Winning the Google Cloud Prize at the Second Future Finance AI Challenge
▲ (From the left) Park Ho Sung, Doctoral Student, and Son Hyun Soo, Master’s Student,
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
Park Ho Sung and Son Hyun Soo, both in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Sogang University (Supervisor Prof. Kim Jihwan) had the honor of winning the “Google Cloud” prize, or second runner-up, at the Second Future Finance AI Challenge, hosted by KB Financial Group and Financial Supervisory Service.
The Future Finance AI Challenge is organized with the aim of securing ideas for products and services related to future AI-driven finance and trigger interest from upcoming talents in the financial field. Of note is that the contest has included in its competition fields the Hangeul natural language learning model, “KB ALBERT.” The Hangeul model development was the first in the financial sector achieved through cooperative work between KB Kookmin Bank and Google Cloud Korea based on the up-to-date deep learning language model, “ALBERT.”
Beginning in August, undergraduate and graduate students from major universities and job seekers across the country sent in their applications. The final competition was held through the final test of presentations on September 22 at Ewha Womans University ECC Lee Sam-Bong Hall. The winners - the Grand Prize team, two first runner-up teams and two second runner-up teams - are given KRW 12.8 million and the qualification to be exempted from application document reviews and written tests if they apply to KB Kookmin Bank's public recruiting rounds.
Park Ho Sung of the winning team explained his motive for applying, saying "I wanted to produce usable services by combining the KB-ALBERT model with the various voice recognition devices in research by the Multimedia System Laboratory.“
With the theme of “AI Secretary, 'Hi KB,' Serving both KB Employees and Clients,” the Sogang team developed and proposed an AI speaker that can handle sensitive client information in a contactless environment. They presented a demo of the speaker's actual operation. The speaker is capable of “Keyword Spotting” when users talk to AI speakers saying “Hi, KB” or “OK, Google”; “Voice Recognition” to take in the speaker’s speech, convert to text, and transmit by an interactive model input; “Interactive Question Answering” (IQA) to provide pre-learned knowledge-based responses at the user's request, and; “Speech Synthesis” to produce the output sentences of the interactive model in the AI voice actor's voice to the user.
The Sogang team received feedback from the judges, who said "The demo was impressive in that it did not remain in the planning stage but went further to produce a self-development for practical application." The AI speaker is expected to contribute to improved customer satisfaction with the bank's contactless services, elevated performance efficiency of bank employees, and an advantageous position in the financial transaction market.
Son Hyun Soo said, "I'm so proud to win the prize despite the short one-week period given for preparation. Taking this as an opportunity, I will try harder to be the number one talent in the field of voice recognition."
▶ To see the “Hi, KB” AI speaker demonstration, go to:
