Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): Technology Incubation Network (TIN) Seminar on AI & IoT Past to Smart Future

2018年4月6日星期五

Technology Incubation Network (TIN) Seminar on AI & IoT Past to Smart Future

Technology Incubation Network (TIN) Seminar named “AI and IoT Past to Smart Future” was held on 6^th Apr 2018 in Ideal Lab, HKSTP. We took a group photo with all participants for memory.

In the beginning, Mr. Torin Fung (TIN Chairman) gave welcome speech and briefed TIN which formed by HKSTP incubatee alumni (more than 600 companies).

Mr. Honby Chan (Senior Vice President, The Hong Kong Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology (HKAAST)) gave an opening remark. He introduced HKAAST which was established in 1985 and provided a platform for Academic, Professional and Industry.

My colleague Kent introduced our Incubation Program to the youth participants.

The first speaker was Mr. Benny Lam (Executive Director, AI Capital Ltd.; AISG Chairman, HKAAST) and his topic named “AI Applications Past, Present and Future”. Firstly, he shared his experience and entrepreneur background.

Then he briefed the major milestones of AI. Long time ago, OCR was used to recognize the English character that was the early AI application. However, there were two AI winter periods because of out of expectation at that time. After deep learning succeed, AI wave come again.

He added many people though AI as “thinking logically”, “Ability to learn” and “solving problem”, etc. Some applications were mentioned as AI Object Detection for Retail, Visual Recognition, Autonomous Cars, AI enabled Autonomous Driving, Jet Engine Predictive Maintenance, etc. The most important was that AI enabled IoT Growth.

Finally, he mentioned the evolution of AI from assisted intelligence to augmented intelligence and then to autonomous intelligence. During this evolution, the shift in work would be from low-value activities to high-value one.

The second speaker was Mr. Jack Wong (Founder, Zetakey Solution Ltd.; AISG Core Committee Member, HKAAST) and his presentation entitled “IoT and Smart Application”. His topics included IoT Overview, Key Elements and Smart Applications.

In the beginning, he briefed the IoT history since 1980. Since it was still new, we all learnt the new things. Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics software, sensors and network connectivity which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. Previously, people stated “Machine-to-machine (M2M)” that direct communication between devices using any communications channel.

After that Mr. Jack Wong briefed the key technologies elements included Sensors (Material Science), Processor Power (Semiconductor), Wireless or Networking and Clouds Computing. Using those elements, Big Data and AI could be growth significantly. Then he demonstrated the structure of IoT which Management and Security were important for each layers.

Lastly, he mentioned some challenges such as Interoperability, Security, Complexity, etc. He raised separation of concerns between Hardware Level and Application Level.

The last speaker was Dr. Frederick Wong (Founder, InnoAIbator Limited) and his topic named “AI Incubator Business Platform”. This platform aimed to minimize development costs, improve time-to-market and maximize the ROI while STARTUP using AI judgement and evaluation.

Firstly, Dr. Wong briefed the hype cycle for emerging technologies in 2017. He said the AR & VR were at the well bottom and passed the high growth slop. However, the Deep Learning and Machine Learning were at the top of the cycle. Nevertheless, IoT was at the high growth position near the top of cycle.

Based on four factors of production, AI was only replaced part of labour but not all, otherwise, the economy was not sustained. Labour would perform some creative and innovative works.

Finally, he mentioned their model for supporting startup business development through three stages. He developed the Business Successful Index (BSI) for Startup AI system with the factors as Personality, Idea/Concept, Finance, Innovation and uniqueness, Marketing and Sustainability.

Mr. Harvey Ko (CEO, SupBuyer.com; Secretary, TIN) was MC and chair the Q&A session.

Participants asked about monitoring the house worker but conflicted the privacy. Torin said it should be more humanity (人性化). Dr. Wong said following the Nation AI Policy and Plan more that 50% and the other followed multi-discipline (多元化) policies which were suitable for Hong Kong. One question was about from IoT to Internet of Everything (IoE) like smart home to smart family.