Alibaba AI Labs Adds Two Chief Scientists With Alleged USD1 Million Salaries to Boost Visuals

LIAO SHUMIN

(Yicai Global) Sept. 18 — China’s Alibaba Group Holding has persuaded two experts of video compression and computer vision to join the tech giant’s artificial intelligence lab at the famed Alibaba Damo Academy and according to one media report, offered at least USD1 million to each in annual pay.

Chen Ying will become the chief scientist of AI and edge computing, studying smart homeware visuals and Internet of Things chips, and Tan Ping will serve as chief scientist of computer vision, focusing on 3D modeling and developing holographic technologies, The Paper reported today. Alibaba AI Labs is part of Alibaba Damo Academy, the Hangzhou-based firm’s USD15 billion high-tech research institute.

The two new hires show that Alibaba is increasingly placing attention on visuals after rolling out many audio-based AI technologies. Founded in 2016, Alibaba AI Labs launched its first product, the Tmall Genie X1 voice assistant, in July 2017.

Chen, a former senior staff engineer at Qualcomm, led the development of advanced video coding, a compression standard, at the San Diego-based chip giant. He was the first Chinese employee to be rewarded with the firm’s intellectual property achievement award.

Tan, associate professor at the School of Computing Science in the Simon Fraser University, has mainly studied structure from motion, a technique to create 3D images from 2D ones.

Chen and Tan will work with a team that includes Miffy Chen, head of AI Labs, Nie Zaiqing, principal engineer, Li Mingyang, senior algorithm engineer, and Li Jianye, principal engineer.

Editor: Emmi Laine