Monday, May 18, 2015

Baidu Artificial Intelligence Beats Google, Microsoft In Image Recognition

From MIT's Technology Review:

Baidu’s Artificial-Intelligence Supercomputer Beats Google at Image Recognition
A supercomputer specialized for the machine-learning technique known as deep learning could help software understand us better.

Chinese search giant Baidu says it has invented a powerful supercomputer that brings new muscle to an artificial-intelligence technique giving software more power to understand speech, images, and written language.

The new computer, called Minwa and located in Beijing, has 72 powerful processors and 144 graphics processors, known as GPUs. Late Monday, Baidu released a paper claiming that the computer had been used to train machine-learning software that set a new record for recognizing images, beating a previous mark set by Google.

“Our company is now leading the race in computer intelligence,” said Ren Wu, a Baidu scientist working on the project, speaking at the Embedded Vision Summit on Tuesday. Minwa’s computational power would probably put it among the 300 most powerful computers in the world if it weren’t specialized for deep learning, said Wu. “I think this is the fastest supercomputer dedicated to deep learning,” he said. “We have great power in our hands—much greater than our competitors.”

Computing power matters in the world of deep learning, which has produced breakthroughs in speech, image, and face recognition and improved the image-search and speech-recognition services offered by Google and Baidu....MORE
See also HPC Wire May 13: "Tech Giants Battle for Image Recognition Supremacy".

Previously on the Deep Learning channel:
"As Machines Get Smarter, Evidence They Learn Like Us"
Researcher Dreams Up Machines That Learn Without Humans 
Artificial Intelligence Company Sentient Raises Another $103 Million, Emerges From Stealth 
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