AI & Robotics

With respect to climate change, poaching, and encroachment on natural habitats, some animal populations have fared far worse than others. It’s estimated that the populations of more than 4,000 species shrunk by 60% between 1970 and 2014, and a recent United Nations global assessment found that as many as 1 million species are at risk of extinction within the next decade. That’s why Google has…

AI and machine learning are powerful tools for the synthesis of speech. As countless studies have demonstrated, only a few minutes — and in the case of state-of-the-art models, a few seconds — are required to imitate a subject’s prosody and intonation with precision. Baidu’s latest Deep Voice service can clone a voice with just 3.7 seconds of audio samples, for example, and a recently…

Industrial robotics startup Gecko Robotics has raised $40 million in a series B round of funding led by Drive Capital, with participation from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and Next47. Notable angel investors in this round include Mark Cuban, SoftBank senior managing partner Deep Nishar, and Gusto CEO Josh Reeves. Founded out of Pittsburgh in 2016, Gecko Robotics develops several…

Presented by Dataiku White-box AI boosts transparency, creates more collaborative data science, and improves trust within businesses and with customers — and it’s getting a lot of attention. Join this VB Live event to learn how, and why, businesses need to move away from black-box systems to more explainable AI. Register here for free. Black box AI went viral recently, when David Heinmeier…