Votee AI｜Planning to expand into Southeast Asia and Africa in unpopular languages

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Lamenting the lack of talent, fresh graduates are preferred Support EJ Tech

go through Hong Kong Economic Times August 19, 2024

originalPublished in Hong Kong Economic Times Financial NewsEJ Tech Innovation Lab“

Local AI startupsVoting AIIn the past, it mainly used big data to support corporate business decisions. In the early days of the chatbot ChatGPT, it received many customers asking about related business, and it was difficult to cope with the increasing amount of data, so it decided to develop its own large language model (LLM).

Votee AI Technical Director Chen Haojie pointed out that scarce resources do not mean a small audience or a small market. More than 86 million people speak Cantonese, which is one of the top 20 languages in the world. He believes that although most professional documents are written in English, it is crucial for AI to have the ability to understand and translate Cantonese when dealing with highly localized cases.

Chen Haojie pointed out that they regularly update the LLM model, but after understanding some vulgar language, their own model began to “become black with the company of bad people”. The team focused on solving this problem and tried to make AI achieve “you have to understand, but you can’t speak”, and it is expected to launch a new version in early September.

Votee AI plans to expand its business to Southeast Asia, Africa and other places, and develop LLM for unpopular languages such as Javanese and Ryukyuan. The team has also been approached by customers recently, and dialects such as Shanghainese, Hakka and Tibetan have also become potential development directions. However, the intention to expand the scale is facing a “talent shortage”. Chen Haojie admitted that “(interview) 60 (candidates) first invite one.” He smiled bitterly and said that money can be found from investors, chips can be found from Cyberport, and data processing can be dealt with. “(Lack of) talent really doesn’t know how to calculate.”

Votee AI, Chan Ho Kit, Ding Bosheng, Cantonese, LLM — Chen Haojie bluntly said that some candidates have impressive academic qualifications but do not know much about market trends. (Photo by Huang Jinzhang)

Lamenting the lack of talent, fresh graduates are preferred

Chen Haojie said frankly that some candidates have impressive academic qualifications but do not know much about market trends. He believes that the most ideal candidates are fresh graduates with a master’s degree, who have the ability to conduct scientific research and read papers, and have access to the latest technology. He also said that the team even considered AI employees (such as GPT Engineer), but gave up because it was impossible to achieve full automation.