Google today launched an updated version of Voice Access, its service that enables users to control Android devices using voice commands. It leverages a machine learning model to automatically detect icons on the screen based on UI screenshots, enabling it to determine whether elements like images and icons have accessibility labels, or labels provided to Android’s accessibility…
Phocas Software‘s cloud data analytics tools might be best known in Australia, where they’re used by Thermo Fisher Scientific, Fiskars Royal Doulton, and Burson Automotive to streamline employee access to key financial data, but the company is planning to become more…
Atlanta, Georgia-based Verusen, a startup leveraging AI to build a connected supply chain, today raised $8 million in series A funding co-led by Forte Ventures and Flyover Capital. The company says it’ll put the funds toward R&D as it expands the size of its…
AI holds the key to even better AI
January 29, 2021
For all the talk about how artificial intelligence technology is transforming entire industries, the reality is that most businesses struggle to obtain real value from AI. 65% of organizations that have invested in AI in recent years haven’t yet seen any tangible gains from those investments, according to a 2019 survey conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group.
Researchers propose AI system that summarizes historical texts
January 28, 2021
Summarizing historical text can help people gather, organize, and share knowledge, but cultural and linguistic changes and the sheer volume of archives can make interpreting historical text challenging even for experts. Researchers at the University of Sheffield, Beihang…
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is launching the Global AI Action Alliance today, with more than 100 organizations participating at launch. The steering committee includes business leaders like IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, multinational organizations like the OECD and UNESCO, and…
MIT CSAIL claims its breast cancer prediction AI works equally well across demographic groups
January 28, 2021
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) say they’ve created a breast cancer risk-assessment algorithm that shows consistent performance across patients from the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This new algorithm captures the requirements of risk modeling, jointly learning a patient’s risk across multiple future time points and optionally drawing on…
Ukko raises $40 million to address food allergies with AI
January 27, 2021
Ukko, a 30-employee biotech company using AI to investigate solutions for food allergies and sensitivities, today raised $40 million in a series B round led by Bayer’s Leaps by Bayer. Ukko says the new funding will allow it to enter clinical trials with an investigational…
A burgeoning subfield of AI focuses on leveraging models to improve the performance of robots that follow instructions given by people. These models generate directions (e.g., “Walk up the stairs and enter the first room on the left”) that ostensibly improve robots’…
Tasker's Android phone automation connects with Google Assistant
January 27, 2021
People have long used Tasker to take care of repetitive tasks on their Android device, or to customize its features based on things like whether they’re at home or at the office. Now the app’s features are a little easier to use since you can trigger them via Google Assistant. XDA points out a post by the developer on Reddit where he points out the currently available triggers, which you can…
