AI & RoboticsNews

AI Weekly: NeurIPS 2020 and the hope for change

December 12, 2020
On Monday morning, organizers of NeurIPS, the largest annual gathering of AI researchers in the world, gave Best Paper awards to the authors of three pieces of research, including one detailing OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model. The week also started with AI researchers refusing to review Google AI papers until grievances were resolved after firing Ethical AI team co-lead Timnit Gebru. Googlers…
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AI & RoboticsNews

Teachable AI will help Alexa users set up preferences

December 11, 2020
Amazon today detailed a capability coming to Alexa called Teachable AI that will enable the assistant to ask questions to fill gaps in its understanding. First announced during the company’s September virtual press event, Teachable AI leverages machine learning to…
AI & RoboticsNews

Hyundai acquires majority stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics

December 11, 2020
(Reuters) — Hyundai and its chairman have agreed to buy an 80% stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank, Hyundai said on Friday. Hyundai said the deal values the robot firm at $1.1 billion, suggesting the automaker group offered $880 million for the 80% stake. Hyundai can leverage robot technology to expand automation at its unionised car factories, as well as design autonomous…
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AI & RoboticsNews

Papercup raises $10.5 million to dub videos with AI-generated speech

December 10, 2020
Papercup, a U.K.-based startup developing speech translation technology for video creators, has raised $10.5 million in venture funding. The company says the funds will be put toward machine learning research and expanding its human-in-the-loop quality control feature for customers’ AI-translated videos. Most of the world’s videos have been recorded in a single language. For example, 33% of…
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AI & RoboticsNews

SoftBank has reportedly sold Boston Dynamics to Hyundai

December 10, 2020
Hyundai Motors is acquiring Boston Dynamics, according to The Korea Economic Daily. The publication says Softbank has agreed to sell the robot maker for 1 trillion won (US$917 million) and that the acquisition will be finalized at a board meeting today, December 10th. The…
AI & RoboticsNews

Google will investigate the controversial exit of a top AI ethicist

December 10, 2020
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has pledged to investigate the departure of a top AI ethics researcher, according to a company-wide memo Axios obtained. Pichai also apologized for how Google handled Dr. Timnit Gebru’s exit.  “I’ve heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru’s departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google,” Pichai…
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