To help catch you up on some of the biggest announcements from Samsung’s jam-packed year, we proudly present our top 15 stories of 2020. Click on the thumbnails in the image below to read them for yourself, and read on to learn more about what made each one so meaningful.

Samsung Newsroom’s Top Stories of 2020

Mobile

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  The History of the S Pen
  
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  Galaxy Buds Live Design Int.
  
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  Hideaway Hinge Design Article
  

TV ∙ Home Appliances

• 
  Big-Screen Chronicles
  
• 
  Lifestyle Appliances Editorial
  
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  Clothing Care with AirDresser
  

Semiconductors

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  Image Sensor Editorial
  
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  Samsung’s Carbon Trust Cert.
  
• 
  New Memory Material Discovery
  

Technology

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  What’s Next in Comm. Tech
  
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  Samsung AI Forum 2020 Recap
  
• 
  Holographic Display Interview
  

Corporate News

• 
  Empowering Future Generations
  
• 
  Advancing Ed. During Pandemic
  
• 
  Designing a Sustainable Future
  

Once again, some of the most popular content featured in the Newsroom this year discussed exciting additions to the Galaxy family. An article highlighting the history of the S Pen, along with enhancements that were made for the Galaxy Note20, showcased how Samsung made one of the Note series’ most powerful features even more so. An interview with the team that perfected the design of the Galaxy Buds Live demonstrated the lengths Samsung went to ensure that its newest earbuds would offer an exceptionally comfortable fit. We also published an in-depth series on the Galaxy Z Flip’s Hideaway Hinge and the groundbreaking technologies that make it work.

Samsung’s TVs and appliances were also prominently featured. Our ‘Big-Screen Chronicles’ series walked readers through the ins and outs of selecting the perfect TV, and outlined steps Samsung has taken to foster next-level viewing experiences. An enlightening editorial from Samsung Electronics’ Head of Digital Appliances offered insight into how Samsung’s lifestyle-focused approach to home appliance design has evolved in response to the pandemic, while a feature on the Samsung AirDresser highlighted the device’s comprehensive take on clothing care.

Standout articles in the semiconductor category include an editorial on developing image sensors that capture more detail than the human eye, and an announcement that Samsung’s efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its memory solutions resulted in a total of nine Samsung memory products receiving Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) labels from the U.K.-based Carbon Trust. We also posted a story on the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology’s (SAIT) groundbreaking discovery of a material that could be game-changing for semiconductor designs.

There were also several articles that highlighted technologies that have the power to shape the future of tech. Our ‘What’s Next in Communications Technology?’ series collected insights from experts whose work has the potential to transform communication as we know it, while our recap of Samsung’s 2020 AI Forum highlighted some of the biggest topics in AI research today. One of our most engaging articles illuminated SAIT researchers’ efforts to usher in a new era of immersive holographic displays.

Last but certainly not least, some of the most meaningful content that was featured in the Newsroom spotlighted Samsung’s commitments to sustainability and corporate citizenship. Click on the links above to learn more about how Samsung technologies are empowering young people to achieve their full potential – even in the face of a global pandemic – and how the company’s commitment to sustainable design will help create a brighter future for us all.

This November 2 and 3, experts, researchers and interested viewers alike convened virtually to share the latest developments in AI research and discussed some of the most pressing and relevant issues facing AI research today.

Making the Best Use of AI in a Rapidly Changing World

AI technologies have developed remarkably in recent years, thanks in no small part to the hard work and diverse research projects being done by academic and corporate researchers alike all around the world. But given the rapid and significant changes brought on by the recent global pandemic, attention has recently been turning to how AI can be used to help solve real-life problems, and what methods might be most effective in order to create such solutions.

The first day of the forum, organized by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), was opened with a keynote speech by Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, who acknowledged the importance of the discussions set to take place at this year’s AI Forum around the past, present and future of the role of AI. Dr. Kim also affirmed Samsung Electronics’ dedication to working with global researchers in order to develop products and services with meaningful real-world impact.

The first day of the Forum then continued with a series of fascinating invited talks given by several global leading academics and professionals. Professor Yoshua Bengio of University of Montreal, Professor Yann LeCun of New York University and Professor Chelsea Finn of Stanford University were the first three to present, following which the Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards were presented. After this ceremony, SAIT Fellow Professor Donhee Ham of Harvard University, Dr. Tara Sainath of Google Research and Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan of Microsoft Research gave their talks.

Taking AI to the Next Phases of its Development

The first day’s invited talks were followed by a virtual live panel discussion, moderated by Young Sang Choi, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, and attended by Professor Bengio, Professor LeCun, Professor Finn, Dr. Sainath, Dr. Wortman Vaughan and Dr. Inyup Kang, President of Samsung Electronics’ System LSI business. “It is my great pleasure to join this Forum,” noted Dr. Kang. “I feel as if I am standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Questions were given to the panel that invited the experts to discuss the ways in which computational bottlenecks can be overcome in order to take AI systems to the next level and be developed to possess the same intelligibility as the human brain. The panelists weighed the benefits of scaling neural nets as opposed to searching for new algorithms, with Dr. Kang noting that, “We have to try both. Given the scale of human synapses, I doubt that we can achieve the human level of intelligibility using just current technologies. Eventually we will get there, but we definitely need new algorithms, too.”

Professor LeCun noted how AI research is not just constrained by current scaling methods. “We are missing some major pieces to being able to reach human-level intelligence, or even just animal-level intelligence,” he said, adding that perhaps, in the near future, we might be able to develop machines that can at least reach the scale of an animal such as a cat. Professor Finn concurred with Professor LeCun. “We still don’t even have the AI capabilities to make a bowl of cereal,” she noted. “Such basic things are still beyond what our current algorithms are capable of.”

Building on the topic of his invited talk, Professor Bengio added that, in order for future systems to have intelligence comparable to that of the way humans learn as children, a world model will need to be developed that is based on unsupervised learning. “Our models need to act like human babies in order to go after knowledge in an active way,” he explained.

The panel discussion then moved on to the ways in which the community can bridge the gaps between current technologies and future, human-intelligence level technologies, with all the experts agreeing that there is still much work to be done in developing systems that mimic the way human synapses work. “A lot of current research directions are trying to address these gaps,” reassured Professor Bengio.

Next, the panel shared their thoughts on how to make AI ‘fairer’ given the inherent biases possessed by today’s societies, with the experts debating the balance that needs to be struck between systems development reform, institutional regulation and corporate interest. Dr. Wortman Vaughan made the case for introducing a diversity of viewpoints across all parts of the system building process. “I would like to see regulation around processes for people to follow when designing machine learning systems rather than trying to make everyone meet the same outcomes.”

The final question given to the panel asked for their thoughts on which field will be the next successful application area for end-to-end models. “End-to-end models changed the field of speech recognition by reducing latency and removing the need for internet connection,” noted Dr. Sainath. “Thanks to this breakthrough, going forward, you’re going to see applications of end-to-end models for such purposes as long meeting transcriptions. We always speak of having ‘one model to rule them all’, and this is a challenging and interesting research area that has been expanded by the possibilities of end-to-end models as we look to develop a model capable of recognizing all the languages in the world.”

Enhancing Human Experience through AI

The second day of the AI Forum 2020 was hosted by Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub of Samsung Electronics that leads the development of future technologies for the company’s end-product business.

In his opening keynote speech, Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, outlined the areas in which Samsung has been accelerating its AI research to the end of providing real-world benefits to their users, including more traditional AI fields (vision and graphics, speech and language, robotics), on-device AI and the health and wellness field.

After showcasing a range of Samsung products bolstered with AI technologies, Dr. Seung affirmed that, in order to best extend the capabilities of AI to truly help people in meaningful ways, academic researchers and corporations need to come together to find best-practice solutions.

Putting the Future of AI into Perspective

Following Dr. Seung’s speech, the second day of the Forum proceeded with a series of invited talks around the theme of ‘Human-Centric AI’ by Professor Christopher Manning of Stanford University, Professor Devi Parikh of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Professor Subbarao Kambhampati of Arizona State University and Executive Vice President of Samsung Research Daniel D. Lee, Head of Samsung’s AI Center in New York and Professor at Cornell Tech.

The expert talks were followed by a live panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Seung and joined by Professor Manning, Professor Parikh, Professor Kambhampati and EVP Lee. Dr. Seung kicked off the discussion with a question about a topic raised in Professor Kambhampati’s speech around the potential issues that could lead to the risk of data manipulation as AI develops. “As AI technology continues to develop, it is important that we stay vigilant about the potential for manipulation and work to solve the issues of any AI systems’ inadvertent data manipulations,” explained Professor Kambhampati.

Dr. Seung then posed a much-requested viewer question to the panel. Given that one of the most practical concerns in AI research is the obtaining of data, the experts were asked whether they believe that companies or academic researchers need to develop new means of handling and managing data. Acknowledging that academics often struggle to secure data while companies possess alleviated data shortage problems yet elevated restraints around the usage of their data, Professor Parikh made a case for the need of new research methods that can be modeled with insufficient data or with cooperation between academia and industry, including open research methods. “In many areas, there are big public data sets available,” she noted. “Researchers outside of companies are able to access and use these. But further to this, some of the most interesting fields in AI today are the ones where we don’t have much data – these represent some of the most cutting-edge problems and approaches.”

The final question took the panel back to the theme of the AI Forum’s second day, ‘Human-Centered AI’, wherein the panelists were asked whether or not they believe that AI will be capable of equaling human intelligence in the next 70 years, since that is the period of time it has taken us to get to where we are today in the field of AI research. EVP Lee reasoned that AI still has a way to go – but that 70 years is a long time. “I am optimistic,” noted EVP Lee, “but there are lots of hard problems in the way. We need to have academics and companies working on a goal like this together.”

“We are currently reaching the limits of the range of problems we can solve using just lots of data,” summarized Professor Manning. “Before we see AI developments like this on a large scale, an area that we should emphasize is the production of AI systems that work for regular people, not just huge corporations,” he concluded.

The Samsung AI Forum 2020 ended with a warm thanks to all the esteemed experts who had taken part in the two-day Forum and a shared hope to hold next year’s Forum offline. All the sessions and invited talks from the AI Forum 2020 are available to watch on the official Samsung YouTube channel.

This year’s AI Forum, the fourth of its kind, is being held over two days this November 2 and 3. The second day of the event, hosted by Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub of the company that leads the development of future technologies for Samsung Electronics’ SET (end-products) business, facilitated discussion around how industry experts and academics alike can further research into AI technologies, products, and services that directly impact and enhance the lives of all people.

AI Forum Day 2: Human-Centered AI

To open up the second day of the AI Forum 2020 on November 3, Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, gave a welcome speech that highlighted how the theme of the Forum’s second day, “Human-Centered AI,” is very much in line with Samsung’s vision of creating products and services that make all our lives richer and more convenient.

Dr. Seung outlined the importance of collaboration between corporate and academic AI researchers. “Unlike academic researchers, who have greater freedom to explore their professional interests, corporate researchers dealing with real-world issues often encounter constraints in their research,” explained Dr. Seung. “To overcome such restraints, companies are driven to find creative ways to problem-solve and to conduct truly innovative research.”

Dr. Seung went on to outline the areas in which Samsung has been progressing its AI research, highlighting how the company has been expanding its research into traditional AI fields such as vision and graphics, speech and language and robotics. He noted that the company has also been making great efforts with their on-device AI, with work being done to develop how AI functions on devices with limited computational power, limited electrical power consumption and other such constraints. He also highlighted the company’s focus on the field of health and wellness, stressing it as a very fascinating area wherein AI, data and devices can come together to benefit people in their health and wellness journeys.

In order to showcase the big picture within which AI research exists, Dr. Seung then presented a range of Samsung products that are infused with AI technologies, noting the existing technical challenges that Samsung and other AI researchers around the world should be looking to surmount in order to extend the capability of AI as much as possible to help people. “AI research for a better world only begins when we think deeply about how AI is capable of improving our lives and changing human behavior for the better,” concluded Dr. Seung.

Expert Highlights: Keynote Speeches

For the second day of the Samsung AI Forum 2020, some of the most prolific experts in AI worldwide were invited to participate in the Forum’s lectures and discussions. Professor Christopher Manning of Stanford University, a world-renowned scholar in the field of natural language processing (NLP), gave a presentation titled Natural Language Understanding and Conversational AI. Professor Manning shared the current status and latest trends in NLP technologies, highlighting the recent rapid development of such technologies, and introduced more accurate conversational agents and more effective open domain social robots based on them. Professor Devi Parikh of the Georgia Institute of Technology gave a lecture titled Multimodal and Creative AI Systems, in which she described her work into computer vision systems that humans can interact with via language and AI systems that can assist humans with their creative and artistic endeavors.

Professor Subbarao Kambhampati of Arizona State University, a founding board member of the nonprofit The Partnership on AI, gave a lecture titled Synthesizing Interpretable Behavior for Human-Aware AI Systems. Using several case studies from his research, Professor Kambhampati highlighted the growing need for AI systems to work synergistically with humans in everyday life and asserted that, for this to happen, the systems need to exhibit behavior interpretable by humans.

Lastly, Daniel D. Lee, Executive Vice President of Samsung Research, Head of Samsung’s AI Center in New York and Professor at Cornell Tech, delivered a lecture under the theme AI for Robots and People. He examined the technologies being used in the latest machine learning algorithms and explained how they can be used both to develop more advanced robotics systems and to improve people’s everyday lives.

Stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for more information on the Samsung AI Forum 2020.

This year’s AI Forum, the fourth of its kind, is being held over two days this November 2 and 3. The first day of the event, hosted by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, is enabling participants to facilitate discussions around how to make the best use of AI technologies in a way that can benefit our daily lives in a rapidly changing world, particularly within the context of the unprecedented situations that have arisen recently due to the global pandemic.

AI Forum Day 1: The Past, Present and Future of AI

On November 2, Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, commemorated the start of the first day of the AI Forum 2020 by delivering an opening speech that highlighted how AI technologies have shown remarkable progress over the years. He went on to note that, given these changes, many are expecting AI to address the issues brought on by the recent pandemic, but highlighted that since AI bases its models on massive amounts of real-life data and simulations, the task of modeling the current pandemic and other natural disasters with AI was a daunting one.

Dr. Kim went on to provide his own views on the ways in which AI technologies can move forward and be harnessed to have meaningful impact on real world problems, and also highlighted that Samsung Electronics, as a major provider of core technologies in the AI ecosystem, is proactively co-operating with global researchers to seek solutions to such real world problems. Dr. Kim ended his opening speech with the expectation that meaningful discussions on the present and future of AI technologies and their benefit for humanity were set to take place during this year’s Forum.

Recognizing Leading Talent in the Field

At this year’s AI Forum, Samsung introduced their inaugural Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards with the view to identify prominent emerging researchers in the field from around the world and to support their research activities.

This year’s Samsung AI Research of the Year awards went to Professor Kyunghyun Cho of New York University, Professor Chelsea Finn of Stanford University, Professor Seth Flaxman of Imperial College London, Professor Jiajun Wu of Stanford University and Professor Cho-Jui Hsieh of UCLA.

Professor Kyunghyun Cho, a globally recognized researcher in natural language processing, has been publishing a consistent stream of acclaimed papers across the medicine, biology and optimization disciplines. “I am honored to have received a Samsung AI Researcher of the Year award and am committed to developing AI-focused research further down the road,” said Professor Cho of the recognition.

Expert Highlights: Keynote Speeches

Professor Yoshua Bengio, who served as this year’s co-chair and was selected as Samsung AI Professor of the Year, gave a presentation titled Towards Discovering Casual Representations. In his lecture, Professor Bengio explained that, up until now, conventional deep learning technologies have been relying on inference to recognize sensual information and learn from it, but AI technologies that are instead capable of learning the causality between hidden variables before drawing conclusions could be capable of making inferences just as humans do, and hence would be able to respond to unprogrammed situations. With visions of such a type of AI in mind, Professor Bengio shared the initial outcomes of his research and suggested how, based on this, AI technologies can make steps forward.

Professor Yann LeCun of New York University, a researcher who pioneered the Convolutional Neural Network widely applied to video recognition technologies, presented his latest model related to Self-Supervised Learning. Unlike supervised learning which returns a given answer to each given data set, self-supervised learning adopts a learning model consisting of autonomously creating questions within data and subsequently finding answers. Such a method has been applied to a massive linguistic model capable of generating sentences just as people do. Professor LeCun highlighted how self-supervised learning is similar to the way children experience and learn the world, and presented an energy-based model based on such a comparison.

Professor Chelsea Finn of Stanford University, a young researcher in the spotlight within the field of meta learning, gave a lecture titled From Few-Shot Adaptation to Uncovering Symmetries. In her lecture, Professor Finn introduced meta learning technologies in which AI, in spite of changes in data, can adapt swiftly to untrained data, and proceeded to share success stories of the application of these technologies in the areas of robotics and new drug candidate material design.

Professor Donhee Ham, Fellow at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Professor at Harvard University, delivered a presentation titled Reconstruction of the Brain. In his presentation, he highlighted that the current level of AI is based on the human brain but in fact works in a way different from how the brain functions, causing limitations to its capability. Professor Ham introduced cutting-edge neural science technologies that could mimic the structure and functionalities of the human brain circuit and create computer integrated circuits on their own.

Industry experts also took part in giving presentations. Dr. Tara Sainath of Google Research released the latest research outcomes of end-to-end models developed for speech recognition capable of enhancing the accuracy, efficiency and multi-lingual capability of voice assistant services widely available across smart devices.

Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan of Microsoft Research gave a lecture titled Intelligibility Throughout the Machine Learning Life Cycle. She shared a human-centric machine learning concept, highlighting that, in order to develop a fair machine learning system capable of garnering the trust of people, people’s clear understanding of the system is required. Dr. Wortman Vaughan then introduced research outcomes that can objectively verify such a mechanism.

Since the Samsung AI Forum 2020 was held virtually this year, students and researchers alike in the AI research field from all over the world were able to engage in online discussions and exchanges. When tuning in to the Forum’s lectures on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel, attendees could ask questions to and receive answers from the distinguished speakers thanks to a real-time chat functionality.

Stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for more information on the Samsung AI Forum 2020.

Day 1: AI Technologies for Changes in the Real World

On Day 1, which will be hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics will deliver opening remarks. Renowned AI experts will subsequently give presentations under the theme “AI Technologies for Changes in the Real World.”

This year, Dr. Inyup Kang, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics will join the panel discussion with the presenters. Topics for in-depth discussions include: challenges that need to be overcome on a global level through AI technologies over the next decade; limitations that AI faces in tackling real-world issues such as a pandemic or climate change; and whether humans need human-level AI, among other topics.

Day 1 Sessions:

• “Towards Discovering Causal Representations” by Prof. Yoshua Bengio, the University of Montreal
• “Self-Supervised Learning” by Prof. Yann LeCun, New York University
• “Meta-Learning: From Few-Shot Adaptation to Uncovering Symmetries” by Prof. Chelsea Finn, Stanford University
• “Reconstruction of the Brain” by Prof. Donhee Ham, Fellow at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Professor at Harvard University
• “Intelligibility Throughout the Machine Learning Life Cycle” by Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Microsoft Research
• “End-To-End Models for Speech Recognition” by Dr. Tara Sainath, Google Research

Professor Yoshua Bengio, the winner of the 2018 Turing Award, often referred to as “the Nobel Prize in computing,” is assuming co-chairmanship for the forum, and the newly established “Samsung AI Researcher of the Year” award will be presented at the event.

The awardee of the “Researcher of the Year” honor is selected among global AI researchers under the age of 35 through extensive evaluations and assessments made by AI experts at both Samsung Electronics and renowned academic institutions. On the first day of the forum, the award ceremony will be held to present the USD 30,000 prize and the awardee will give a presentation.

Additionally, Samsung has named Professor Yoshua Bengio as “Samsung AI Professor.” As the co-chair of the forum with Dr. Sungwoo Hwang, President and Head of SAIT, Professor Bengio will utilize his wide networks and expertise in the field of deep learning to broaden cooperation for expanding the boundaries of AI research at Samsung Electronics.

“We have an outstanding set of speakers and discussion topics which promise to shed light on both the limitations of current AI technologies, which raise both practical and theoretical questions, and research directions aimed at reaching human-level intelligence,” said Professor Yoshua Bengio.

Day 2: Human-Centered AI

Day 2 sessions will be hosted by Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub of the company that leads the development of future technologies for Samsung Electronics’ SET (end-products) Business. Under the theme “Human-Centered AI,” Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, will deliver the keynote speech, and AI experts who have been actively engaging in AI research activities worldwide will share their insights.

Day 2 Sessions:

• “Natural Language Processing” by Prof. Christopher Manning, Stanford University
• “Vision” by Prof. Devi Parikh, the Georgia Institute of Technology
• “Human Robot Interaction” by Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati, Arizona State University
• “Robotics” by Prof. Daniel D. Lee, Cornell Tech, Executive Vice President at Samsung Research and Head of Samsung AI Center-New York

Professor Christopher Manning, a renowned expert in natural language processing (NLP), will speak on the current status and future of NLP technologies required for Human-Centered AI. He previously delivered the keynote speech at the first Samsung AI Forum in 2017 on the development of neural network-based natural language understanding technology. Samsung has been working with Professor Manning on Q&A and dialogue modeling and will continue to collaborate with him on the overall development of NLP technologies.

After the presentations, Sebastian Seung, a pioneer in AI research based on neuroscience, will preside over an in-depth panel discussion with the four speakers regarding the prospects and future direction of Human-Centered AI.

“We hope that Samsung AI Forum 2020 will contribute to enhanced understanding of AI technology developments and its applications that can bring positive impact to human lives,” said Seung. “Especially since this year’s forum will be held online, I hope that the event will be an opportunity for greater participation of those interested in AI technologies.”

The event will be open to pre-registered attendees. Registration is available through the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology website and the Samsung Research website starting October 6.