News
Mr. OU Qiang (Oscar), SK 2012, Founding Partner of Versa Inc, entrepreneur in the AI industry in China !
Our first Wednesday Talk of this semester was successfully delivered on 29th August, 2018 in Suzhou campus. We had the great opportunity to welcome Mr. OU Qiang (Oscar), SK 2012, Founding Partner of Versa Inc.Oscar shared his successful entrepreneur story in China in the AI industry. This was a great opportunity for students interested in the truth of AI technology and how we get into the great ear. Let us introduce to you Mr. OU Qiang (Oscar).
What is Versa now?
It is the best visual creation app with next generation technology of artificial intelligence, it is a black technology that turns a photo (and after the video) into an art painting and rebuild the elements of the photo uploaded with few clicks, like a mobile end photoshop, and it empowers the ordinary people to create visual artworks without any professional skill.
You are responsible for imagination, AI is responsible for drawing. Everyone can be an artist.
In this era, when AI technology is bringing disruptive changes to our life, Versa turns out to "empower the creators" which creates a "playground for playmates", and lets the best scientists and the best creators to produce and create fun and interesting experiences. This is the most amazing visual creation app in AI era. Only 9 months on the market, the registered users of Versa broke through 12 million, there are also many professional artists and photographers who use Versa to recreate their work. Recently, the lab “Shanghai Jiaotong University-Versa Joint Laboratory on Brain Science and Artificial Intelligence” has been formally announced, jointly established by Versa and Shanghai Jiaotong University.
Could you please introduce us about Versa? So what is the future of Versa?
2017- The big year of AI
When people think that AI is just the "track" of a big company, Versa believes that small companies can also own the most powerful technology, as a real AI is not based on big data which is expensive and can only be afford by big companies.
April 2017
With the 6 million angel round led by the Zhen Fund and followed by the Innovation Angel Fund, Versa began its journey of AI+ culture.
August 2017
Versa's first AI image processing app was launched.
September 2017
Versa App’s downloads broke through 300,000 users.
October 2017
Versa received Sequoia Capital's Pre-A round of financing, equivalent ¥30 million.
May 2018
The total number of Versa users has exceeded 12 million.
From 10th Aug. 2018, Versa’s new version of the App is on Apple store, and , by the end of Aug.2018, this new version is on Android markets.
Paris & San Francisco office
Currently, Versa is preparing for the Paris and San Francisco offices, and welcomes a wide range of user download experiences in the region. At the same time, Versa also welcomes everyone to submit resumes and apply for internships or jobs (JD can be searched online in China). Versa looks forward to "run wild" with you!
The original intention of Versa was to empower the creators. In the field of artificial intelligence, Versa achieved a number of leading performance of the world, in the field of image/video Style Transfer, Image/video semantic Segmentation, monocular camera 3D Pose Estimation, 40 thousands points face modeling and other fields. With innovative technological achievements.
Our goal is to build the most amazing creative tool for creators. Next, Versa will further increase the number of styles and speed of computing, and will introduce other more interesting products.
At the same time, Versa is actively building the “Versa Intelligence Alliance” (VIA), which consists of worldwide artists, designers, architects, institutions, art galleries, museums, and art festivals. VIA is about to launch the offline Versa Space to create a high-value, interactive AI+art space experience. Regular exhibitions and forums will be held to provide a platform for creators to communicate and learn, and explore the possibilities of AI+ culture.
It will be a paradise for all playmates who have enough imagination, AI will help them to have the unique creative experience.
How does Versa combine AI and culture?
First of all, I will briefly introduce our AI technology here:
Versa's advancement in technology
In general, most companies' AI technology is constantly feeding data for training. For example, if you want to identify a cat, most AI technology companies need more than 80,000 pictures, and we all know that a human child only needs to see twice. What is the difference?
The difference is that human being’s cognitive method is based on concept learning which is completely different from that of data-stacked machines. For the cat recognition example, Versa's AI algorithm needs only 300 pictures to recognize the cats, and we are constantly trying to get close to the ability of human being. The technical route that we take is brain-like computing, simulating human being’s conceptual learning ability, which is a great technical challenge. Our scientist team has overcome many obstacles and achieved world-class results. Versa CTO Weijie Zhao proposed the original brain-like computing theory: ConceptNet, which lets Versa's AI to be completely independent of big data.
Cultural creation
We believe that technology should not only just empower traditional industries. Apart from autonomous driving, quantitative trading, and security monitoring, should our team of 30-year-old average ages be different, cool, and fun? Since our AI algorithm is not based on big data, we know that data annotation and GPU server are very expensive, most self-media creators, personal, small studio cannot afford it. But our technology has no such problem at all, so considering our intention and the characteristics of technology, we have chosen this field, and China's entertainment market is worth 500 billion Yuan.
Could you share with us your study and internship experience at SKEMA?
I learnt information security in my undergraduate stage in China. With a heart of entrepreneurship, I tried professional-related entrepreneurship during my undergraduate course, but ended in failure. I attributed the failure of this venture to the lack of management skill, and the idea of learning management was born.
At the beginning of 2008, I came to France for study. After the study of the engineering, I studied the business school with a good project management in France. I found that the PPMBD of SKEMA Business School is unique among them and has a high evaluation in management colleges. Therefore, in the spring of 2010, I enrolled in the SKEMA Business School's Master of Science programme in Project and Programme Management & Business Development.
I had two internships during my stay in France. The first time I did EMEA's Technical Pre-sales internship at the Marketing Department of Alcatel-Lucent group in France. The pre-sales work needs the characteristics of both engineers and sales and we have to give the technical solutions that can be sold, according to the requirements. This is in line with my professional counterpart in the undergraduate stage, and with my knowledge of marketing learnt in SKEMA. .
After that, I entered the Investment bank department of Society General (SGCIB) as a recruiting intern (stagiaire Pre-embauche). Thanks to the knowledge of SKEMA project management (SKEMA provides the world's three major project management system certification exams, the US PMI, the UK's Prince2 and MSP, and Japan's P2M), I quickly adapted to the investment bank's work. For newcomers, quickly understanding the working methods and processes of the big group is a necessary requirement to rapidly enter into the working state. I found that the risk project management method of the Industrial Bank is basically in line with the British MSP and Prince2 systems. It is the most direct asset that SKEMA has given me, so that I can apply my knowledge to practice.
There is also an episode in the middle. When the HR department learned that I was still a student at SKEMA, my internship salary was raised from 1,500 Euro/month to 1700 Euro/month. Although it was only 200 Euro, I realized that SKEMA is generally valued in the banking sector.
SKEMA will open an MSc program in collaboration with Microsoft next year to promote artificial intelligence into the SKEMA classroom. Do you have anything to tell the students who are interested in choosing a related major?
AI seems to be something that can't be done today, but in fact, AI, like electricity, Internet, car, regarded as an unrealistic technology at first. In fact, looking backward, they are just the basic technology and facilities of society . The key is how we use it. This is the philosophy that Versa respects. AI is a kind of thinking.
At this stage, you don't have to care about how the car is made. You only need to care if you can get your driver license or not. The AI is the same. As long as we learn how to break down everything into the seven major problems of AI, then the corresponding algorithm to solve the problem will be developed by thousands of scientists, we only need to know how to choose. In the future, if you want to use AI to solve problems, we only need to find a small amount of data, break down the real problem, and then click "run", the problem can be solved.
As a business school student, you should learn to understand the technical landscape and direction of development, gain insight into the potential business value of AI technology, and use the tools of AI to lead the future. I feel that the establishment of this major at SKEMA Business School is extremely sensitive and forward-looking.
I would like to give two suggestions to students who are interested in learning AI or being discouraged in the face of AI:
- Don’t set limits for yourself
- Find your own interest and love it
At the beginning of learning AI, we must have a basic understanding of its technology, which do not require you to have a technical background, but just your logical thinking. So don't be afraid when you first come into contact with AI. Second, you need to know what you want to do with AI.
What advice do you have for students at SKEMA?
- Doing more internship in different companies, take advantage of Gap year well, you have to see various big companies.
- Don't compromise on things that you love, not a bit
- The recent SKEMA global ranking has risen rapidly and I am very happy with the achievements of SKEMA. I think the reason why the school is a good school is that it has cultivated good students. I believe that one day SKEMA will become a great school, and alumni will become great SKEMIENS.
Be young, do what you want to do, do what young people should do!
