Microsoft won't shut down the Beijing AI Lab

Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) will not be temporarily shut down, according to The New York Times. As one of Microsoft's eight global research labs, the Beijing-based lab, with its hundreds of researchers, is the largest outside the U.S. headquarters. Today, let’s talk about how an advanced technology lab navigates geopolitical turmoil.

Back in 1998, computer scientist and now investor Kai-Fu Lee was appointed by Bill Gates with the task of establishing the lab. 

According to statistics from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, before 1997, fewer than 20 multinational companies had established research institutions in China. This number surged to 750 by 2005, coinciding with China's market expansion

Starting with just six members, Lee's leadership saw the lab's swift evolution, culminating in 2004 when MIT Technology Review dubbed it “The world’s hottest computer lab.”

In his autobiography, Kai-Fu Lee mentioned that a fundamental objective of the MSRA has always been to support enduring computer science research, unfettered by the constraints of product development cycles

MSRA excels in technologies like speech and facial recognition, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, nurturing numerous talents. Many researchers from MSRA have taken key positions in tech giants or started their own companies, contributing significantly to accelerating China's entry into a technological renaissance.

This includes ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, SenseTime founder Tang Xiao'ou, Xiaomi co-founder Lin Bin, Baidu president Zhang Yaqin, Alibaba Cloud creator Wang Jian, and Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng, among others.

MSRA's success and fame have caught the attention of Washington.

Karen Weise, Cade Metz and David McCabe with New York Times:

Microsoft, aiming to alleviate concerns in Washington, stated that it had implemented strict guidelines at the lab. This included restricting researchers from engaging in politically sensitive work such as quantum computing. Last fall, it was also noted that MSRA personnel were not granted early access to GPT-4 for their work.

Last June, Financial Times reported Microsoft's plan to relocate top AI experts from Beijing to Vancouver, where a new branch of the lab had just opened. Researchers have the freedom to use cutting-edge technology there.

I believe Microsoft is unlikely to easily give up on MSRA. It serves as a strategic asset for improving relationships with the Chinese government and universities, while also attracting top talent. Just last year, President Xi met with Gates in Beijing. And don’t forget, the initial aim of establishing MSRA was to tap into China’s vast talent pool.

Microsoft's presence in China remains strong, with various business ventures. After Google left China in 2010, Bing became the country's only foreign search engine. In 2023, China made up 1.5% of Microsoft's sales - a small but significant piece of their global business.

Asia Must Reads 

Tokyo-based AI lab raise $30 mln to develop AI models

Sakana AI, an AI startup from Tokyo started by two ex-Google researchers, announced on Tuesday that it raised $30 million in seed funding. The round was led by Lux Capital and included investment from Khosla Ventures.

Why it matters: Sakana AI aims to establish Tokyo as a key AI hub. Their investors note that the company focuses on developing AI models tailored for the Asian market, addressing the unique challenges of Asian character-based languages, which differ significantly from Western languages.

Between the line: Llion Jones is the fifth author on Google's 2017 research paper "Attention Is All You Need", which introduced the "transformer" deep learning architecture. (Anna Tong / Reuters)

Zhipu AI Unveils GLM-4, Paralleling OpenAI

Zhipu AI, a leading Chinese startup in the AI field, has launched its new GLM-4 large language model and a range of other products at their first DevDay on January 16th.

Why it matters: Zhipu AI aims to be the best student of OpenAI. The company claims GLM-4 is nearly as good as OpenAI's GPT-4, I guess it’s about 80%-90% as capable according to the index.

Driving the news:

• GLM-4 can handle much longer texts, up to 300 pages in one go.

• CogVLM3, another product, reportedly performs better than some existing multimodal models.

• With AI agent GLMs and the GLM Store, users can customize models easily, even without coding skills.

Yes, but: It struggled in the HellaSwag test requiring common-sense understanding and had issues in a live demo, where it couldn't recreate images accurately in a conversation.

Try more: https://www.chatglm.cn/

ByteDance presents powerful AI model for video generation from text 

ByteDance introduces a new AI model MagicVideo-V2 for text-to-video generation that outperforms other methods like Gen-2(Runway), Pika 1.0. (Maximilian Schreiner / The Decoder)

Driving the news: According to the team, MagicVideo-V2 it's not your usual text-to-video (T2V) model. It ingeniously integrates various modules, including text-to-image (T2I), image-to-video (I2V), video-to-video (V2V), and video frame interpolation (VFI), all into one seamless architecture. 

Try more: https://magicvideov2.github.io/

Chinese chipmakers are networking with Japanese firms through group tours, responding to strict export controls from the US and allies. (Qianer Liu / FT)

Naura Technology expects higher revenue and profits in 2023, driven by local demand as China's chip makers replace foreign semiconductor equipment with domestic alternatives. (Che pan / SCMP)

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are set to invest 622 trillion won to create the world's largest semiconductor hub in Gyeonggi Province, backed by the Korean government's commitment to infrastructure and skilled workforce development. (Michael Herh / Business Korea)

At the Davos World Economic Forum, China's premier Li Qiang advocated for a human-first approach to technology, emphasizing the need for humans to control machines, not the reverse. He stressed that artificial intelligence should be directed towards advancing human development.

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