'China's Uber' ramps up AI arms race, says it will open third deep learning research lab
China’s dominant ride-hailing company gears up for second Beijing facility dedicated to artificial intelligence, bringing the number of research labs to three
Didi Chuxing, the largest ride-hailing app operator in China, has decided to add a third research facility, located in Beijing, in the wake of renewed competition, 16 months after rival Uber ended operations in the country.
The facility will consolidate research efforts in artificial intelligence, including deep learning, computer vision and natural language processing technologies for smart transportation, according to Ye Jieping, vice president of Didi Chuxing.
Didi Chuxing currently operates two artificial intelligence research labs based in Silicon Valley and Beijing.
“Didi has been touching and expanding boundaries of smart traffic innovation. There’s plenty of research data to comb through and precipitate,” said Ye.
The same technology that underlines AlphaGo – Google’s AI programme that last year beat the world’s leading Go players Ke Jie and Lee Sedol – is also adopted to optimise navigation routes and match sharing rides by move prediction, according to Ye.