AI takes off in Washtenaw County

Bank of America has touted its virtual financial assistant, Erica, as a pioneering technology, but the founders of Ann Arbor-based tech company Clinc say their artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot would trounce Erica in a fair fight.

Clinc Head of Sales Steve Liebman says the company demonstrates a "battle of the bots" for clients by giving both Erica and Clinc's tool the same set of 10 questions or scenarios. 

"Ours can handle all 10, but Erica can handle just three of those," Liebman says. "If the conversation quality isn't great, people get frustrated and won't hang around."

Liebman says Clinc's tool is superior because it easily handles naturally worded queries. For instance, it understands that "cheddar" or "dough" are synonyms for money and it understands that a follow-up question is related to the previous query.
Doug CoombeClinc CTO and COO Jamal El-Mokadem.
Clinc now has offices and employees working all over the U.S. and in Europe, but its roots are in a research collaboration project at the University of Michigan (U-M). And it's among a slew of companies in the Ann Arbor area that are developing AI tools for fields ranging from bioscience to mobility.

For instance, Initium.ai is another Ann Arbor-based AI company that grew out of U-M. The company uses AI to provide research and administrative aid to individuals and organizations looking to write grant applications. In another example, CircNova, an Ann Arbor-based biotech startup founded by University of Michigan alum Crystal Brown, developed an AI platform to identify RNA structures that could lead to therapies for a variety of diseases.

"They’re building something truly groundbreaking in biotech," Ann Arbor SPARK Vice President Mike Flanagan says. "Not only are they developing their own therapies, but they’re creating an AI platform that other companies can use to innovate."

Artificial intelligence that you "just didn't know about"

The average person is most likely to interact with a kind of AI called a "large language model" (LLM). LLMs "train" an AI program by feeding it massive amounts of text data, which in turn lets the AI generate text, answer questions, or provide summaries. LLMs are useful but also prone to returning nonsensical information, known as "hallucinations," or just plain making information up. LLMs aren't the only type of AI, though.

Voxel51 is an Ann Arbor-based company specializing in "visual AI," a way of training an AI tool to interpret visual data in a way closer to how humans perceive a photograph, video, or other visual input. Co-founder and U-M robotics professor Jason Corso says Voxel51's infrastructure, called "FiftyOne," enables users to build better visual AI applications in their field of specialty, from retail to autonomous vehicles.
Doug CoombeVoxel51 co-founders Brian Moore and Jason Corso.
Corso says the company has "a pretty broad user base" that wants to make visual AI a reality. Voxel51 has a dataset and modeling tool as its core offerings, available as open-source software to users who want to speed up the process of adding visual AI to their own platforms or tools. That tool has been downloaded more than 3 million times, Corso says.

"They can iterate with the models and do an analysis about what to do next," Corso says. "It really makes that flywheel spin faster."

Corso says he can't name Voxel51's clients, but visual AI is being used by "most major automakers," consumer product companies, and security companies. There are even applications in agricultural technology.
Doug CoombeA screengrab of Voxel51's FiftyOne.
Corso says Voxel51 was the only company doing visual AI for a long time, but the company now has "half a dozen or more competitors." His next challenge is to remain innovative.

Corso says the average consumer, and society broadly, is more comfortable with AI virtual assistants and LLMs like ChatGPT. However, consumer interactions with AI aren't new, he says.

"We've had AI prior to large language models," Corso says. "Every time you swiped a credit card, an AI was processing it to make sure it wasn't fraud. You just didn't know about it."

"A little like where self-driving cars were 20 years ago"

Corso says AI still has a "huge way to go before it's a really trusted, core component of everyday life," though.

Clinc staff are also concerned about public perceptions of safety and trust around AI.

"Generative AI is a little like where self-driving cars were 20 years ago," says Clinc CEO Drew Harman. "The car could move down the road, but it would be a long time before error rates were reduced enough to put them on the streets of San Francisco."
Doug CoombeClinc CTO and COO Jamal El-Mokadem.
He says generative AI generally is "not safe" to put in front of consumers right now, "especially in health care and finance. They want the experience, but not the risk."

"That's why Voxel really has been able to create a stronghold [in the visual AI field]," Corso says. "We provide good insight and capabilities around data quality and the role that plays in AI. It's super critical to have good data, and a lot of good data." 

He says it's not clear if large amounts of "noisy" or error-filled data is better than a smaller but clearer data set, but in any case, "it's clear data plays a central role."
courtesy Voxel51The Voxel51 team.
Corso says Voxel51 offers a paid service for companies but its basic tool has always been open source, because of the great need for lots of data but also for societal reasons.

"Open source is the only way to go for AI," Corso says. He adds that the public has to feel that AI tools and platforms are "trustworthy," and opening up Voxel51's tools and datasets to the public is the way to generate social buy-in and acceptance of the technology.

Ripple effect

Major developments are on the horizon for Washtenaw County's AI landscape as new programs and facilities continue to proliferate.

For instance, Washtenaw Community College has already been partnering with semiconductor company MACOM, which has an office in Ann Arbor, on various resources for WCC students. Semiconductors are crucial to providing the computational power necessary for AI tools. WCC and MACOM plan to expand their partnership with a new semiconductor manufacturing technician program set to launch this autumn. Students will be able to work with manufacturers like MACOM and others to earn an advanced certificate or an associate's degree in semiconductor manufacturing. 

Additionally, U-M recently announced a partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to build a joint AI research facility focused on providing high-quality computing for crunching lots of data. Ann Arbor SPARK CEO Paul Krutko says SPARK helped LANL find a 20-acre site off Whittaker Road in Ypsilanti Township that suited LANL's water, power, and other infrastructure needs.
Doug CoombeAnn Arbor SPARK CEO Paul Krutko
Krutko says that many developers are helping companies find locations for data centers right now, and the Ypsi Township location had a fortunate combination. It's developed enough to have nearby infrastructure while also offering an undeveloped parcel of at least 20 acres available to build on.

"That really is the sweet spot," Krutko says. He says the final facility will be "massive" and will involve "over a billion dollars of investment." Since SPARK is an economic development organization, SPARK staff hope that those benefits will spill over into job and economic opportunities in Ypsi Township as well.

Sarah Rigg is a freelance writer and editor in Ypsilanti Township and the project manager of On the Ground Ypsilanti. She joined Concentrate as a news writer in early 2017 and is an occasional contributor to other Issue Media Group publications. You may reach her at sarahrigg1@gmail.com.

All photos by Doug Coombe.