Artificial Intelligence provides us with data driven, complex solutions by using human-like learning methods.
Many start-ups flop due to insufficient AI. Road2 and NVIDIA built an Innovation Center featuring a state-of-the-art AI Lab in Haifa to bring early-stage start-ups the resources they need in order to succeed.
But what is AI, and how can entrepreneurs use it to develop their ideas? A good place to start is to understand the objective of AI in the first place.
AI simulates the performance of cognitive tasks like decision making, problem solving, perception, and decoding communication in order to reach a set goal. In entrepreneurship, the objective is to train a computer to take large amounts of data and analyze it the way we want it to. The skills it learns can then be applied to new situations that are not within the original data set, and it can tell us what we want to know.
Applications
Many people are unaware that they come into contact with AI on a daily basis. Much of the internet, including online shopping and customer service all run some form of AI. All the biggest retail outlets like Amazon, Walmart, AliExpress, etc., use recommendation engines to suggest other products based on search results or what people have previously clicked on. Another example is speech recognition technology. Think Siri or Alexa and how you can ask them for any information you want. You don’t need to choose from given commands anymore like in the past. Call centers used to be automated and you had to choose a spoken command like “make an appointment,” “track a package,” “speak to a representative,” etc. Now you make your own command and the machine will understand you, even if you have an accent or lisp.
As we feed the internet with more and more data such as tagged videos and pictures, computer vision can identify similar features on subsequent untagged videos or pictures. It applies the data it has already learned to new situations. For instance, if people start posting pictures of Haifa and add a tag called “Haifa,” computer vision technology can learn what Haifa looks like. Together with geotagging, when someone next adds a picture of Haifa without a tag, their computer may suggest tagging it as Haifa based on the picture’s features.
But that’s just for starters.
AI computer vision applications can already allow for the unlocking of your phone by recognizing your face. It can take a picture of something you like while walking down the street and ask Google to identify it for you or to find something similar.
Start-ups are constantly pushing the technology further, but 90% of them fail due to misgauging the market, flawed business models, or inadequate research. They lack critical resources – exactly what Road2’s accelerator program is dedicated to delivering promising start-ups.
What does access to an AI lab mean for start-ups?
Data Analysis
In order to achieve the right outcomes, start-ups must grapple with immense quantities of data. Based on the data provided, AI supercomputers are able to process, classify, and predict what you want them to. They have staggering processing speeds, allowing them to transform raw data into useful data in seconds, minutes, or days, rather than years or even decades if it were to be done manually. The result is that it can rapidly predict whatever you want it to, e.g., which song a spotify user would like to listen to next, which category of damage a car has on its door, which dress would best fit you, and endlessly more.
Road2’s Resources
Considering that the $1,000,000 price tag of a supercomputer is often prohibitive even for well-established companies, most start-ups certainly can’t afford one. Instead of a small company having to over leverage itself, we at Road2 grant promising start-ups access to our AI lab’s supercomputer, the Advanced NVIDIA DGX A100 server, powered by NVIDIA. The likes of its super processing capabilities can only be found at Google and Amazon.
In addition to granting access to the server, at Road2, start-ups collaborate with engineers that provide training. This collaboration is what allows start-ups to advance their AI models to their fullest potential. What’s more, start-ups can use NVIDIA’s channels and connections to reach potential clients in addition to gaining free access to cloud service.
Partnerships
Start-ups can get the data they need to reach their first customers through our partnerships with RAMBAM, חברת החשמל לישראל – עמוד הבית (iec.co.il), Bazan, Tambour, Strauss, Johnson Matthey, NVIDIA, and other leading international corporations.
With our training, partnerships, financial support, and tech infrastructure, we empower start-ups to make accelerated breakthroughs. A tailor-made program is made for each start-up based on the stage they are at. We help them create scalable infrastructure for their ideas by thoroughly teaching them the tools and technology of AI. In other words, we make it possible for a pipedream to become a reality, and all the while we are solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Learn more about Road2’s AI Center of Excellence.
