2021’s first StartupTing is joined by a renowned AI company, MINDs Lab. MINDs Lab is the best and only AI expert organization equipped with AI algorithms to AI applications and services. The company has recently launched a subscription AI platform ‘maum’ open to anyone in the cloud field.

In today’s StartupTing, CEO Hong-Seop Choi introduced MINDs Lab and researchers from KAIST explained the characteristics of various AI fields. About 80 students actively participated in StartupTing through Zoom.

MINDs Lab wishes to create a world where anyone can use AI and become a company that can affect the world with AI. The company is the first Korean company to partner with amii, one of Canada’s top three AI research institutes, and generating single sales in the AI field. In addition, MINDs Lab is developing AI programs and algorithms to provide a cloud service using an AI engine, and adding edge computing to its AI platform ‘maum’.

When CEO Choi opened the maum AI cloud platform, he received a lot of collaboration requests not only from large companies but also small and medium-sized startups. He mentioned that all startups are related to AI somehow, and that MINDs Lab started its business in the AI field early. Using the ecoMINDs program, any startup can utilize AI easily. The company is currently establishing the 2^nd Center for ecoMINDs in Daejeon.

After introducing MINDs Lab, CEO Choi explained the benefits of joining the company. MINDs Lab headquarters is located in Pangyo, and it is possible to work either in Pangyo or Daejeon, as well as at home due to COVID-19. In addition, MINDs Lab has A-backs. The company is looking for globally talented people, who can also work at the Silicon Valley Branch and in Toronto Canada. Applicants can apply for Full time/internship/part-time (only Daejeon office)/industrial functional agent, professional functional agent, etc., and there will be interviews and coding tests.

Senior researcher JunHyeok Lee gave a friendly and easy explanation of what the Brain Audio team of MINDs Lab does. Researcher JunHyeok Lee is a graduate of KAIST Mechanical Engineering currently working at MINDs Lab.

The Brain-audio team is working on the development of audio-voice signals, and servicing a streamer TTS (Text to speech). MINDs Lab’s TTS service converts foreign language text into speech data and successfully created a voice conversion system with Cotatron. Research Lee showed real-life examples, increasing interest in participants. MINDs Lab is applying speech recognition in government projects and actively researching speech to text. The company’s voice filter field is also recognized by Google for its technicality.

StartupTing was followed by a lecture by Senior Researcher Hyoungkyu Song from the Brain Vision Team. Researcher Hyoungkyu Song is currently a masters student at the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST and is working as an industrial agent.

Researcher Song said that courses at school, and club activities helped him grow. He mentioned that to proceed in the field of deep learning, it is important to have experience in projects. Deep learning requires a lot of supplies, and MINDs Lab has a lot of GPUs. At the company, he is coding the contents in research papers. Looking at the direction of AI scientists compared to developers, it is important to set metrics, experiment to improve performance, and preprocess data. Lastly, it is important to constantly research, discuss and develop. Currently, the Brain team consists of people from various departments and is also doing code review. There is also a vc in data sets.

As there are more related academic conferences, you can do research on what you want to do at MINDs Lab. The company is currently focusing on the Lip sync-seen model, which creates images that seem to realistically speak for a particular person, and continuously developing to create optimized models through various studies, such as Holistic-3D Reconstruction, FaceShifter, and Point cloud completion. The company is also building models using data from customers, such as a tooth model that locates a suitable place to add braces and a photoshoot model that recommends clothes.

The brain team of MINDs Lab is composed of young people with strong potential, and you can research and directly experience what you have learned in courses at KAIST.

During the Q&A session, we received a lot of pre-registered questions and also real-time questions through Zoom. The CEO and researchers answered many questions about working at MINDs Lab, the skill sets they see in applicants, etc. They answered that positions are divided into development and research positions and subdivided according to the roles. The service positions do not require any research experience. Coding tests see the ability to review research papers and analyze models. To the question about which field developed the most in AI, they answered that MINDs Lab is ahead in the contact center-voice recognition chatbot and AI human voicebot, and that the CCTV vision traffic-related abnormal behavior control will be commercialized in the future. MINDs Lab is currently not doing direct B2C business and have no plans to do so. There were many more questions during the session.

MINDs Lab is also working with the bio field to predict new drug candidate materials. MINDs Lab has 16 AI-related patents, and wishes to create an AI engine that anyone can use. Anyone can join MINDs Lab and do research on what they wish to. If you want to grow and become an AI scientist, take a good look at MINDs Lab. Please look forward to the next StartupTing