Depictions of artificial intelligence in popular culture as mostly white can carry a number of consequences, including the erasure of people who are not white, according to research released today by researchers from the University of Cambridge. The authors say the normalization of predominant depictions of AI as white can influence people aspiring to enter the field of artificial intelligence as…
Salesforce open-sources the AI Economist, a research environment for exploring tax policies
August 6, 2020
In April, Salesforce detailed the AI Economist, a research environment for understanding how AI could improve economic design. The company pledged to eventually make the codebase available in open source, and today marks the release of the initial version.
Studies have shown…
The promise of conversational AI is that, unlike virtually any other form of technology, all you have to do is talk. Natural language is the most natural and democratic form of communication. After all, humans are born capable of learning how to speak, but some never learn…
Zencity raises $13.5 million to help cities aggregate community feedback with AI and big data
August 5, 2020
Zencity, a platform that meshes AI with big data to give municipalities insights and aggregated feedback from local communities, has raised $13.5 million from a slew of notable backers, including lead investor TLV Partners, Microsoft’s VC arm M12, and Salesforce Ventures.
Gathering data through traditional means, such as surveys or Town Hall meetings, can be a slow and time-consuming process and…
Just how comprehensively do natural language processing (NLP) pipelines support widely spoken languages? A recent study coauthored by researchers at Clarkson University and Iona College sought to investigate the degree to which NLP tools understand eight dialects: English…
Syntiant, a startup developing AI edge hardware for voice and sensor solutions, today closed a $35 million round. CEO Kurt Busch says the funds will be used to ramp up production throughout the remainder of 2020.
According to a report published by Meticulous Research, the…
(Reuters) — Chinese artificial intelligence company Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology, also known as Xiao-i, has filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging it has infringed on Xiao-i’s patents.
Xiao-i is calling for 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in damages and demands that Apple cease “manufacturing, using, promising to sell, selling, and importing” products that infringe on…
A new study from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) proposes a machine learning system that can examine X-rays to diagnose conditions including lung collapse and an enlarged heart. That’s not especially novel — computer vision in…
A new whitepaper coauthored by researchers at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence examines the ethics of AI in surgery, making the case that surgery and AI carry similar expectations but diverge with respect to ethical understanding. Surgeons are faced with…
Data-driven construction reporting company Buildots this week announced it raised $16 million, a combination of a $3 million seed round and a $13 million series A. Cofounder Roy Danon says it’ll be used to scale and improve the company’s products as Buildots expands to new regions around the world.
Large construction projects — which some countries have allowed to continue during the…
