CUHK
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The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has forged a tripartite partnership with the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, AI unicorn SenseTime, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University and unveiled a new generation of general vision model “INTERN”, addressing the key obstacles to the development of general vision in AI, including generalisation and data efficiency.

INTERN fully covers four key tasks in computer vision – classification, target detection, segmentation and depth estimation, while its versatility has been widely verified in 26 internationally representative downstream scenes including ImageNet.

Specifically, compared with CLIP(Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training), the most powerful general vision model published so far, the average error rate of INTERN on 26 data sets of the above four visual tasks decreased by 40.2%, 47.3%, 34.8% and 9.4% respectively. With only 10% of the training data in the target domains used, INTERN consistently outperforms those state-of-the-art models trained with the whole set, often by a significant margin. This technological breakthrough dramatically reduces the cost of data acquisition and annotation, a key bottleneck that has puzzled the industry for years.

AI models have been developed by designing models for specific tasks. However, with the introduction of INTERN, this model can accomplish many tasks simultaneously and cover various long-tail scenarios such as smart auto, smart manufacturing and smart cities with small sample data. The launch of INTERN will help the industry greatly reduce the resource input cost of general vision model research and lay a solid foundation for the adaptation of AGI technology that addresses long-tail applications in various scenarios in smart cities, smart business, smart life and smart auto.

CUHK always strives to advance the development of AI research and its applications, which is also one of the key research areas of the CUHK Strategic Plan 2021-2025.  Based on the University’s world-leading research excellence, CUHK has identified its research priorities to focus on interdisciplinary research to reach the next level of excellence and breakthrough and fulfil societal needs on a national and global scale. Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is an advanced research institute focusing on AI research and application. Working in concert with universities and industry, it explores the future of AI by conducting original and forward-looking scientific research that makes fundamental contributions to basic theory as well as innovations in various technological fields, striving to become a top-tier global AI Laboratory. In September 2021, CUHK and the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory joined hands to establish the CUHK Artificial Intelligence and Interdisciplinary Research Institute to foster scientific research, to target cutting‑edge fields, and help Hong Kong develop into an international innovation and technology hub as laid down in the National 14th Five-year Plan.