VietAI Summit 2018 Recap

On December 22nd, VietAl and Kambria co-organized the VietAl Summit 2018 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Many projects on Al research and adoption were introduced at the event.

Applying AI to Agriculture

Kenneth Tran, an engineer at Microsoft Research, introduced his project on AI applications in agriculture. Tran’s project helps “develop an algorithm which has the ability to operate indoor farms in an automatic and effective way.” In an experiment of planting cucumbers in a greenhouse, an AI system was used to control the machines and to make decisions on the amount of water and light. The productivity of this crop was significantly higher compared to previous crops. According to Tran, this technology will be utilized not only in agriculture but also in other industries such as energy or transportation.

Another outstanding presentation was from a new graduate of the University of Natural Science, National University of Ho Chi Minh City, Chuong Huynh. Huynh is currently a Product Engineer at HasBrain. His healthcare project concerns “the diagnosis system on lung X-ray images by combining chest x-ray bone shadow exclusion with deep learning.” This technology provides an automatic diagnosis for patients through lung x-ray images.

Next two young men, Do Truong and Minh Thang from VietAl, introduced their four demo models on how Al can automatically transcribe Vietnamese with high accuracy. This technology promises to improve the interaction between machines and humans in the Vietnamese language and has been utilized in smart homes.

The Big Picture of AI Adoption in Vietnam

These projects from well-known Microsoft experts like Kenneth, start-ups like Do Truong and Minh Thang’s, or even a student like Chuong Huynh received a great deal of attention from the audience. And “we can infer that Al research and training activity in our country has taken great strides,” according to Dr. Thuc Vu, Kambria CEO and Co-founder.

VietAl is a non-profit project co-founded by Stanford PhDs, Dr. Thuc Vu, and Dr. Thang Luong, with the aim of training IT engineers who are eager to learn more about AI. “Our foreign co-workers will share their expertise with us while working together and play an important role in building a strong AI developer community although the number of them is still small in comparison with other countries,” Dr. Vu said.

Real-world use cases of AI have received a lot of attention in Vietnam and according to Dr. Vu. “In healthcare, big data and Al can be used to identify diseases. Some focus on fintech, for example, and credit scoring to know the credit indexes of borrowers. We also have a recommendation system of applications used for advertising. Some have used big data in agriculture to increase productivity.” However, Dr. Vu also said that AI is still not popular enough in Vietnam.

In the event, Dr.Thuc Vu also introduced Kambria, a platform leveraging the development of robotic and Al technologies. This project will offer solutions for the existing drawbacks such as dependence on big companies and lack of cooperation between experts in this field.
VietAl is an educational organization founded by Thuc Vu and their mission is to provide AI courses to young Vietnamese engineers. Through the VietAl Summit, the founders hope that more programmers will join the movement to contribute to the development of the Kambria platform in Vietnam.

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