Yixue Education Squirrel AI chief executive to deliver speech and lead discussion at 2018 China-UK Hi! Technology Festival on the future of AI education

LONDON, July 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Themed "Ignite the Future", the China-UK Hi! Technology Festival, an event that is part of London Tech Week, took place on June 12, 2018. "Squirrel AI", the latest artificial intelligence learning system from Shanghai Yixue Education Technology Co Ltd, a leading Chinese education company focused on adaptive learning, was invited to attend.

Attracting over 55,000 attendees across 300 events, London Tech Week is Europe's largest technology fair. The China-UK Hi! Technology Festival is the only official event that connects technology, entrepreneurship and investment between China and the United Kingdom during the Week. With the goal of connecting Chinese and British science and technology firms to create investment opportunities, the festival will build a community platform, so that, regardless of whether they are located in the UK or in China, investors interested in high-tech opportunities and the start-ups seeking investment can find each other. The platform is expected to strengthen Sino-British exchanges on innovation and entrepreneurship, creating opportunities for equity investment and the realization of bilateral scientific and technological achievements.

Yixue Education Squirrel AI co-founder and CEO Zhou Wei was invited to attend the China-UK Hi! Technology Festival at which he delivered a speech that caught the attention of attendees. Zhou gave a presentation on the development of Squirrel AI in China and said "one of the ultimate goals we want to achieve is to educate all children in accordance with their aptitude, to provide them with individualized education, and to solve, once and for all, the issue of the imbalance of educational resources."

Zhou further explained that the Squirrel AI adaptive learning system can resolve this issue by creating the most effective learning plans for students, pinpointing the students' knowledge gaps, and filtering out the knowledge points that the students have already mastered. In addition, the system makes a broad array of high-quality educational resources widely available, systematically emulates and replicates the teaching experience of some of the highest rated schools and teachers, and makes the process of learning more enjoyable by means of technology.

At the event, Zhou also participated in a round-table discussion themed "The Future of Educational Science and Technology", and discussed the opportunities and challenges facing the next stage of development in the educational technology sector with entrepreneurs from the sector. He said AI has driven the education revolution, and is likely to be the vehicle to raise learning efficiency and generally enhance the quality of education.

Since its launch in 2014, London Tech Week has become the largest science and technology fair in Europe. Last year, 48,000 scientific and technological pros from 93 countries came to London to participate in the event. The theme for the 2018 London Tech Week is to embrace technology, shape the future and change the world. The guests, including UK's Secretary of State for Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport Matthew Hancock and Facebook Vice President for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Nicola Mendelsohn, jointly discussed economic and social trends as well as scientific discoveries, especially the challenges and opportunities brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They also shared their thoughts on how to become both a subversive entrepreneur and an innovator during the next 20 years. The Festival this year not only strengthened the exchanges and cooperation in innovation and entrepreneurship between China and UK, but also demonstrated the strength of Chinese players.

Immediately following the event, Zhou said, "It is a great honour for me to represent Squirrel AI at the China-UK Hi! Technology Festival, an event that has not only strengthened the exchanges and cooperation between China and UK as it concerns innovation in science and technology, but also demonstrated the strength of China's educational science and technology to the world. Squirrel AI stands at the forefront of AI in education and will combine AI technology with the experience of excellent teachers, educational surveying and big data to create an efficient adaptive learning system, bringing personalized learning to every child around the world."

Yixue Education Squirrel AI is an AI adaptive online education company founded in 2014 and focused on personalized tutoring for K-12 students in China. In 2016, the company unveiled Squirrel AI, a proprietary AI adaptive learning engine that offers after-school courses in maths, English, Chinese, physics and chemistry, powered by its AI adaptive engine and custom-built courseware. Yixue Education Squirrel AI jointly established an AI adaptive learning laboratory with SRI International and a parallel AI adaptive joint laboratory with the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Yixue Education brought three leading global experts in adaptive learning technology on board, Cui Wei as chief scientist, Richard Tong as chief architect and Dan Bindman as chief data scientist, paving the way for the firm's AI adaptive learning model and technology to represent the most advanced level in the Chinese market. Coming respectively from three world-renowned AI adaptive education companies RealizeIt Learning, Knewton and ALEKS, they have combined the first-hand experience that each of them accumulated over the last decade in the application and development of educational technologies for intellectual adaptation, enabling Yixue Education to stand head and shoulders above the competition and to maintain the lead by continuing to develop proprietary products and enhance existing ones. Furthermore, the AI technical papers on the Squirrel AI adaptive system have won awards for two consecutive years at the world's top AI conference, the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), as well as having garnered several other awards. The CEO, Mr. Zhou, been invited to speak at some of the world's other leading AI conferences, among them, the International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU), the Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP) and the Association for Computing Machinery's ACM TURC. For these reasons, Yixue Education Squirrel AI has become a widely recognized AI company in academic circles. 

Yixue Education Squirrel AI has recently held three man-machine teaching debates and built a reputation as a disruptive enterprise in much the same way that Alpha Go defeated world's Go champions Lee Sedol and Ke Jie. In October 2017, the first man-machine teaching debate in the Asia-Pacific region was held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, at which Squirrel AI teaching robot defeated a senior instructor with 17 years' experience. In April 2018, the second man-machine teaching debate was held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, while in June 2018, when the third man-machine teaching debate was held in Dongying, Shandong Province, the robot defeated the senior teacher in 1V3 education.

Yixue Education Squirrel AI has opened more than 700 stores in more than 200 cities in 20 provinces across China. Based on the teaching model where the Squirrel AI Smart Adaptation System accounts for 70 percent of what is taught in the classroom and the teacher assists with the remaining 30 per cent, teachers will be responsible for inspiring the student's interest in learning, while Squirrel AI will be devoted to improving the student's learning ability. In addition, pure online learning is accomplished through the course material that is taught by the Squirrel AI intelligent adaptive system and complemented by the live monitoring which teachers provide.

SOURCE Yixue Education