AI Research Funded By Silicon Valley NEDians at Their Alma Mater in Karachi

[RiazHaq]

Koshish Foundation, an organization funded primarily by NED University Alumni in Silicon Valley, helped fund Koshish Foundation Research Lab (KFRL) in Karachi back in 2014. It has since received additional funding from numerous national and international organizations including DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service. The lab has been renamed RCAI- Research Center For Artificial Intelligence.

In a letter addressed to NEDians Suhail Muhammad and Raghib Husain, the RCAI director Dr. Muhammad Khurram said, "I would really like to thank you (and Koshish Foundation) who helped me in making things happen in the start. Still, a lot needs to be done."

Dr. Ata ur Rahman Khan, former chairman of Pakistan Higher Education Commission (HEC), believes there is significant potential to grow artificial intelligence technology and products. In a recent Op Ed in The News, Dr. Khan wrote as follows:

"Pakistan churns out about 22,000 computer-science graduates each year. With additional high-quality training, a significant portion of these graduates could be transformed into a small army of highly-skilled professionals who could develop a range of AI products and earn billions of dollars in exports."

Dutch publication innovationorigins.com recently featured a young Pakistani Tufail Shahzad from Dajal village in Rajanpur District in southern Punjab. Tufail has studied artificial intelligence at universities in China and Belgium. He's currently working in Eindhoven on artificial intelligence (AI) projects as naval architect and innovation manager at MasterShip Netherlands.

There is at least one Pakistani AI-based startup called Afiniti, founded by serial Pakistani-American entrepreneur Zia Chishti. Afiniti has recently raised series D round of $130 million at $1.6 billion valuation, according to Inventiva. Bulk of the Afiniti development team is located in Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore. In addition, the company has development team members in Islamabad and Karachi.

Afiniti uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to enable real-time, optimized pairing of individual call center agents with individual customers in large enterprises for best results. When a customer contacts a call center, Afiniti matches his or her phone number with any information related to it from up to 100 databases, according to VentureBeat. These databases carry purchase history, income, credit history, social media profiles and other demographic information. Based on this information, Afiniti routes the call directly to an agent who has been determined, based on their own history, to be most effective in closing deals with customers who have similar characteristics.

Investors in Afiniti's latest round include GAM; McKinsey and Co; the Resource Group (TRG); G3 investments (run by Richard Gephardt); Elisabeth Murdoch; Sylvain Héfès; John Browne, former CEO of BP; Ivan Seidenfeld; and Larry Babbio, a former president of Verizon. The company has now raised more than $100 million, including the money previously raised, according to VentureBeat's sources.

Drone is an example of artificial intelligence application. It now a household word in Pakistan. Drones outrage many Pakistanis when used by Americans to hunt militants and launch missiles in FATA. At the same time, drones inspire a young generation of students to study artificial intelligence at 60 engineering colleges and universities in Pakistan. It has given rise to robotics competitions at engineering universities like National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and my alma mater NED Engineering University. Continuing reports of new civilian uses of drone technology are adding to the growing interest of Pakistanis in robotics.

Dr. Ata ur Rehman Khan rightly argues in his Op Ed that AI should be an area of focus for research and development in Pakistan. He says that "the advantage of investing in areas such as artificial intelligence is that no major investments are needed in terms of infrastructure or heavy machinery and the results can become visible within a few years". "Artificial intelligence will find applications in almost every sphere of activity, ranging from industrial automation to defense, from surgical robots to stock-market assessment, and from driverless cars to agricultural sensors controlling fertilizers and pesticide inputs", Dr. Khan adds.

https://www.riazhaq.com/2018/12/ai-research-funded-by-silicon-valley.html

 

[kakamana]

Those of us working in AI for last couple of years know its potential & appreciate this good initiative. However I differ a bit related to "no major investments are needed", we need rendering or gaming GPU to process data and to run our algorithms. And game boys or animation nerds know the pricing. It simply can't run on showbaz shareef laptop junk!!!!!!!
Beside this in Pakistan there is almost zero concept of open data e.g. schooling, traffic, food supply, crime, imaging etc So we know how much challenges we faced to work on our model to process almost "no-data"

Koshish Foundation, an organization funded primarily by NED University Alumni in Silicon Valley, helped fund Koshish Foundation Research Lab (KFRL) in Karachi back in 2014. It has since received additional funding from numerous national and international organizations including DAAD, German Academic Exchange Service. The lab has been renamed RCAI- Research Center For Artificial Intelligence.

In a letter addressed to NEDians Suhail Muhammad and Raghib Husain, the RCAI director Dr. Muhammad Khurram said, "I would really like to thank you (and Koshish Foundation) who helped me in making things happen in the start. Still, a lot needs to be done."

Dr. Ata ur Rahman Khan, former chairman of Pakistan Higher Education Commission (HEC), believes there is significant potential to grow artificial intelligence technology and products. In a recent Op Ed in The News, Dr. Khan wrote as follows:

"Pakistan churns out about 22,000 computer-science graduates each year. With additional high-quality training, a significant portion of these graduates could be transformed into a small army of highly-skilled professionals who could develop a range of AI products and earn billions of dollars in exports."

Dutch publication innovationorigins.com recently featured a young Pakistani Tufail Shahzad from Dajal village in Rajanpur District in southern Punjab. Tufail has studied artificial intelligence at universities in China and Belgium. He's currently working in Eindhoven on artificial intelligence (AI) projects as naval architect and innovation manager at MasterShip Netherlands.

There is at least one Pakistani AI-based startup called Afiniti, founded by serial Pakistani-American entrepreneur Zia Chishti. Afiniti has recently raised series D round of $130 million at $1.6 billion valuation, according to Inventiva. Bulk of the Afiniti development team is located in Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore. In addition, the company has development team members in Islamabad and Karachi.

Afiniti uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to enable real-time, optimized pairing of individual call center agents with individual customers in large enterprises for best results. When a customer contacts a call center, Afiniti matches his or her phone number with any information related to it from up to 100 databases, according to VentureBeat. These databases carry purchase history, income, credit history, social media profiles and other demographic information. Based on this information, Afiniti routes the call directly to an agent who has been determined, based on their own history, to be most effective in closing deals with customers who have similar characteristics.

Investors in Afiniti's latest round include GAM; McKinsey and Co; the Resource Group (TRG); G3 investments (run by Richard Gephardt); Elisabeth Murdoch; Sylvain Héfès; John Browne, former CEO of BP; Ivan Seidenfeld; and Larry Babbio, a former president of Verizon. The company has now raised more than $100 million, including the money previously raised, according to VentureBeat's sources.

Drone is an example of artificial intelligence application. It now a household word in Pakistan. Drones outrage many Pakistanis when used by Americans to hunt militants and launch missiles in FATA. At the same time, drones inspire a young generation of students to study artificial intelligence at 60 engineering colleges and universities in Pakistan. It has given rise to robotics competitions at engineering universities like National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and my alma mater NED Engineering University. Continuing reports of new civilian uses of drone technology are adding to the growing interest of Pakistanis in robotics.

Dr. Ata ur Rehman Khan rightly argues in his Op Ed that AI should be an area of focus for research and development in Pakistan. He says that "the advantage of investing in areas such as artificial intelligence is that no major investments are needed in terms of infrastructure or heavy machinery and the results can become visible within a few years". "Artificial intelligence will find applications in almost every sphere of activity, ranging from industrial automation to defense, from surgical robots to stock-market assessment, and from driverless cars to agricultural sensors controlling fertilizers and pesticide inputs", Dr. Khan adds.

https://www.riazhaq.com/2018/12/ai-research-funded-by-silicon-valley.html

 

[PappuChikna]

Those of us working in AI for last couple of years know its potential & appreciate this good initiative. However I differ a bit related to "no major investments are needed", we need rendering or gaming GPU to process data and to run our algorithms. And game boys or animation nerds know the pricing. It simply can't run on showbaz shareef laptop junk!!!!!!!
Beside this in Pakistan there is almost zero concept of open data e.g. schooling, traffic, food supply, crime, imaging etc So we know how much challenges we faced to work on our model to process almost "no-data"

Kaka sahab, good to know you are in the field and there is unlimited potential in this field.
AI is the future!!
and unfortunately we are no where to be found.
I think you should occasionally post a guidance thread for college and university students about how to learn and excel in this field.

 

[kakamana]

Couple of time done it on this forum & active speaker in known AI group of pakistan & countries i have been working along.... Also been doing it while visiting my university couple of time during vacations.
During election time suggested Adeel about using ML for election camping and being suggested to use Deep learning for controlling trolling and spam on this forum. But seems it will affect his business model.

Kaka sahab, good to know you are in the field and there is unlimited potential in this field.
AI is the future!!
and unfortunately we are no where to be found.
I think you should occasionally post a guidance thread for college and university students about how to learn and excel in this field.

 

[PappuChikna]

Couple of time done it on this forum & active speaker in known AI group of pakistan & countries i have been working along.... Also been doing it while visiting my university couple of time during vacations.
During election time suggested Adeel about using ML for election camping and being suggested to use Deep learning for controlling trolling and spam on this forum. But seems it will affect his business model.

excellent work. So proud of you my friend.
Our students also need lots of motivation because we are generally lazy and lack ambition. Or may be we dont lack ambition we severely lack the drive and only the students themselves need to overcome this laziness.

In any case, you are doing your part.

 

[PappuChikna]

Couple of time done it on this forum & active speaker in known AI group of pakistan & countries i have been working along.... Also been doing it while visiting my university couple of time during vacations.
During election time suggested Adeel about using ML for election camping and being suggested to use Deep learning for controlling trolling and spam on this forum. But seems it will affect his business model.

kakay, my dream is to see pakistani in the top posts at amazon and google and facebook and microsoft.
and we can only do that if we get lots of lots of students getting employment there.
and that can be done if we have students who work hard in learning and marketing their skills.

 

[kakamana]

We saw it the other way around, y not to do our own startups??? fair enough there was a time when US was land of opportunity & biggest startup were done in US but things r changing evolutionary.
That is misery of our education system unfortunately they developed us to be a "nokar" or job seeker instead of enterprenuer. Just see young blood from karachi, sialkot, faisalalbad, peshawar, quetaa etc they try to do their own work even a little stall of under garments. So this need to be changed at top level too.
Already enough brain-drain has been happened and believe me those smart minds want to come back to pakistan & just waiting for right time & seems it isn't far enough

kakay, my dream is to see pakistani in the top posts at amazon and google and facebook and microsoft.
and we can only do that if we get lots of lots of students getting employment there.
and that can be done if we have students who work hard in learning and marketing their skills.

 

[PappuChikna]

We saw it the other way around, y not to do our own startups??? fair enough there was a time when US was land of opportunity & biggest startup were done in US but things r changing evolutionary.
That is misery of our education system unfortunately they developed us to be a "nokar" or job seeker instead of enterprenuer. Just see young blood from karachi, sialkot, faisalalbad, peshawar, quetaa etc they try to do their own work even a little stall of under garments. So this need to be changed at top level too.
Already enough brain-drain has been happened and believe me those smart minds want to come back to pakistan & just waiting for right time & seems it isn't far enough

nahi bhaee, I have to disagree.
brain drain is not a bad thing.
export of human resource is good for the country. Not only they send remittances back which are pivotal for our economy, they also learn and gain valuable experience which they can apply in their own start ups later on or bring it back to our country which is extremely backward in technology.
Secondly, only a small percentage of the population have entrepreneurial skills.
Ofcourse, not 100% of our experts will be hired by silicone valley. Most likely only 5% tops. Rest can do their start ups as they please, no problem.

I think its also important for our students to market their skills.
They need to participate in online forums and create websites to post and show-case their work.

 

[RiazHaq]

#Pakistani #tech #startup develops #AI #journalist. “With Dante’s help, #media outlets can produce endless original content as it neither sleeps nor tires,” Founder Shiekh says produces content in different formats like online, #radio, #print, #television http://www.arabnews.com/node/1187761#.XBg9J8xM_uE.twitter

A Pakistani tech company has developed an artificially intelligent journalist, the first of its kind, which can produce a complete news item in just a few seconds.
Dante is currently producing 350-word closing reports for the Pakistan Stock Exchange, as well as six-month charts and graphs showing market trends.
“This news-writing bot produces 100 percent original content in just two to three seconds after accessing relevant data from newswires, local and international media outlets,” Anis Shiekh, founder of baseH — the company that created Dante — told Arab News.
“It’s not going to replace reporters and editors. Rather, it will help newsroom staff carry out their work smoothly and quickly.”
Dante can automatically develop and maintain its own archive, and can provide context and background to articles.
“With Dante’s help, media outlets can produce endless original content as it neither sleeps nor tires,” Shiekh said, adding that it can easily produce content in different formats such as online, radio, print and television.
Content generated by Dante was shared with senior Pakistani journalists and editors for feedback.

“It was amazing,” Khurram Shahzad told Arab News. “It was so perfect that it hardly required any editing or even proofreading.”
The working prototype can quickly adapt to new writing styles, editorial policies and preferences, so it can easily be deployed anywhere.
Shiekh said numerous brokerage firms and media houses in Pakistan have expressed their interest in buying Dante, but baseH has decided to provide services via subscription only.
Regarding the company’s future plans, he said it is concentrating on tailoring Dante to produce content on the 2018 World Cup, and to write 700-800-word articles on various subjects, including sports, education, health, entertainment and foreign affairs.
“Our subscribers will be able to get original articles instantly on their required subject by just entering a few keywords related to the topic,” said Shiekh.
His company has been working on Dante since 2009, at a cost so far of more than 6 million Pakistani rupees ($56,980).