(upbeat symphonic orchestra) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube Conversation here in Palo Alto, California, the Cube Headquarters. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media for a special Cube Conversation with Tami Zhu, who is the General Manager of Kika Tech Headquarters in San Jose. She's a friend of the Cube, I've known Tami since almost about 15 years ago from the Web 2.0 era. Dual degree in Computer Science, undergraduate and a Master's as well as an M.B.A. from M.I.T., Sloan. Great to see you. >> Thank you, John, for having me here. >> Great to see you. So we've kind of been through Web 2.0. I think you were at AOL Ventures then, and riding other careers. You've been in the trenches, certainly in the front lines in tech. You've seen a lot of waves. So where are you now? Give us an update on what you're doing now, lot of great things happening. >> Yes, since we last saw each other 15 years ago. Most recently, I joined the company called Kika Tech and we're headquartered in San Jose. As a matter of fact, the reason the company recruited me to join the company is for two things. One is to develop our A.I. effort and product, and secondly is to move the headquarters from China to San Jose because a large percentage of our consumers are U.S. based. >> We love the China connection. We've been covering China recently for SiliconANGLE and the Cube. We just did Hangzhao for Alibaba but this really speaks to- I don't want to say the Chinese invasion of North America, but that's certainly happening, but also the rest of the world is going to China. Tons of users out there. It's exploded with mobile usage, really setting the trends. So the globalization of the internet is happening. The software on mobile is just getting better and better. You're doing some A.I. work with Kika. What's going on with A.I. and Kika? You guys have spectacular performance. What, 400 million downloads? What is it all about? What is the big trend that you're riding? >> Yeah, so the mission of Kika is to revolutionize communication with A.I. If you were to look at the purposes of human communication, we categorize into three categories. Number one is by sharing information, and number two is about initiating requests and having your requests fulfilled. Number three is about sharing your emotion. A lot of companies out there are addressing one of the three challenges and purposes where at Kika, we're taking on the challenges, addressing all three purposes in communication. >> Well congratulations on all your successes as General Manager and expanding out in North America from the Chinese base company. You've got a big challenge ahead of you, but I've got to ask you on a personal level, I've always seen you in a male-dominated culture in the Web 2.0 era. You've been very successful as a woman in tech, and... what got you into technology? You've kind of a nerd like me and you love to get in there and look at the technology. You're not afraid to get your hands dirty in the tech. How did you get into the technology business? >> I'm probably nerdier than you. (laughs) As a starter. So I grew up in a very academic family. My parents are both engineering professors. They encouraged me to excel in academics at school. I was very competitive and I always wanted to be number one, I was always number one as a matter of fact throughout the entire school and academic career. When I was 12 years old, my dad was a visiting professor here in the United States, and he told me a lot about Stanford and the Silicon Valley. At that time, I decided I was going to come to the Silicon Valley when I grew up and participate in technological innovation. I just thought that was so cool. >> And you did? >> Tami: Yes, absolutely. This is something that I'm passionate about and that I love to do. >> You're certainly an inspiration. I've always enjoyed the work you've done and just the energy you bring to the table. This is something we need more of. You're out there... what do you say to people? "Hey, I've been around the block a few times." There's a lot of people trying to figure out the whole women in tech thing. There's been such negative things going on in the business. You're a positive light. What would you like to share for folks around just your thoughts on this whole... women in tech, should they be special? The pipelining issues, all these issues and conversations. What's your perspective? How would you take it perspectively? >> Right. I say we take advantage of our individual strengths and a number of things I continue to emphasize to my colleagues at work. Number one is every day you check in and ask yourself, "do I love this work? Is this something I'm passionate about?" If you are, it's more likely you're going to be successful in the business with some perseverance, right? The second thing that I emphasize is don't be afraid of experimenting and try to make mistakes, that's okay. Completely okay. Try to make mistakes early and frequent as long as you don't make the same mistakes again and learn from that. The third thing I continue to emphasize, a matter of fact, I lead by example, is never procrastinate. We have dreams and hopes and we talk about that, that's great. But we need to execute on that now. >> I love your competitive spirit. I think you're an inspiration. But also, you said you like to be number one, and you were in school. I think you might be a little bit nerdier than me, but we can talk about it after. When you're number one, you're going fast, you're moving fast and you're learning, you're not going to go without a few interactions that are unfavorable. So how do you talk to other women when you're out in the field? When you're hard-charging like that and you're smart, you've got to deal with a lot of bad actors. It could be men, it could be harassment, it could be sexual, whatever it is, you know you've got to break through it. If you want to be number one, you've got to deal with this. >> Sure. >> I've talked to a lot of women who have said they've had their fair share of interactions that were unpleasant, but I moved past it. How do you deal with it? I'm sure you have stories and can share a perspective on how you deal with unwanted advances to just bad behavior. >> Right. I think I'm luckier, probably, than some of the... average population in that I've not really dealt with much bad behavior. Certain behaviors, I'd say, look way beyond that. Don't play the same game. Don't play the game at all. Don't entertain any of the bad behaviors. Believe in yourself and perseverance will get you far and apart. Never give up. >> Awesome. On the inspiration side, how do you inspire other women? I'm seeing some really good things happening. One thing is, I'm seeing a lot of conversations. A lot of people coming together. A lot of young women are looking up for leaders and looking to folks who have been through, climbing the mountain, close to the top or at the top. You have this new really cool vibe going on where the women are coming together at all ages for sharing. How do you do it? >> As a matter of fact, compared to 15 years ago when we met doing Web 2.0 I think there were a lot fewer women in tech. Nowadays with a new generation of technology and social media, we're actually seeing women in computer science taking the lead. Just taking the time, be patient, and I think one of the things as human being, we often worry about compensation and how much we're being paid now, how much we're worth, and what exactly the title is, right? I say don't even worry about that. Focus on what you're passionate about. It will take some time. Be patient and it will get there. >> We always say, "respect for the individual," but just be a good person. Don't deal with the nonsense, just move past it and don't play the games. Alright got to get back into the tech since we're going to geek out here. So A.I. I think is the hottest thing on the planet right now. Obviously I.O.T. is super important. We cover it heavily on the Cube. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "I can't wait to talk about I.O.T with my friend!" They all love A.I. because it's got a cooler vibe to it, but we're talking about software. We're talking about really cool software and a Renaissance of software development. So A.I. is super hot, you guys are doing a lot of A.I. at Kika. What is the coolness, for male and female, for anyone to get involved - What is the hot A.I. trend? Is it the machine learning, is it the deep learning? Is it the user experience, is it making it easier? What are some of the advances that you're excited about in A.I.? >> So depending on the timing and the year, say 15 years ago, or 20 years ago... Let's say 20 years ago, at the time, A.I. actually, there was a small boom that very quickly went into an ice age. A cold winter. Matter of fact, during that time, I was in undergrad and my undergrad thesis was natural language processing in Chinese languages. With that expert system at that time, the framework never got anywhere. They were really limited because of the knowledge from experts. So now fast-forward to two, three years ago when Amazon Echo first launched. I think there was a lot of doubt. In academia and the amount of people in the industry were thinking pretty cynically. Saying, "well that's just another boom. I doubt that." Echo really paved the way and brought artificial intelligence into the homes of consumers. Two, three years ago it was very cutting edge in terms of voice recognition. You hear a lot about far field, noise cancellation, but nowadays, the voice recognition is becoming far more mature, right? For someone who wants to work on the most cutting edge thing, from my point of view, voice may be a little bit to the point where it's mature and people understand the problems. So this year, only recently, Apple announced an emoji. So this is the starting point of computer vision in consumers' lives. Say if I were an engineer, I would want to get into computer vision, because there's so many more things you could potentially create with that. >> John: It's the next level U.I. in the interaction, I mean, I think NLP, National Language Processing, has always been kind of fun. I remember back when I was getting my C.S. degree, entologies were big. That kind of stalled, the nuclear winter, or the cold winter. But now with cloud computing, and mobile being so powerful, you now have so much at your disposal. With all these libraries and open source developing, it's a dream for a developer because now you can create new experiences. Not the old way, browser, or just typing on a phone. You guys have got a really cool app that you can download Kika Technologies. You got huge opportunities that reimagine the interface and the interactions. I think A.I. has put a picture in the mind of the user, the consumer, and the developer. Self-driving cars, Teslas. This is a new coolness. What are some other examples of this new coolness that you can share that are happening whether it's computer vision, Teslas, or voice interaction? What are some examples of the coolness? >> So I've been very limited in that. I've been so focused on work. We have something really cool coming up in 2018. Matter of fact, we're kicking off 2018 with launching a brand new product that's taking our existing input method keyboard to the whole next level. The whole I.O.T., you were just mentioning, "who cares about I.O.T.?" (laughs) >> Well it's one of the fastest growing areas, but I.O.T. is A.I will become an edge of the network. Now on this launch, is this going to happen at C.E.S? >> Yes, we're going to launch at C.E.S. >> So we'll look for the news at C.E.S. >> Yes. It'll be very exciting, matter of fact. >> I'll have to dig some information out of Tami after this interview is over. Find out more. We'll be at C.E.S. Okay, final question. In general, just your thoughts on the tech cycle right now. You've ridden many waves, you've seen a lot, you know the tech under the covers. What's the big movement that young people should be jumping on? The new Renaissance in software development is happening. We see the cloud there. It's clear from Amazon success of the new models here, you're seeing some successes. How would you describe this new era, this new guard of technology providers and software? >> From a talent point of view, 10 or 15 years ago, if you got a P.H.D. in computer science, you could hardly find a job other than finding a professorship somewhere. Nowadays, if you're to look at Facebook or Google as a P.H.D. in computer science, then you are worth a lot more- >> Some say Google is turning into academia, but that's a whole other conversation. But okay, if you can get a P.H.D., neural nets are hot still. Neural networks, things of that nature. P.H.D., there's a lot of work there. Anything else? >> Yes. A.I. will continue to develop, and now A.I. is the real thing compared to 15 or 20 years ago, right? It was very limited to academia. That's going to continue to develop, and you'll look at other areas. For example, digital advertising. In the past four or five years, it was programmatic advertising. How do you accurately target the audience and then maximize the CPA or CPM per audience. Then the next level is about how to build an advertising network that's effective and targeting the audience, not only maximizing the revenue, but also how do you keep the audience and continue to grow the audience. So these are- >> In the role of data, just one final thought on the data, the role of data in all of this is the center of all this. Your thoughts on the role of data and how that's going to shape- because those experiences of targeting might shift around with the users who are now driving the data. >> Matter of fact, the data is key. At Kika, our number one differentiation is a large volume of training data, so with that data, we can train our deep learning algorithm. Make our algorithm, find patterns and predict contacts and text. That's the number one thing. The number two thing is because you have the data, there are a lot of privacy policies that you need to watch out and make sure there's no data leaking or security leak that could potentially create that press. Also it's not safe for the consumers. So we're talking about data. Data really is the competitive advantage. >> If you're a data geek out there, you have no problem getting a job. We're here with Tami Zhu who is the general manager of Kika Tech headquarters in San Jose here inside the Palo Alto Cube studios for Cube Conversation, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat electro)