AI & Robotics

IBM today acquired Instana, a German-American software firm that specializes in developing application performance management software. The acquisition represents IBM’s continued investment in hybrid cloud, big data, and AI capabilities. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. As workflows evolve, organizations are moving away from monolithic apps toward more complex distributed systems. With…

Google today announced the launch of Tree Canopy Lab for Los Angeles, a tool that combines AI and aerial imagery to help cities see their current tree canopy coverage and plan future tree-planting projects. Google says that Tree Canopy Lab, which is a part of the company’s Environmental Insights Explorer platform, could make it easier for cities to measure, plan, and reduce carbon emissions and…

AliveCor, a startup developing algorithms that detect atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, tachycardia, and other health issues from heart rate readings, today raised $65 million in funding. The company says the proceeds will be used to bolster go-to-market efforts as AliveCor kicks off a partnership with Omron to provide at-home blood pressure monitoring tech to customers. Over the past few months…

In a paper accepted to the 2020 NeurIPS conference, Google and Stanford researchers explore the bias exhibited by certain kinds of computer vision algorithms — convolutional neural networks (CNNs) — trained on the open source ImageNet dataset. Unlike humans, ImageNet-trained CNNs tend to classify images by texture rather than by shape. Their work indicates that CNNs’ bias toward textures may…