A talk by Tak Lo at Seoul Tech in Aug 2016

1. AI IN ASIA TODAY
ZEROTH.AI

2. SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY
▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?
▸ AI trends across Asia
▸ Program

3. WHO AM I
MD at Zeroth.ai
First accelerator for Artificial Intelligence/
Machine Intelligence startups

4. MY BACKGROUND
=
50 companies
Raised over $67m
Investor in Weave.ai

5. OUR PROGRAM
$20,000 USD funding for Asian AI/ML startups
Application deadline: September 24, 2016

6. SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY
▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?
▸ AI trends across Asia
▸ Program

7. WHAT IS AI/ML?
▸ AI
▸ Some level of cognition-ability in a machine
▸ Weak/Narrow AI - doing one task well
▸ Strong/Full AI: Human-level cognition
▸ ML
▸ Algorithms that allow machines to learn by itself
▸ Examples are: neural network, reinforcement learning,
deep learning, genetic programming,

8. SOURCES
▸ Master Algorithm: How the quest for the ultimate learning machine will
remake our world
▸ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012271YB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?
_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
▸ Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
▸ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LOOCGB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?
_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#navbar
▸ Wait But Why: The AI revolution: The road to Superintelligence
▸ http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
▸ Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
▸ https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/
dp/0136042597

9. WHY AI NOW?
▸ More structured data than ever before
▸ Increased cloud computing power
▸ Do more, faster
▸ Decreasing storage cost
▸ ability to crunch loads of input

10. A FEW AREAS AI WILL DISRUPT, I
▸ Industries
▸ Self driving: Cruise, Google
▸ Healthcare: Alzheimers: https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F
%2Fmedium.com%2F%40YvesMulkers%2Fartificial-intelligence-could-help-
catch-alzheimers-early-c0073a7d9e1%3Fsource
%3DuserActivityShare-502c13d18b4-1469332947&formCheck=5d4a479dc
ab685d6e2774064fda498dd
▸ Online Marketer: Persado: http://persado.com/
▸ Accounting: Smacc: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/28/goodbye-
accountants-startup-builds-ai-to-automate-all-your-accounting/
▸ HR Professional: FlatPI: https://flatpi.com/
▸ Journalism: Wordsmith: https://automatedinsights.com/products/
▸ Editor: Bold: https://bold.bold.io/post/make-your-words-stand-out-udvqaw

11. A FEW AREAS AI WILL DISRUPT, II
▸ Industries
▸ Education:
▸ Instagram: Prisma: http://prisma-ai.com/
▸ Insurance:
▸ Legal: Ross: http://www.rossintelligence.com/
▸ AI therapist: http://futurism.com/uscs-new-ai-ellie-has-more-success-than-
actual-therapists/
▸ B2B marketing software: Optimate and Wondertech
▸ Office workers: X.ai, Mimetic.ai
▸ Deepmind: AlphaGo, Electricity: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/
articles/2016-07-19/google-cuts-its-giant-electricity-bill-with-deepmind-
powered-ai

12. A FEW AREAS AI WILL DISRUPT, III
▸ In short - everything

13. WHAT WON’T HAPPEN SOON

14. WHY
▸ Machines will always optimize individual tasks well - but
across multiple tasks require a different level
▸ The ability to have machines with human-like cognition will
take a lot more time to develop
▸ simple analogy - to get a machine to be a father, an
athlete, a thinker, and a GO player is HARD

15. VISUAL REPRESENTATION
STRONG AI STRONG AI
Narrow
AI
Narrow
AI
Narrow
AI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
NarrowAI
Theoretical End State What will likely end up happening

16. WHAT RESULTS
▸ Positives of AI outweigh negatives = net positive

17. WHAT’S LEFT OVER: IRRATIONAL FEAR

18. the best defense is "to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI
powers, then there's not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI
superpower” - in creating OpenAI
DEFENSE

19. SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY
▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?
▸ AI trends across Asia
▸ Program

20. ▸ 15 days traveling
▸ 6 cities covered
▸ Kuala Lumpar, Ho Chi Minh City, Manilla, Bangkok,
Beijing, Sydney
▸ 50 individual meetings
▸ Presented to over 300 people
WHAT WE DID FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS

21. PEOPLE WE MET WITH

22. Conclusions

23. HO CHI MINH CITY
▸ Ho Chi Minh City has the most potential
▸ The volume of AI startups isn’t high, but the technical
quantity and quality of people are
▸ There is a hunger and tenacity in Vietnamese founders
▸ Huge volume of young people (> 50% under the age of
35)
▸ There seems to be a culture of entrepreneurship starting

24. KUALA LUMPAR
▸ Kuala Lumpar is like Singapore in maturity as compared to
Vietnam, but not as developed
▸ Activity centers around MAGIC, the government center for
entrepreneurship
▸ There is a lot of government momentum and incentives

25. MANILLA
▸ Manilla has a high level of business outsourcing expertise,
but not necessarily technical expertise nor founders
▸ Most startups center around work optimization and SaaS
startups, or are the outsourced workforce for overseas
startups
▸ Despite that - a huge number of private work spaces (like
WeWork)
▸ Lot of startups deal with ecommerce space because of
larger consumer market

26. BANGKOK
▸ The scene we didn’t get to know the best
▸ Huge volume of people interested in startups
▸ Unsure whether that is full fledge companies or simply
founders
▸ Worth another trip to understand

27. + SYDNEY
▸ The volume and quantity of startups high
▸ Google’s largest engineer office outside of the US is in
Sydney
▸ Lots of founders with experience in the US in Sydney
▸ Investors also understand AI and sophisticated
▸ Very impressive startup scene and organic
▸ Government starting to back the entrepreneurial
community

28. + BEIJING
▸ Most volume of AI/ML startups that we’ve seen
▸ literally hundreds of founders
▸ The good ones are very well funded
▸ Most are dabbling in it because valuations are high and
that it is “hot”
▸ Valuations super high

29. WHAT WE DIDN’T COVER: SINGAPORE AND JAKARTA
▸ Singapore
▸ Most developed ecosystem in SE Asia
▸ Hugely government subsidized versus organic growth
▸ High funding rounds; most funds have a government tie
▸ Jakarta
▸ Consumer market is huge and most startups cater to the
market
▸ Still relatively early in terms of startups
▸ Family funds dominate investor scene

30. SOME OF THE THINGS WE WILL CHAT ABOUT TODAY
▸ What is AI/ML and why is it important?
▸ AI trends across Asia
▸ Program

31. PROGRAM
$20,000 USD funding for Asian AI/ML startups
Applications close: September 24

32. PARTNERS
Jaan Talinn - Co-founder Skype
Jon Bradford - Techstars London MD, founder F6S
Thomas Stone - prediction.io (acquired by salesforce.com)
Nathan Beinach - Playfair Capital
Jung-Hee Ryu - FuturePlay
Jason Chiu - Cherry Picks
Jeremy Fisher - cofounder of Wander (acquired by Yahoo)
Alec Hartmann - cofounder of Digital Ocean

33. COMPANIES
▸ Deepmind
▸ Vicarious
▸ Mapillary
▸ Siri
▸ Summly
▸ Weave.ai
▸ Rainbird
▸ Seldon

34. STRUCTURE
▸ Space —
▸ Community-working space
▸ in Hong Kong
▸ Weekly office hours with mentors
▸ Weekly deep dives
▸ $20,000 USD

35. OUTCOMES
▸ product/market fit
▸ fundraising
▸ at Techstars, average was $1.5m USD after DD

36. THE TYPE OF TEAMS WE’RE LOOKING FOR
▸ Crazy: Pursuing industries and markets that are non-
obvious
▸ Smart: Intellectually bright
▸ Doers: Will build product and users

37. THE INDUSTRIES WE LOOK FOR
▸ Meta-Layers
▸ NLP
▸ Autonomous driving
▸ Non-obvious sensory perception

38. QUESTIONS
tak@zeroth.ai