China is looking forward to accomplishing its mission to become a global leader in artificial intelligence.
However, the country has never been associated with the development of operating systems.
In fact, almost half of China’s operating system market share is held or controlled by Google’s Android whereas another quarter belongs to Microsoft’s OS, Windows.
Despite foreign operating systems controlling China’s OS market share, the situation has not stopped the country from making efforts to create its own.
Back in 2001, researchers from the National University of Defense Technology started building an operating system that was mainly designed to be used by China’s military among other departments of the government.
Referred to as Kylin, the AI operating system was initially based on FreeBSD and then Linux.
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Later in 2015, another operating system dubbed NeoKylin was unveiled with the expectation that it would phase out Windows on the nation’s computers.
Other operating systems developed locally include China Operating System, which was designed for use on both set-top boxes and mobile devices.
Eric Wong, the co-founder of Rokid, said that even though China boasts a strong pool of machine learning and AI talent, the same cannot be said for the development of operating systems.
In fact, in his statement to TechCrunch Hangzhou, he emphasized that China lacks adequate OS development talent compared to the US, which many OS developers.
Despite lacking OS development talent, China has witnessed rapid improvement in its artificial intelligence capabilities in the past decade.
Rokid, for instance, is geared towards developing an AI operating system not only for its products but also those other companies.
Looking at the abundance of AI talent in the nation, such an AI operating system may not be a bad starting point for the company and the country at large.
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According to Eric Wong, Rokid is currently working on a full-stack solution, whereby it intends to offer an interactive voice solution for its products while also opening it up to the entire industry.
He added that in this artificial intelligence era, there is still no artificial intelligence (AI) operating system.
Even though big technology companies have hinted about such plans, Rokid cannot afford to sit and wait for such development to take place.
In an effort to utilize the talent possessed by China in the development of the AI operating system, Wang stressed that standards are very high.
Rokid is currently creating a community development platform to help it accomplish its endeavour.
As such, the company is encouraging individual developers in China to come on board and join the R&D platform.
What’s more, it expects to give a standard software development kit (SDK) to all individuals.
Rokid is seeking to offer a wide range of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered products.
Recently, it launched several new hardware pieces, which comprised of a voice-first AI chip, AR glasses and a portable smart speaker.
Earlier on, the company said that it discovered that creating AI products, particularly on multi-purpose chips was not only costly but also power consumption, which makes it an impediment to building the technology.
Source TechNode
