Keynote Presentation: Prof. Kai Yu, Director of Cross-media LANguage IntelligenCE (X-LANCE) Lab
Title of Keynote: Scaling Heights, Grounded Solutions: Navigating Practical Problems with Scientific Innovation
Abstract: In the era of intelligent agents, the fusion of billions of intelligent hardwares and data driven AI especially deep learning has positioned speech and language interaction as a gateway to information. This talk will review the evolution of speech recognition and dialogue systems, showcasing the pivotal developments from academic research to industry applications. I will introduce the creation of cutting-edge conversational AI, sharing insights from the dual perspective of a researcher and a practitioner. Highlighting AISpeech’s journey to becoming a leader in the field with products that reach billions of users each year, I will focus on the challenges encountered in marrying practical applications with scientific breakthroughs, offering a glimpse into the journey of innovating and commercializing of spoken language technology.
Biography: Prof. Kai Yu is a distinguished professor at Computer Science and Engineering Department and the Director of Cross-media LANguage IntelligenCE (X-LANCE) Lab, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. He got his Bachelor and Master degree from Tsinghua University, China in 1999 and 2002, and his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, U.K. in 2006. He is a senior member of IEEE, a member of the IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee (2017-2019), a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Conferences Board and Membership Board. He also currently servers as the director of the Speech, Dialogue and Auditory Processing Technical Committee of China Computer Federation (CCF) and the director of the Academic and IP committee of the China AI Industry Alliance. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on speech and language processing and holds over 100 granted patents. He served as program chairs for InterSpeech, ICMI and SigDial, as well as area chairs for ACL and EMNLP.
Prof. Yu founded AISpeech and worked as the chief scientist to commercialize state-of-the-art speech and language processing technology. AISpeech has now become a leading conversational AI provider in China for intelligent hardwares such as smart cockpit and home appliance. It was selected into the “AI Key Players” list in the Equity Research Report of AI by Goldman Sachs and one of the Cool Vendors for AI (East Asia) by Gartner.
