In a preprint paper, Microsoft researchers describe a machine learning system that reasons out the correct actions to take directly from camera images. It’s trained via simulation and learns to independently navigate environments and conditions in the real world, including unseen situations, which makes it a fit for robots deployed in search and rescue missions. Someday, it could help those…
Intel debuts Pohoiki Springs, a powerful neuromorphic research system for AI workloads
March 18, 2020
This morning, Intel announced the general readiness of Pohoiki Springs, a powerful self-contained neuromorphic system that’s about the size of five standard servers. It says the system will be available to members of the Intel Neuromorphic Research Community via the cloud…
Over the past four years, the strongest demand for candidates with AI skills hasn’t come from IT departments, but from other business units within organizations. That’s according to a Gartner report that found that the number of AI jobs posted by IT was less than half of…
Coronavirus fears halt autonomous vehicle testing for Uber, Cruise, Aurora, Argo AI, Waymo, and others
March 17, 2020
Following Waymo’s announcement that it would limit its ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona and autonomous car testing on public California roads in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several competitors adopted similar measures this week. Uber, GM’s Cruise, Aurora, Argo AI, and Pony.ai are among the companies that have suspended driverless vehicle programs in the hopes of limiting contact…
Researchers detail TrojAI, a framework for hardening AI models against adversarial attacks
March 17, 2020
One way to test machine learning models for robustness is with what’s called a trojan attack, which involves modifying a model to respond to input triggers that cause it to infer an incorrect response. In an attempt to make these tests more repeatable and scalable…
Tech Nation: U.S. companies raised 56% of global AI investment since 2015, followed by China and U.K.
March 17, 2020
A new report shines some light on the investments made into artificial intelligence (AI) between 2015 and 2019, revealing that the U.S. attracted more than half of all global AI investments during the five year period, followed by China and the U.K.
The UK Tech For a…
Microsoft, White House, and Allen Institute release coronavirus data set for medical and NLP researchers
March 16, 2020
The COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), a repository of more than 29,000 scholarly articles about coronavirus family viruses from around the world, is being released today for free. The result of work by Microsoft Research, the Allen Institute for AI, the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP), and others…
In a preprint research paper published this week, Nvidia researchers propose an approach for human-to-robot handovers in which the robot meets the human halfway, classifies the human’s grasp, and plans a trajectory to take the object from the human’s hand. They claim it…
The world’s tech industry will be shaped by China, artificial intelligence, cancel culture, and a number of other trends, according to the Future Today Institute’s 2020 Tech Trends Report.
Now in its 13th year, the document is put together by the Future Today Institute…
The emergence of the professional AI risk manager
March 14, 2020
When the 1970s and 1980s were colored by banking crises, regulators from around the world banded together to set international standards on how to manage financial risk. Those standards, now known as the Basel standards, define a common framework and taxonomy on how risk should be measured and managed. This led to the rise of professional financial risk managers, which was my first job. The…
