The latest McKinsey Global Survey released today found that artificial intelligence is having a positive impact on business outcomes, with 63% of respondents reporting an increase in revenue after adoption of the technology. However, only 30% of companies apply AI to multiple business units, up from 21% last year.
Still, overall AI adoption is on the rise — in standard business practices it’s…
OpenAI releases Safety Gym for reinforcement learning
November 21, 2019
While much work in data science to date has focused on algorithmic scale and sophistication, safety — that is, safeguards against harm — is a domain no less worth pursuing. This is particularly true in applications like self-driving vehicles, where a machine learning…
Buttigieg and Yang say AI is essential to U.S. national security
November 21, 2019
Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang called artificial intelligence essential to U.S. national security in the fifth Democratic debate on Wednesday.
Buttigieg said the U.S. is spending a fraction of the attention and resources on AI research China is. “If…
Route raises $12 million to track packages with AI
November 21, 2019
It’s a busy time of year for ecommerce retailers — perhaps the busiest by the numbers. An estimated 165.8 million people shopped between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday in 2018, and each purchased an average of 16 gifts during that time frame. Collectively, their haul came in billions of packages delivered through the mail system, over 900 million of which were tendered by the USPS…
Celonis raises $290 million for AI-powered process mining at $2.5 billion valuation
November 21, 2019
Celonis today closed a $290 million series C round for its solution that uses AI-driven data and process mining to make companies more efficient. This round raised the company’s valuation to $2.5 billion. Today’s news follows a $50 million funding round in June 2018 that…
Snapchat’s Time Machine lens uses AI to age and de-age selfies
November 21, 2019
If you weren’t convinced yet that artificial intelligence will eventually be able to do pretty much anything, Snapchat is about to show you just how powerful machine learning can be — for free. Today, the popular social media app is adding a new lens called Time Machine…
Google Assistant uses ‘Duplex on the Web’ to buy your movie tickets
November 21, 2019
Since last year, you’ve been able to purchase movie tickets using your voice with Google Assistant and Fandango. Today, Google is enhancing that capability to make it more versatile.
If you own an Android phone, simply tell the digital helper that you want seats to a specific movie or search for showtimes using the Google app. Assistant will then take care of working through any website…
Deep tech investment surges across Europe as AI ecosystem expands
November 21, 2019
While Europe still faces a wide venture capital gap compared to Silicon Valley, the continent is nevertheless making big strides in positioning itself as an attractive hub for scientifically based startups.
This is one of the key takeaways of “State of European Tech Report…
Sonos buys an AI startup to improve voice control for its speakers
November 21, 2019
Sonos might just be less reliant onthird-party assistantsfor voice control. The company hasboughtSnips, a Paris startup that helps create “tailored voice experiences” through its AI voice platform and tools. No, Sonos isn’t planning…
Sonos acquires privacy-conscious AI startup Snips for $37.5 million
November 20, 2019
Audio company Sonos today announced the acquisition of Snips, a privacy-conscious conversational AI company based in Paris. The $37.5 million acquisition will bring machine learning engineers and others from Snips, a company with about 50 employees, into Sonos.
Snips is the creator of open source conversational AI projects that have been used by more than 30,000 developers, such as Snips-NLU.
