Sam Zheng, CEO and Co-Founding father of DeepHow, spearheads a rapidly evolving startup, backed by esteemed investors. DeepHow revolutionizes expert workforce training with an revolutionary, AI-powered, video-centric knowledge capturing and transfer platform.

Prior to DeepHow, Sam dedicated over a decade to Siemens, driving digital innovation across various industries. His noteworthy projects, reminiscent of the Cloud Digital Inspection Jacket, have significantly improved technical knowledge sharing, efficiency, and user experience, earning his team the distinguished Siemens Innovation Award.

Concurrently, Sam serves as an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Tsinghua University and holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology and a Master’s in Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

You have got an academic background in psychology and statistics, how did you transition to specializing in videos and machine learning?

My background in psychology and statistics actually served as a natural segue into the realm of machine learning and video-centric platforms. The study of psychology sparked my fascination with the human mind and intelligence, particularly the means of skills learning and expertise development. Meanwhile, statistics provided the mathematical foundation to explore artificial neural networks, inspired by our biological brain.

In today’s digital age, videos have emerged as a more engaging, interactive, and effective learning medium. This shift is obvious with platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where users, particularly the younger generation, invest hours consuming and learning from video content.

Nonetheless, the normal means of creating instructional or how-to videos, especially the editing part, is time-consuming and labor-intensive. A brief video spanning just a few minutes could require hours of meticulous work. Recognizing this inefficiency and the potential to boost the educational experience, my co-founders and I made a decision to harness the facility of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to expedite the how-to video creation process.

Our AI-powered video platform can transform hours of laborious work into mere minutes, drastically improving efficiency without compromising effectiveness. In essence, my academic grounding in understanding human cognition and the statistical models that mimic it helped pave the way in which for this revolutionary enterprise.      

You have got multiple patents under your name, what’s a very powerful one that you simply worked on?

All my patents concentrate on harnessing technology to boost human performance. During my tenure at Siemens, one notable project involved working on an answer for Professor Stephen Hawking. We developed an intuitive eye-typing input method to assist individuals with ALS, just like Professor Hawking’s condition. This revolutionary work is now a part of a pending patent.

Nonetheless, essentially the most significant patent I’ve contributed to is a recent one: the Generative AI-Powered Know-How Management Platform for Industrial and Manufacturing Organizations.

Here’s a temporary overview:

Our invention presents a cutting-edge generative AI solution specifically tailored for industrial and manufacturing organizations. It effectively captures, organizes, and disseminates each institutional and tribal knowledge, intersecting fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, training and development, and knowledge management systems.

Industrial and manufacturing sectors often face immense challenges in capturing, organizing, and sharing critical knowledge. High staff turnover rates, complex processes, and the perpetual need for upskilling amplify these difficulties. Traditional knowledge management methods are sometimes cumbersome, time-intensive, and lack flexibility, necessitating a more advanced solution.

Our generative AI solution employs proprietary algorithms and machine learning techniques to streamline the creation of video-based standard operating procedures (SOPs), optimize workflows, and facilitate quick, efficient access to information via AI-driven chat features. As a result of its adaptability and scalability, our solution is suited to a big selection of producing contexts.

Could you share the genesis story behind DeepHow?

Before we launched DeepHow, I used to be working alongside our other founders, Patrik Matos da Silva and Wei-Liang Kao, at Siemens, driving a wide range of digital innovation projects in industrial and manufacturing sectors. Our journey took a giant leap once we joined the Techstars Mobility Accelerator in Detroit in 2018. The experience was essentially a boot camp, helping us validate our idea, discover gaps, and connect with potential investors, partners, and mentors.

We saw the worth in skills and experiences that folks had cultivated through the years but there was one problem- there wasn’t a really effective strategy to capture and share this expertise. We observed how rapidly technology was advancing, and it occurred to us that the methods we used for worker training hadn’t kept up. We were still counting on outdated, time-consuming methods that weren’t efficient and, frankly, weren’t engaging enough.

I spotted there was a novel opportunity to mix advances in AI and video technology to completely change how we capture, structure, and share information. So we got down to construct DeepHow, a platform where corporations can create amazing training videos in-house and remain on top of things. To actualize this concept, we created an AI system called “Stephanie”. Stephanie is the backbone of our solution, capturing experts’ know-how and making a knowledge repository. It generates step-by-step, interactive how-to videos to hurry up the educational process for brand new and fewer experienced employees.

Through using AI workflow indexing and segmentation, we have managed to create video content ten times faster and improve workforce performance by 25%.

We’ve come a great distance for the reason that early days, but our mission continues to be the identical. We’re committed to helping corporations leverage their wealth of institutional knowledge and expertise and enable their employees to repeatedly learn and grow. It’s an exhilarating journey.

What are a number of the workplace challenges DeepHow is solving?

Knowledge Transfer: In any workplace, transferring skills and knowledge, especially from seasoned employees to recent hires or less experienced staff, could be quite a challenge. We now have made it possible to capture and structure that knowledge in a way that is easy to share, broken down into segments and easier to know.

Training Efficiency: Traditional training could be tedious, right? Long hours, hard to retain information- it isn’t all the time essentially the most efficient process. With DeepHow, employees can learn at their very own speed and in a way that is best tailored to their very own unique learning style. It’s our goal to make training painless and enjoyable.

Skills Gap: Sometimes, determining where your teams’ skills gaps are can feel like trying to seek out a needle in a haystack. That’s one other thing that we may help with. Our platform uses analytics to indicate you where there’s a spot in training and enables training teams to bridge that by creating the precise content they need.

Outdated Training Materials: Things change fast, don’t they? Standards and procedures, they’re all consistently evolving. Well, we be certain that your training materials are never left behind. Editing and updating is quick and painless, and having the ability to share those updates across different locations and shirts with a straightforward skills task makes sure that nobody is left without the newest information.

On-Demand Learning: Convenience is king! Everyone desires to have access to what they need, after they need it. That’s the philosophy behind DeepHow. We imagine that training should not be a scheduled event that disrupts all the day, but a versatile resource that’s there whenever you need it. Being confined by a spot and time isn’t ideal. Have to learn something specific, immediately? Search and watch. It couldn’t be easier.

Boosting Worker Engagement: Everyone knows that training can sometimes be, well, not essentially the most exciting thing. Nevertheless it absolutely doesn’t must be this manner. DeepHow allows creators room to be creative. Learning needs to be a fun, engaging and enjoyable experience.

Fostering Communication: Communication could be tricky, especially when coping with a fancy process or procedure. Our platform makes communication simpler by enabling step-by-step guides that allow employees to simply digest and understand the duty at hand, promoting clear and consistent messaging across the board. Our platform also understands, translates, and transcribes in nearly 50 languages and counting. This feature alone has proven to be one among the most respected tools many corporations possess. Allowing someone to learn of their native language ensures higher understanding and boosts morale.

How does DeepHow enable enterprises to create an adaptive training program?

Let’s consider the normal training environment. You’ve got static material, rigid schedules, and a one-size-fits-all approach. Now, these methods don’t consider that everybody learns in a different way and at a distinct pace. They are not scalable or flexible to accommodate the rapidly changing landscape or individual worker progress. Those are significant pain points for any enterprise, right?

That’s exactly where DeepHow steps in. We assist you to flip the script on these issues. We enable businesses to develop agile training programs which are dynamic, personalized, and highly aware of business needs and worker learning patterns. 

Our platform captures expert knowledge in easy-to-follow, video-based learning modules. But we don’t stop there. We harness the facility of AI to research employees’ interactions with these models, enabling deeper insight into where your skills gaps remain. It’s about turning weaknesses into strengths and capitalizing on individual areas of experience to foster a continuous learning culture. 

What role does DeepHow play in increasing workplace safety?

Safety is such a critical aspect of any workplace, yet it is commonly difficult to get it right, resulting in unlucky accidents and regulations violations. That is unfortunately true in industries like manufacturing, construction, or healthcare, where even a small lapse can have significant consequences.

So where does DeepHow fit into this picture? Well, we’re keen about ensuring that safety practices are clearly understood and consistently implemented across the board.

We do that by providing a platform where corporations can easily capture and share expert knowledge on safety protocols. As a substitute of the old-school, hard-to-follow manuals, we provide interactive, step-by-step video guides. They’re straightforward, easy to know, and most significantly, accessible anytime, anywhere. This implies employees never have an excuse to not stay awake to this point with the most recent safety protocols. Safety should all the time be a top priority and everybody deserves to feel protected at work.

How is Generative AI used to enable this to occur?

At the center of our Generative AI-powered know-how management platform, “Maven,” lies a set of revolutionary capabilities aimed toward revolutionizing the way in which industrial and manufacturing organizations capture, manage, and share their institutional and tribal knowledge. Maven employs proprietary algorithms and advanced machine learning techniques to simplify and enhance a wide range of processes:

1. Streamlined Video SOP Creation: Using our unique Generative AI algorithms, Maven assists in the automated generation of video shooting guides and narration scripts. This facilitates the creation of high-quality video SOPs with consistency, setting a recent industry standard.
2. Efficient Workflow Optimization: By leveraging advanced machine learning techniques, Maven’s workflow visualization tools enable users to simplify complex tasks, thus promoting productivity through user-friendly interfaces and smart applications of AI.
3. Strategic Knowledge Mapping: Maven’s AI algorithms help organizations map crucial know-how, discover knowledge gaps, and uncover essential content opportunities. This leads to the event of targeted training materials uniquely tailored to the needs of a talented workforce.
4. AI-Enhanced Chat Feature: Powered by leading-edge natural language processing algorithms, Maven’s AI Chat enables users to access obligatory information quickly and efficiently using natural language queries.
5. Multimodal Content Generation: In situations where a written SOP is unavailable, Maven can analyze video content and generate multimodal content like step-by-step video SOPs, text SOPs, and workflow diagrams, thereby streamlining the content creation process.

By marrying advanced Generative AI with the most recent knowledge management strategies, Maven offers organizations a novel tool to harness their expert workforce’s potential, driving continuous improvement and innovation.

Are there other varieties of machine learning algorithms which are used?

Indeed, DeepHow leverages a variety of sophisticated machine learning algorithms and AI techniques throughout the realms of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision. These techniques, each supervised and unsupervised, underpin our proprietary, domain-specific AI technology, which has been trained and optimized for the commercial and manufacturing sector. Key areas of application include:

1) Workflow Segmentation: We utilize machine learning algorithms to extract critical information and steps from complex, unstructured task demonstrations captured in videos. This permits us to interrupt down complex procedures into manageable, teachable steps.

2) Multimodal Step Embedding: By modeling an ‘activity genome’, we’re in a position to reconfigure instruction and workflow guidance to raised suit specific operational contexts.

3) Cross-Modality Retrieval: We use advanced in-video search techniques to facilitate multi-language, skills-based content retrieval. This permits users to access relevant information with greater efficiency and precision.

4) Know-How Mapping: We construct a knowledge graph that visually represents a company’s core competencies. This mapping allows corporations to discover their knowledge assets clearly, enabling more practical upskilling and training strategies.

These advanced machine learning techniques, combined with our concentrate on industrial and manufacturing services, allow us to supply a comprehensive solution to the unique challenges faced by organizations in these sectors.

For corporations that want to start, what’s the method?

We’ve designed our platform with simplicity in mind, so onboarding your organization doesn’t must be complex. The truth is, greater than 80+ enterprise and SMB customers have successfully deployed our solutions to over 400 sites in 24 countries across 6 continents. 

First, our teams will meet and have a conversation about your organization’s specific needs and pain points. We wish to know your goals, the training challenges you’re facing, the form of skills your workforce needs – the entire picture. 

Next, we guide you thru the means of capturing your experts’ knowledge. This could be about any process or skill that is essential to your organization. Our team will assist you in creating these step-by-step video guides using DeepHow’s intuitive tools.

Our team is there to support you each step of the way in which, from the initial setup to the continuing optimization of your training program. We’re here to form a partnership with you and enhance your workforce’s skills and efficiency. Simply visit DeepHow.com to start.

Is there anything that you want to to share about DeepHow?

At the center of DeepHow is a transparent, compelling mission: we aim to empower every expert employee to develop into an authority. We try to make knowledge transfer and training seamless, engaging, and cost-effective, harnessing the transformative power of AI. We firmly imagine that technology should augment human capabilities, not replace them. This principle guides every part we do.

In our rapidly evolving technological landscape, this mission is more relevant than ever. The shift towards digital transformation and Industry 4.0 has modernized manufacturing, introducing an array of advanced technologies. These innovations have significantly altered job requirements, demanding staff to accumulate recent technical skills to operate, maintain, and optimize these sophisticated machines. The pace of change is so rapid that traditional training approaches struggle to maintain up, resulting in an ever-widening skills gap.

Our aim is to handle this challenge head-on, empowering staff to ‘construct back higher’ by reskilling for the factories of tomorrow. High levels of automation mean there’s less need for manual labor; as an alternative, the main target shifts to leveraging staff’ expertise and intuition in operating advanced technological systems.

Factories have evolved substantially over the past decade, with the mixing of robotics, cobotics, and analytic technologies that continually optimize output and minimize waste. To administer these technologies, an upskilled workforce is critical.

DeepHow provides a contemporary training methodology, enabling manufacturers to draw talent, fill entry-level positions, and progressively upskill staff for advanced roles across manufacturing, logistics, and planning. With an emphasis on contemporary, engaging training, we’re helping to shift the perception of producing from a dead-end profession to a dynamic, technology-driven field with limitless possibilities.