Factories Are AI’s Next Frontier
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The artificial-intelligence expert, Andrew Ng, is on a mission to AI-ify manufacturing, starting with partners like Foxconn.
Every day, in factories around the world, thousands of people spend hours squinting at tiny circuit boards and other electronic components, looking for imperfections. It’s painstaking work, and Andrew Ng, a leading artificial-intelligence expert who’s already spent years helping tech giants Google and Baidu spread AI across their companies, thinks computers can do it better.
Ng, formerly the head of AI for Chinese Internet company Baidu and the creator of the deep-learning Google Brain project, is the CEO of a new startup called Landing.AI that will help companies figure out ways to incorporate AI. Specifically, Landing.AI, which is based in Palo Alto, California, and has existed for only about four months, is working with manufacturers—including Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer and maker of Apple’s iPhones—to figure out how AI can help with product yield and quality control.