How working over continents and time zones formed the Samsung European heart for AI language improvement
As Samsung continues to pioneer premium cellular AI experiences, we go to Samsung Analysis facilities around the globe to find out how Galaxy AI is enabling extra customers to maximise their potential. Galaxy AI now helps 16 languages, so extra folks can broaden their language capabilities, even when offline, due to on-device translation in options reminiscent of Dwell Translate, Interpreter, Word Help and Shopping Help. However what does AI language improvement contain? Final time, we visited India to find out how groups collaborate with college students and universities to carry Galaxy AI to extra folks. This time, we’re in Poland to find how European nations collaborate to perform their aim.
There’s a saying on the Samsung R&D Institute Poland (SRPOL): “A day at SRPOL lasts 96 hours”. It refers back to the heart’s international position as one of many largest and fastest-growing R&D facilities within the area, typically working throughout 4 completely different time zones. Sitting on the coronary heart of Europe whereas masking many European and international markets, SRPOL has labored on automated speech recognition, neural machine translation and text-to-speech fashions for greater than 30 languages. When it got here to bringing 10 languages to Galaxy AI, this experience meant the crew was nicely suited to seamlessly mix cultural views with Samsung’s international expertise.
SRPOL has years of expertise in Pure Language Processing. What makes it distinctive is its adaptability to work on any language due to the passionate crew and their instruments, reminiscent of a crowdsourcing platform that allows quick and agile improvement.
“Collaboration throughout the continent means relentless information assortment, annotation and analysis, which has change into one thing we actually take pleasure in,” says Kornel Jankowski, Head of Speech Decoding at SRPOL. “We’ve handled so many languages that our crew developed common, language-agnostic expertise. Once we’re requested to help a brand new language mannequin, all people’s angle is: Oh wow, we get to study one other one, that’s going to be enjoyable!”
A European Middle for AI Language Improvement
Language is a cornerstone of tradition and communication throughout Europe no matter whether or not it’s integrated into expertise. Nonetheless, it presents distinctive challenges for the crew at SRPOL, who develop AI fashions for European languages.
“Every language and the tradition that it’s a part of, comes with hurdles that make us reevaluate how we understand a particular difficulty,” explains Adam Ros, Head of Synthetic Intelligence at SRPOL. These hurdles embrace navigating the untranslatability of sure phrases and dealing with idiomatic expressions that won’t have direct equivalents in different languages.
The crew noticed these challenges as a possibility to make SRPOL a European heart for AI language improvement. The largest good thing about that is that it shortens the communication path between completely different departments and crucially, the decision-making path. Whether or not it’s a matter of automated speech recognition, neural machine translation or text-to-speech, groups might merely stroll over to colleagues in Cellular High quality Assurance and effectively remedy issues collectively.
Whereas this has helped, it hasn’t overcome all AI challenges. Inevitably, there are limitations in AI fashions when coping with a number of European languages, reminiscent of translating with out context or variations in intonation. Nonetheless, the crew noticed these as a possibility to continue to learn and innovating.
“My crew by no means stops at only one instance when dealing with a brand new phrase or subject. Some European languages are tougher than others,” provides Ros. In the event you’ve ever been to Spain, that Spanish is usually spoken at blazing-fast speeds and we have to prepare AI nicely to deal with that.”
Galaxy AI’s enlargement required novel cross-continent collaboration, however the work quickly grew past European borders. SRPOL supported the Jordan crew’s efforts to show Galaxy AI Arabic’s myriad of dialects, in addition to the Brazil crew’s work on Latin American languages.
The significance of language and cultural distinction subtleties are all on the radar of SRPOL product builders as a result of they will all be observed by the goal — the top customers.
“There are refined variations between European cultures that affect whether or not one thing feels pure to the top person. For instance, folks in some nations anticipate to learn costs with the euro image (€), whereas others are accustomed to seeing it spelled out, e-u-r-o-s,” says Agata Maria Rozycka, Head of Voice Intelligence Analysis at SRPOL. “If this cultural nuance will not be mirrored translated textual content, the interface might sound much less intuitive to a person. Implementing these micro-level insights into interface design could make expertise really feel extra pure throughout various cultures.”
“The crew has been remotely speaking and collaborating throughout completely different nations for a few years, build up quite a few efficient communication channels,” says Marcin Mrugala, Head of Cellular High quality Assurance at SRPOL. “We had been able to do our half in enabling Galaxy AI to decrease language limitations around the globe.”
Expertise for Bridging Cultures
Managing and integrating various linguistic and cultural insights is a difficult process, however it’s important for Samsung’s imaginative and prescient for Galaxy AI — reducing the limitations that divide folks primarily based on language and tradition, and enabling them to create deeper connections.
“We’re not simply constructing expertise of the longer term, we’re constructing groups of the longer term too. Our greatest practices are designed to refine merchandise primarily based on variations throughout nations, however we essentially imagine our similarities far outweigh our variations and our expertise can unite cultures,” says Mrugala.
“Our aim is to carry folks collectively, to make their lives simpler, and to simplify their each day duties. We’re seeing our households utilizing the Voice Recorder in new methods, and we are able to now name our pals and completely different nations and speak with them in their very own language. It’s magical to see this variation on the earth and to be a part of it. Galaxy AI introduced SRPOL folks collectively and now we’re bringing collectively the world,” concludes Rozycka.
