In what might only be perceived as a win for Facebook, OpenAI today announced that it will migrate to the social network’s PyTorch machine learning framework in future projects, eschewing Google’s long-in-the-tooth TensorFlow platform. OpenAI is the San Francisco-based AI research firm cofounded by CTO Greg Brockman, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Elon Musk, and others, with backing from…
Amazon details AI that answers questions more reliably
January 30, 2020
Might natural language models improve in their ability to answer questions on the fly? That’s what a team of Amazon researchers set out to answer in a study scheduled to be presented at the 2020 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in New York. They…
Researchers associated with Google and the Partnership on AI have created a framework to help companies and their engineering teams audit AI systems before deploying them.
The framework, intended to add a layer of quality assurance to businesses launching AI, translates into…
IBM releases annotation tool that taps AI to label images
January 30, 2020
Data labeling is an arduous — but necessary — part of the AI model training process. Currently, it takes around 200-500 samples of annotated images for a model to learn to detect a single object. Fortunately, freely available tools help automate the most monotonous sub-tasks, and one of these was recently published by IBM on GitHub. It’s part of the company’s Cloud Annotations project…
Aquant raises $30 million for AI that gives customer service agents mission-critical data
January 30, 2020
Organizational data is often scattered across systems, hidden within text, and locked within the minds of employees. Given the disparate channels, how might this data be unified and delivered to support agents engaged in service calls? Assaf Melochna and Shahar Chen, former…
Robotic finger can sweat like a human to cool down
January 30, 2020
Robots can already do lots of things people can including gymnastics, but a new type of soft robot has one of the most human traits of all. Researchers have a developed a finger-like appendage that can break into sweat to prevent overheating, much like we do during hot days…
Microsoft backs AI in healthcare with a $40 million program
January 30, 2020
Microsoft’s deepening health tech strategy now includes a significant commitment to AI. The company is starting a $40 million AI for Health program that should help researchers and key organizations improve the quality of life for people around the planet. The five-year initiative will use AI to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment, as you might have expected, but it’ll…
OpsRamp raises $37.5 million to apply AI to DevOps processes
January 30, 2020
Ever heard of AI for IT management (AIOps)? It’s a burgeoning ecosystem of platforms and products that enhance IT operations by leveraging AI to analyze data collected from various tools and devices. OpsRamp is one of the startups leading the charge in what Research and…
Nest is testing detecting HVAC problems with AI
January 29, 2020
Owners of Nest-branded thermostats will soon see their systems improved with a new feature designed to detect problems in heating and cooling (HVAC) systems. Google today announced that it’s testing algorithms tailored to identify “unusual patterns” related to HVAC…
In June 2017, Microsoft launched AI for Earth, a $50 million program that’s provided cloud-based tools and services to dozens of startups working to protect the planet. Subsequently, the Seattle tech giant expanded the scope of its “AI for good” work with AI for Accessibility (in May 2018), AI for Humanitarian Action (in September 2018), and AI for Cultural Heritage (July 2019), all of…
