Chinese social media giant Tencent to build AI research facility in U.S.May 2, 2017 - 16:06 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings said on Tuesday, May 2 it will open an artificial intelligence (AI) research facility in Seattle in the United States, to be led by former Microsoft scientist Yu Dong, according to Reuters. Yu, who has been appointed as deputy head of Tencent's AI Lab division, will run the new lab as well as spearhead research in speech recognition and natural language understanding, the company said. Tencent, which owns the popular WeChat messaging app, is Asia's most valuable company with a market capitalization of nearly $300 billion. Shenzhen-headquartered Tencent is one of a number of Chinese technology juggernauts that are stepping up efforts in AI research. Tencent's WeChat has more than 889 million monthly active users. Tencent has more than 50 researchers and more than 200 engineers at its AI Lab in Shenzhen, which was established in April 2016, according to the company. China's "Big Three" tech firms - Tencent, Baidu Inc and Alibaba - have been competing to attract top-notch talent. Yu, a speech recognition and deep learning expert, was the principal researcher at Microsoft Research Institute's Speech and Dialog Group before joining Tencent. Baidu suffered a setback to its AI ambitions after its chief scientist Andrew Ng resigned in March, shortly before Tencent announced it has poached Baidu's former big data director Zhang Tong to head up its AI Lab. Yu is looking to build a team of around 20 for the Seattle lab, according to Tencent. Top stories Yerevan will host the 2024 edition of the World Congress On Information Technology (WCIT). Rustam Badasyan said due to the lack of such regulation, the state budget is deprived of VAT revenues. Krisp’s smart noise suppression tech silences ambient sounds and isolates your voice for calls. Gurgen Khachatryan claimed that the "illegalities have been taking place in 2020." Partner news Most popular in the section | Police try to impede Armenian Church head’s access to war memorial Police tried to stop the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, from visiting a war memorial. Greece says ready to help as Armenia fights flooding consequences Greece is ready to assist Armenia in combatting the consequences of deadly floods in the country’s north. “He will leave”: Protest leader no longer demands meeting with Pashinyan Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan no longer demands a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Lemkin Institute petition seeks release of Armenians in Azerbaijan The Lemkin Institute is deeply concerned about the continued illegal detention of political prisoners from Karabakh in Azerbaijan. |