LG And Element AI Announce Strategic Partnership

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jan 6, 2020
  • Element AI and LG announced a strategic partnership for the R&D of next-generation AI-powered products and services

At CES, Element AI and LG announced a strategic partnership for the research and development of next-generation AI-powered products and services. Element AI is a global developer of AI services and software that helps enterprises “operationalize AI.”

The announcement was made in a ceremony held prior to LG’s annual CES Press Conference today. Both companies signed an MOU outlining the strategic partnership in which they will work together on a series of R&D programs related to AI technologies in order to support the development of next-generation solutions and products for LG.

The first step in the partnership effort is a joint research initiative called “Levels of AIX: AI’s Future and the Human Experience,” which was unveiled at LG’s annual CES Press Conference.

This conceptual structure is based on the latest scientific developments and thinking from across the field of AI with four proposed distinct levels of advancement and supporting dimensions to capture the different aspects of AI and its interaction with users.

This framework is expected to guide industry and AI practitioners and promote the responsible development of AI-powered products and solutions. And it also encourages ethically sound and purposeful outcomes that will ultimately benefit users.

“This strategic partnership is an important indicator that industry leaders like LG are becoming increasingly aware of the challenges that operationalizing AI poses, particularly at the point of interface with human users,” said Element AI CEO Jean-François Gagné — who is also the co-founder of the company. “As a pioneer in the field, it is our responsibility to consider the importance of the Human Experience whilst pushing the boundaries of research and development. We greatly value this opportunity to work with LG to help accelerate its AI journey, setting standards and principles that guide AI practitioners to consider a human-centric approach when building the future.”

Both parties believe that there is a significant opportunity to use this framework to accelerate the pace of development and to shorten the length of time it takes for cutting edge AI research to impact consumers. And by leveraging the commonly held human-centric values, both parties are confident in being able to leverage the capabilities of AI to generate greater value for society and consumers.

In recent years, LG has been embarking on an ambitious program to integrate its AI research strategy and AI-powered products under the ThinQ brand. And the success and learnings from these initiatives have enabled the business to expand its efforts in the AI field.

“We want to ensure that we are developing AI technology in a way that is meaningful to the customers we serve,” explained LG Electronics President and CTO I.P. Park. “This partnership with Element AI ensures that LG is bringing the right expertise to bear on this huge opportunity to lead the industry for the responsible and human-centric development of AI products and solutions.”

Element AI was originally founded in 2016 by Gagné and Yoshua Bengio. Since being founded, Element AI has raised over $257 million in funding.