Seoul Tech Society - Zeroth.ai by Tak Lo

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AI IN ASIA TODAYZEROTH.AI

SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY

▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?

▸ AI trends across Asia

▸ Program

WHO AM I

MD at Zeroth.ai

First accelerator for Artificial Intelligence/Machine Intelligence startups

MY BACKGROUND

=50 companies

Raised over $67m

Investor in Weave.ai

OUR PROGRAM

$20,000 USD funding for Asian AI/ML startups

Application deadline: September 24, 2016

SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY

▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?

▸ AI trends across Asia

▸ Program

WHAT IS AI/ML?

▸ AI

▸ Some level of cognition-ability in a machine

▸ Weak/Narrow AI - doing one task well

▸ Strong/Full AI: Human-level cognition

▸ ML

▸ Algorithms that allow machines to learn by itself

▸ Examples are: neural network, reinforcement learning, deep learning, genetic programming,

SOURCES

▸ Master Algorithm: How the quest for the ultimate learning machine will remake our world

▸ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012271YB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

▸ Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

▸ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LOOCGB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#navbar

▸ Wait But Why: The AI revolution: The road to Superintelligence

▸ http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

▸ Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

▸ https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597

WHY AI NOW?

▸ More structured data than ever before

▸ Increased cloud computing power

▸ Do more, faster

▸ Decreasing storage cost

▸ ability to crunch loads of input

A FEW AREAS AI WILL DISRUPT, I

▸ Industries

▸ Self driving: Cruise, Google

▸ Healthcare: Alzheimers: https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40YvesMulkers%2Fartificial-intelligence-could-help-catch-alzheimers-early-c0073a7d9e1%3Fsource%3DuserActivityShare-502c13d18b4-1469332947&formCheck=5d4a479dcab685d6e2774064fda498dd

▸ Online Marketer: Persado: http://persado.com/

▸ Accounting: Smacc: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/28/goodbye-accountants-startup-builds-ai-to-automate-all-your-accounting/

▸ HR Professional: FlatPI: https://flatpi.com/

▸ Journalism: Wordsmith: https://automatedinsights.com/products/

▸ Editor: Bold: https://bold.bold.io/post/make-your-words-stand-out-udvqaw

A FEW AREAS AI WILL DISRUPT, II

▸ Industries

▸ Education:

▸ Instagram: Prisma: http://prisma-ai.com/

▸ Insurance:

▸ Legal: Ross: http://www.rossintelligence.com/

▸ AI therapist: http://futurism.com/uscs-new-ai-ellie-has-more-success-than-actual-therapists/

▸ B2B marketing software: Optimate and Wondertech

▸ Office workers: X.ai, Mimetic.ai

▸ Deepmind: AlphaGo, Electricity: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-19/google-cuts-its-giant-electricity-bill-with-deepmind-powered-ai

A FEW AREAS AI WILL DISRUPT, III

▸ In short - everything

WHAT WON’T HAPPEN SOON

WHY

▸ Machines will always optimize individual tasks well - but across multiple tasks require a different level

▸ The ability to have machines with human-like cognition will take a lot more time to develop

▸ simple analogy - to get a machine to be a father, an athlete, a thinker, and a GO player is HARD

VISUAL REPRESENTATION

STRONG AI STRONG AI

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Theoretical End State What will likely end up happening

WHAT RESULTS

▸ Positives of AI outweigh negatives = net positive

WHAT’S LEFT OVER: IRRATIONAL FEAR

the best defense is "to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there's not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI

superpower” - in creating OpenAI

DEFENSE

SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY

▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?

▸ AI trends across Asia

▸ Program

▸ 15 days traveling

▸ 6 cities covered

▸ Kuala Lumpar, Ho Chi Minh City, Manilla, Bangkok, Beijing, Sydney

▸ 50 individual meetings

▸ Presented to over 300 people

WHAT WE DID FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS

PEOPLE WE MET WITH

Conclusions

HO CHI MINH CITY

▸ Ho Chi Minh City has the most potential

▸ The volume of AI startups isn’t high, but the technical quantity and quality of people are

▸ There is a hunger and tenacity in Vietnamese founders

▸ Huge volume of young people (> 50% under the age of 35)

▸ There seems to be a culture of entrepreneurship starting

KUALA LUMPAR

▸ Kuala Lumpar is like Singapore in maturity as compared to Vietnam, but not as developed

▸ Activity centers around MAGIC, the government center for entrepreneurship

▸ There is a lot of government momentum and incentives

MANILLA

▸ Manilla has a high level of business outsourcing expertise, but not necessarily technical expertise nor founders

▸ Most startups center around work optimization and SaaS startups, or are the outsourced workforce for overseas startups

▸ Despite that - a huge number of private work spaces (like WeWork)

▸ Lot of startups deal with ecommerce space because of larger consumer market

BANGKOK

▸ The scene we didn’t get to know the best

▸ Huge volume of people interested in startups

▸ Unsure whether that is full fledge companies or simply founders

▸ Worth another trip to understand

+ SYDNEY

▸ The volume and quantity of startups high

▸ Google’s largest engineer office outside of the US is in Sydney

▸ Lots of founders with experience in the US in Sydney

▸ Investors also understand AI and sophisticated

▸ Very impressive startup scene and organic

▸ Government starting to back the entrepreneurial community

+ BEIJING

▸ Most volume of AI/ML startups that we’ve seen

▸ literally hundreds of founders

▸ The good ones are very well funded

▸ Most are dabbling in it because valuations are high and that it is “hot”

▸ Valuations super high

WHAT WE DIDN’T COVER: SINGAPORE AND JAKARTA

▸ Singapore

▸ Most developed ecosystem in SE Asia

▸ Hugely government subsidized versus organic growth

▸ High funding rounds; most funds have a government tie

▸ Jakarta

▸ Consumer market is huge and most startups cater to the market

▸ Still relatively early in terms of startups

▸ Family funds dominate investor scene

SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY

▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?

▸ AI trends across Asia

▸ Program

PROGRAM

$20,000 USD funding for Asian AI/ML startups

Applications close: September 24

PARTNERS

Jaan Talinn - Co-founder Skype

Jon Bradford - Techstars London MD, founder F6S

Thomas Stone - prediction.io (acquired by salesforce.com)

Nathan Beinach - Playfair Capital

Jung-Hee Ryu - FuturePlay

Jason Chiu - Cherry Picks

Jeremy Fisher - cofounder of Wander (acquired by Yahoo)

Alec Hartmann - cofounder of Digital Ocean

COMPANIES

▸ Deepmind

▸ Vicarious

▸ Mapillary

▸ Siri

▸ Summly

▸ Weave.ai

▸ Rainbird

▸ Seldon

STRUCTURE

▸ Space —

▸ Community-working space

▸ in Hong Kong

▸ Weekly office hours with mentors

▸ Weekly deep dives

▸ $20,000 USD

OUTCOMES

▸ product/market fit

▸ fundraising

▸ at Techstars, average was $1.5m USD after DD

THE TYPE OF TEAMS WE’RE LOOKING FOR

▸ Crazy: Pursuing industries and markets that are non-obvious

▸ Smart: Intellectually bright

▸ Doers: Will build product and users

THE INDUSTRIES WE LOOK FOR

▸ Meta-Layers

▸ NLP

▸ Autonomous driving

▸ Non-obvious sensory perception

QUESTIONS

tak@zeroth.ai

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