Artificial intelligence solutions are surely making things simpler, but require immense computing power for the same. Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is further pushing the envelope on AI solutions with the introduction of its updated machine learning platform. It is also looking to make AI technology more accessible with the launch of 2 new solutions at a computing conference in Shenzhen, China.
Earlier in 2015, the company, also known as Aliyun in China, took the wraps off the first publicly available machine-learning platform called PAI. It is a suite of tools and artificial intelligence algorithms which allow businesses and enterprises without an AI background to solve complex problems using their ET program. It is capable of predicting results of reality shows and help ease traffic congestion in the most populous country on Earth.
But the capabilities of this platform are now being expanded upon with the launch of PAI 2.0, which will enable customers of Alibaba Cloud to deploy large-scale data mining and modeling projects. It now provides you with more than 100 sets of algorithms that can be applied to tasks such as data pre-processing, statistical analysis and deep-learning AI solutions. The company has also simplified PAI’s user interface to enable developers to drag and drop elements into workflows to implement functionalities, thus enhancing efficiency.
Speaking on the same, Dr. Jingren Zhou, Alibaba Cloud’s Chief Scientist said:
In the past year, Alibaba Cloud has implemented a number of real-life AI applications for customers across industries. PAI 2.0 will make ET an effective tool for helping people and businesses resolve practical issues.
Alibaba Cloud is looking to make artificial intelligence technologies more widely available using the next iteration of its PAI machine learning service. It is particularly gunning for AI-based, data-driven innovations in China’s healthcare and manufacturing sectors. It has thus developed two new services-packed cloud suites, namely ET Medical Brain and ET Industrial Brain, to support the said cause.
- ET Medical Brain: This AI-enabled suite of cloud computing solutions have been designed to support the medical personnel by automating (or supporting) some of the procedures. Alibaba believes that healthcare requires massive quantities of data to be collected from different sources and processed in a short period of time. There is also the need for virtual assistants for patients and advanced solutions for medical imaging, drug development, and hospital management. Everything, which Alibaba Cloud is supporting with this ET solution.
- ET Industrial Brain: This is another AI-enabled suite of products built upon Alibaba Cloud, the Chinese e-commerce giant’s cloud computing infrastructure. It is looking to support innovation in the manufacturing sector by pushing companies to adopt centralized data management, improved maintenance planning, better equipment utilization, real-time production monitoring to enhance output, energy savings. Industries can also employ AI technologies to spot the weakness in their production process.
With the amalgamation of tangible AI and ML solutions into their infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud is looking to compete against some of the leaders such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Azure in the cloud computing industry. And this would give a certain edge to the company’s existing 765,000 paying customers, including the likes of Nestle and Philips. Talking about the same, the official blog post reads,
With these new cutting-edge developments, Alibaba Cloud is taking the lead in harnessing AI and deep learning technologies to expand the innovative possibilities across industries and enable companies to be more productive and cost-effective.
