AI & RoboticsNews

Facebook gamifies data collection to boost conversational AI

August 19, 2020
Facebook once piloted a text-based fantasy role-playing game to improve the conversational models powering things like its chatbots and smart speakers. In a preprint paper, researchers at the company describe a game that iterates between collecting data and retraining models on the collected data, with a metric that evaluates and compares models using players’ continuation rates (i.e., how long…
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AI & RoboticsNews

How Duolingo uses AI in every part of its app

August 19, 2020
Language learning has surged during the pandemic. Duolingo, which is synonymous with gamified language learning, saw its fastest growth period this March with a 101% global increase in new users. From those who simply have more time on their hands to students trying to keep…
AI & RoboticsNews

Researchers claim their AI can hear if a speaker is wearing a mask

August 19, 2020
Researchers at Duke Kunshan University, Wuhan University, Lenovo, and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou claim to have developed an AI system that detects whether a person is wearing a mask from the sound of their muffled speech. They say that in experiments, it achieves 78.8% accuracy on one metric, demonstrating that sound could be a useful means of enforcing mask-wearing during the…
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AI & RoboticsNews

Machine learning groups form Consortium for Python Data API Standards to reduce fragmentation

August 18, 2020
Deep learning framework Apache MXNet and Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) today launched the Consortium for Python Data API Standards, a group that wants to make it easier for machine learning practitioners and data scientists no matter which framework, library, or tool from the Python ecosystem it came from. ONNX is a group initially formed by Facebook and Microsoft in 2017 to power…
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AI & RoboticsNews

The meatpacking industry is an incubator for AI, automation, and COVID-19

August 17, 2020
This article is part of a VB special issue. Read the full series: Automation and jobs in the new normal. In early spring 2020, Smithfield, Tyson, and other industrial food suppliers warned that upwards of millions of pounds of meat could disappear from the U.S. supply chain as a result of the coronavirus. Although it now appears these fears were overblown or possibly a ploy to bolster exports…
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