Chinese data mining firm MiningLamp, now a national AI champion, began by helping police solve crimes

When the Chinese government named a new batch of national champions in artificial intelligence (AI) in August, one name was relatively unknown to most of the population.

MiningLamp, a Beijing based big data company, joined home-grown tech giants Huawei Technologies, JD.com and Xiaomi Corp as companies tasked with spearheading innovation efforts in the field.

Although not as well known as US equivalent Palantir Technologies, which reportedly contributed to America’s success in hunting down Osama bin Laden, MiningLamp’s data mining software is used to spot crime patterns, track drug dealers and prevent human trafficking.

“Cases are being resolved on our platforms every day” in more than 60 cities and regions in China, said founder and CEO Wu Minghui. “We can run fast analysis on potential drug dealers or major suspects, improving the overall case-solving efficiency several hundred times.”

MiningLamp’s software enables users to search huge volumes of heterogeneous data – information with a great variety of types and formats – and process that into actionable knowledge and insight using a combination of proprietary and commercially available data management tools.

For example, police in far flung cities may use different suspect descriptions and methods of recording evidence for theft cases. Using data mining, connections can quickly be found among the disparate data instead of having to manually cross check dozens of case files.