Statistics experts in hot demand as research into AI gathers pace in China, elsewhere

A special statistical modeling competition was going on in a well-decorated office in northwestern Beijing. The participants were a line of secretaries, human resource officers and marketing and public relations staff who knew nothing about the basics of coding and computer programming.

They were all employees of 4Paradigm, a three-year-old startup founded by Baidu Inc’s former principal IT architect and backed by global venture capital powerhouse Sequoia Capital.

The company has been dubbed by investors the Chinese answer to the US big data firm Palantir. It built 4Paradigm·Prophet, an artificial intelligence-powered platform, to help people and organizations comfortably analyze an explosive amount of data which is of increasing importance.

With machineassisted analysis, we aim to turn ordinary people into data scientists within a month.” Dai Wenyuan, CEO of 4Paradigm

“With machine-assisted analysis, we aim to turn ordinary people into data scientists within a month, so that companies can benefit from artificial intelligence even though they can’t afford to build its own AI teams,” said Dai Wenyuan, CEO of 4Paradigm.

While working in Baidu from 2009 to 2013, Dai built the company’s first commercialized deep-learning search ad platform.

The result of the November statistical modeling competition was impressive, with 70 percent of participant groups — with no computer and data background — man-