AI & Robotics

Microsoft today announced the latest slew of features coming to Microsoft Teams for people at work and in education. This batch aims to “make virtual interactions more natural, more engaging, and ultimately, more human.” The majority of the additions are powered by AI, including Together Mode, Dynamic View, Cortana, suggested replies, and speaker attribution and translation for live captions…

In a preprint paper published this week on Arxiv.org, Nvidia and Stanford University researchers propose a novel approach to transferring AI models trained in simulation to real-world autonomous machines. It uses segmentation as the interface between perception and control, leading to what the coauthors characterize as “high success” in workloads like robot grasping. Simulators have advantages…

Today, a week after its cars resumed testing on public roads and days after it raised $750 million in capital, Waymo took the wraps off an AI model it claims “significantly” improved its driverless systems’ ability to predict the behavior of pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers. Called VectorNet, it ostensibly provides more accurate projections while requiring less compute compared with…

Nvidia unwrapped its Nvidia A100 artificial intelligence chip today, and CEO Jensen Huang called it the ultimate instrument for advancing AI. Huang said it can make supercomputing tasks — which are vital in the fight against COVID-19 — much more cost-efficient and powerful than today’s more expensive systems. The chip has a monstrous 54 billion transistors (the on-off switches that are the…