Zhang Qian

zhqcindy@163.com

JUST a few months after becoming the first expat to be granted this year’s Yantian Talent Award, Matt Scott won a few more national and global prizes, giving high praise to the advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques developed by a company he and a Chinese partner co-founded in Shenzhen three years ago.

Scott, 35, is a native of New York. He was granted the Yantian Talent Award for their achievements in various fields. It is the first time the district government has issued the award to an expat.

The main technology developed by Scott and his company, known as Malong, is customized APIs (application programming interfaces), which helps clients embed artificial intelligence in their products (such as websites, applications, back-end management systems) to help serve customers.

“So, what we do is to make computers to see products like people do,” said Scott. “But the technology is embedded in different products and platforms and individual users won’t notice the technology, it’s like a B2B2C model.”

Scott said the technology was inspired by how human sensation works with neural networks. With this advanced technology that can be applied to multiple industries, products can be tested in order to achieve high efficiency, quality and safety.

For instance, one of the company’s clients is a fabric e-commerce app named Youliaobao, which is an online platform for fashion designers and clothing makers. With the API developed by Malong for the textile industry, the app users are able to search for fabrics that match their needs by simply uploading pictures of the fabrics they are after.

Scott is the chief technology officer of the company. He was recruited to work at Microsoft at a young age before graduating from college. He has also worked as a senior technical staff member for Microsoft Research, and has more than 15 years of R&D experience in computer vision and machine learning.

Shenzhen was not Scott’s first destination in China. He lived in Beijing for eight years and from there he met his current partner and co-founder of the company, Huang Dinglong, a local Yantian resident.

The two set up the company in 2014 and the startup graduated with honors from the Microsoft Ventures Startup Accelerator. They also won the first “AI Pioneer” award from Microsoft in 2016 and received other top-tier awards for the company’s AI technology from Amazon and NVIDIA.

Scott said the company is currently in the B-round financing phase, which means that it is rapidly growing in every way it can. “For this stage, our company just needs to keep going and going and there seems no limit for us to stop,” said Scott.

Shenzhen has been an ideal place for Scott and his company. The American innovator said that Shenzhen being the manufacturing center of the world is one of the largest contributors to the company’s success by far. Also, the government support and talent resources available at a few universities in the city are also boosting the company’s growth.

“We regard ourselves as an international Chinese AI company and we represent China in many global forums and contests of technology,” Scott said, adding that he felt proud to introduce their company and techniques as a Chinese enterprise.

When talking about the development of the AI industry, Scott said that the world would gradually adopt an “AI Plus” mode, which means that every industry will upgrade to a level where AI technology is combined with their original core techniques.

However, entering into an era of AI does not mean people’s jobs will be taken away by robots. “People need to be relaxed because AI is not mankind’s enemy, but a helper that can provide more safety and productivity,” said Scott. He also added that AI development is in the very initial stages, and robots that can threaten people’s lives are still only science fiction.