Exclusive | Chinese search engine Sogou works on lip reading, divorce advice
China’s second largest search engine raised US$585 million in New York IPO in November, but is in no hurry to make money from new applications, says CEO
Chinese search engine Sogou is focused on perfecting the language processing skills seen as a key step towards broader artificial intelligence applications – even if that means going head to head with US leader Google in complex fields such as lip reading to instantaneous machine translation.
The Tencent- and Sohu-backed firm is taking a long-term view and is in “no rush to make money” from its latest smart human-machine query services, chief executive Wang Xiaochuan said in an interview – the first he has given since the company’s initial public offering in November.
“The value lies in helping users make decisions and recommendations. Commercialisation shouldn’t be the challenge,” said Wang. “As long as our smart system is in place, users will become more reliant on Sogou’s search services.”
Dubbed the fourth industrial revolution, technology related to artificial intelligence is expected to boost China’s economic output 26 per cent by 2030, the target date set by the central government to transform the country into a global innovation centre for AI.
Wang’s confidence stands in contrast to the company’s tepid stock performance – down 15 per cent from its listing price in early November. The operator of China’s second largest search engine and most popular digital input method for Chinese language characters raised US$585 million in its New York IPO in November.
