Chinese facial recognition company becomes world's most valuable AI start-up


Chinese facial recognition company becomes world's most valuable AI start-up
     
Margi Murp

The Chinese government's plans for mass surveillance using facial recognition have received a boost from one of the country's tech powerhouses, after Alibaba led a $600m investment in SenseTime, which develops technology for tracking individuals.

The company is working on facial and object recognition technology that accurately can spot people using cameras, recently demonstrated on CCTV in Beijing.

Honda is using SenseTime for its driverless car research and development and it is also being used at shopping counters that allows customers to check-out using their faces.

SenseTime already smashed the record for AI funding, beating British competitor DeepMind which was bought by Google for an estimated £400m in 2014, and in 2017 received $410million in its second round of funding.

The company did not disclose its value but Reuters reported that insiders estimated the company could be worth $4.5bn.

US university Massachusetts Institute for Technology is working with SenseTime for its research into “human and machine intelligence”. It is already working with 40 local governments in China which use its CCTV recognition, helping spot people of interest during festivals and in airports.

SenseTime is partly funded by Qualcomm, a chip-company that US president Donald Trump blocked from what would have been one of the biggest technology mergers in history. Mr Trump quashed Qualcomm's planned purchase of another American chipmaker over concerns it would risk national security.

The partnership would allow Qualcomm to use SenseTime's algorithms in smartphones or devices using its chips.

China is hoping to become the international leader in AI, and industry which it hopes will be worth $63.3bn by 2025. It is already using facial recognition at borders to detect registration plates and drivers' faces.

It has been estimated that AI could add an additional £630bn to the UK economy by 2035 an independent review commissioned by the government as part of its Industrial Strategy found.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-facial-recognition-company-becomes-105823939.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car

BMW traps alleged thief by remotely locking him in car Stealer's Wheel? Seattle police department quotes "Watchmen" movie in a recap of the recent arrest. Tech Culture by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper December 4, 2016 5:00 PM PST It's maybe the most satisfying arrest we can imagine. Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal. Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department, posted a witty summary of the event on the SPD's blog on Wednesday. Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (Nov. 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," Spangenthal-Lee wrote. The suspect found a ke...
Read more

Report: World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China

World’s 1st remote brain surgery via 5G network performed in China Published time: 17 Mar, 2019 13:12 ·           A Chinese surgeon has performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. Dr. Ling Zhipei remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain on Saturday, Chinese state-run media  reports . The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary on the southern Hainan island, located 3,000km away. The surgery is said to have lasted three hours and ended successfully. The patient, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is said to be feeling well after the pioneering operation. The doctor used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei. The new device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.  “You barely feel that th...
Read more

New ATM's: withdraw money with veins in your finger

New cash machines: withdraw money with veins in your finger Cash machine technology that reads the pattern of finger veins is already available in Japan and Poland   By Telegraph Reporters 6:59PM BST 15 May 2014 Cash machines could soon be installed with devices that identify customers by reading the veins in their fingers. The technology is already being rolled out in Poland, where 1,730 cash machines will this year be installed with readers, negating the need for a debit card and Pin. Developed by Hitachi, the Japanese electronics firm, the machines read the patterns of the veins just below the surface of the skin on your finger using infra-red sensors. The light is partially absorbed by haemoglobin in the veins to capture a unique finger vein pattern profile, which is matched to a profile. The technology is used by Japanese banks and also in Turkey, offering “groundbreaking levels of accuracy and speed of authentication”, Hitachi said, which in t...
Read more