OTT box, with Beijing Gehua CATV network, featuring DuerOS voice assistant video search and children's mode. The hybrid OTT box enables users to access both iQIYI videos and cable TV from one box, an industry first.

Partnerships such as this help DuerOS and iQIYI extend presence into the fast-growing OTT market and exemplify the unique value proposition that Baidu and iQIYI can offer, working in tandem.

With that, let me turn the call over to Herman to go through the financial highlights

Alibaba’s DAMO Academy Announces R&D of AI Chip with 40 Times the Cost Performance

INDUSTRYNETEASEAPRIL 20, 2018

2 min read　

Recently, the U.S. ban on sales to ZTE has aroused much attention to the chip industry in China. Today, Alibaba DAMO Academy (DAMO stands for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook) claims that it is developing a neural network chip called Ali-NPU, which will be used in AI reasoning calculations such as video image analysis and machine learning. DAMO Academy says that according to its design, the chip’s cost performance will be 40 times that of existing products.

SEE ALSO: Alibaba Jack Ma’s Promise of 1 Million U.S. Jobs Now in Jeopardy

Jiao Yang, a researcher from DAMO Academy, explained that as general-purpose computing chips, CPU and GPU are designed to deal with linear logic and graphics, but they have high power consumption and low cost performance when dealing with AI computing. Thus specially designed chips are needed for AI computing.

At present, AI chips developed by Alibaba are mainly used to solve AI-related computing problems in commercial scenarios including image and video recognition as well as cloud computing, and to improve computing efficiency and reduce costs.

According to Jiao Yang, Alibaba’s Ali-NPU is developed independently based on the large number of AI algorithm models accumulated by Alibaba A.I. Labs and other teams. It can achieve AI model algorithmic computing of the maximum efficiency at minimum cost according to the microstructure and instruction set based on AI algorithm models.

The Ali-NPU chip is designed to have a special architecture with a performance that is 10 times better than mainstream AI chips based on CPU or GPU architecture, while the manufacturing cost and power consumption are only half of theirs. Its cost performance is over 40 times of existing options. In the future, Ali-NPU can not only meet the demand for video and image processing, but could also for computing output through Ali Cloud, empowering all industries.

In fact, Alibaba has been building a team to develop their own AI chips for a long time.

The Alibaba-developed AI chip is a part of Alibaba’s “China Chip” strategy. At present, the R&D team of DOMA Academy has hired dozens of talent in the United States and Shanghai, and will have 100 people by the end of this year. Prior to this, Alibaba has invested in a number of chip companies including Cambricon, Barefoot Networks, Deephi, Kneron, ASR, and C-Sky.

This article originally appeared in NetEase and was translated by Pandaily.

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By Ina Fried ·Sep 27, 2018

One more plug for this: Tomorrow at 8 a.m. in D.C., join Axios' Mike Allen for conversations on the future of global competition in the age of 5G. He'll be interviewing two of the world's top antitrust officials: European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager and DOJ Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim. RSVP here.

1 big thing: Founders keep piling on Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

First it was the Instagram co-founders leaving. Now WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton is taking fresh aim at the social network he sold his company to in 2014 for $22 billion. In an interview with Forbes, Acton provided his first detailed comments since encouraging people to delete Facebook in a March tweet. Acton left Facebook in 2017, and his WhatsApp co-founder, Jan Koum, left earlier this year. Why it matters: The dramatic back-and-forth underscores the disconnect between Facebook’s leaders and the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram as those apps buoyed the company in the face of stagnant growth on its original platform. The details: Here's some of what Acton had to say... “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit,” he said. “I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.” He also said that while Facebook was instructing him to tell European regulators that it would be difficult to link WhatsApp to Facebook's platforms, the company was exploring that very option. (The company was ultimately fined for misleading regulators during the approval process.) Acton accused Facebook leadership of pushing ad-based revenue strategies, when he believed other approaches would have been successful and better for users. If Acton needed an Exhibit A, it arrived in a Gizmodo story that reported Facebook was using the phone numbers users provide for two-factor authentication to target ads at them. What they're saying: Acton's comments, meanwhile, provoked a host of reactions, including a strong rebuke from Facebook's David Marcus, who stressed he was speaking for himself, not the company: “Lastly — call me old fashioned. But I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class. It’s actually a whole new standard of low-class.” Andreessen Horowitz' Benedict Evans offered a similar criticism: "This is just a thought, but maybe if you don’t want your product to have ads, don’t sell it to an ad company, or find a way to make it worth the ~$18bn they paid without taking ads, or both." Our thought bubble: Yes, all the sniping between members of Silicon Valley's wealthy founder class is entertaining. But the disagreements underscore the discord growing within Facebook's key acquisitions right when the company needs them most.

2. Oculus debuts powerful portable VR headset

Photo: Oculus

While Facebook took a number of hits Wednesday, its Oculus unit made a big step forward. At its developer conference in San Jose, Oculus unveiled its Oculus Quest headset, a mobile VR headset that offers high-end features similar to the Rift but, like Oculus Go, doesn't need to be tethered to a PC. The details: Due spring 2019 $399 50 titles promised for launch Also: Oculus announced new titles coming for the Rift and new features for Oculus Go, including support for YouTube VR and the ability to mirror video to a nearby TV. Why it matters: The VR industry has struggled to take off beyond hard-core gamers. Oculus Quest offers another opportunity to strike the right balance of price, convenience and features.

3. Tech companies want privacy rules on their terms

Sen. John Thune is spearheading a push for privacy legislation. Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

While major tech and telecom companies told lawmakers Wednesday that they generally support federal privacy rules, they aren't ready to embrace some of the most significant policy changes backed by privacy advocates. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, witnesses from companies including Google, Apple and AT&T expressed reservations about some particularly strong steps lawmakers could take to ensure user data privacy. Why it matters: Companies are drawing lines in the sand for lawmakers who are under pressure to produce something, thanks to new privacy rules in Europe and a California privacy law that will go into effect in 2020. What's next: “I think we might have a pretty good idea what a draft would look like [by the end of the year], but I suspect we probably wouldn’t get it acted on until next year," Commerce Chairman John Thune said. Go deeper: Axios' David McCabe has more on the hearing here.

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The 5G network will form a new critical infrastructure for a fully connected society. Cities will become smarter and machines will speak with machines, enabling remote medical monitoring, intelligent factories and hyper-efficient power grids. Learn about 5G use cases.

4. Masa Son sees more Vision Funds ahead

Softbank chief Masayoshi Son tells Bloomberg Businessweek he plans to raise a fresh $100 billion fund every two to three years and to spend around $50 billion a year. By way of comparison, the Bloomberg article points out that the entire U.S. venture capital industry invested around $75 billion in 2106, per the National Venture Capital Association. Other revelations: Son initially was going to pitch the first Vision fund as a $30 billion entity, but decided to up the stakes at the last minute. "Life’s too short to think small,” he told a lieutenant. When Son made his first pitch with the $100 billion figure, the potential client laughed, but Son kept going, raising nearly $100 billion, including $45 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Why it matters: Softbank's Vision Fund has already reshaped the tech industry, inspiring other investors to up their aspirations and fueling a wave of ever more cash-hungry startups.

5. Take Note

On Tap The Grace Hopper Celebration runs through Friday in Houston. Salesforce's Dreamforce continues in San Francisco. Microsoft's Ignite conference continues in Orlando. ICYMI Lyft doubled its revenue in the first half of the year, ahead of an expected IPO filing. (The Information) The FCC approved rules designed to remove local roadblocks to 5G network construction. (Axios) Special Counsel Robert Muller was seen getting tech support at a D.C.-area Apple Store. (Business Insider) Stripe has raised $245 million in additional capital, giving the company a $20 billion valuation. (Axios)

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As a huge fan of women's hockey and love, this story warms my heart.

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