The World Health Organization reports that 1.5 million people were killed in road accidents in 2018, of which more than half were pedestrians and cyclists. One of the biggest culprits is the so-called “hidden pedestrian” problem, in which people obscured by obstacles suddenly appear in front of high-speed vehicles. Sensors like lidar, radar, and cameras promise to improve the detection of…
Andrew Yang ended his campaign Tuesday after a tepid showing in New Hampshire, bringing to an end what can be characterized as the only AI-first presidential campaign in U.S. history. Some will argue Yang’s campaign simply rose to prominence because of his support of a…
MIT CSAIL’s AI corrects outdated Wikipedia articles
February 13, 2020
The English-language Wikipedia contains over 6 million articles, and the combined versions for all other languages contain over 28 billion words over 52 million articles in 309 languages. It’s an incomparably valuable resource for knowledge seekers, needless to say, but…
Israeli robotics startup Intuition Robotics has raised $36 million in a series B round of funding co-led by Sparx Group and OurCrowd, with participation from Samsung Next, Toyota AI Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, iRobot, Sompo Holdings, Union Tech Ventures, Happiness Capital, and Capital Point.
Founded in 2015, Intuition Robotics is creating what it calls “social companion” robots and related…
In 2005, Ali Dixon, then a student at the University of Bristol, founded fabless semiconductor company XMOS alongside former Oxford Semiconductor CEO James Foster, former Inmos chief architect David May, Hitesh Mehta of Acacia Capital Partners, and Noel Hurley. With seed…
AI can automatically rewrite outdated text in Wikipedia articles
February 13, 2020
It’s good to be skeptical of Wikipedia articles for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility of outdated info — human editors can only do so much. And while there are bots that can edit Wikipedia, they’re usually limited to updated…
Optical sensors such as cameras and lidar are a fundamental part of modern robotics platforms, but they suffer from a common flaw: transparent objects like glass containers tend to confuse them. That’s because most of the algorithms analyzing data from those sensors assume all surfaces are Lambertian, or that they reflect light evenly in all directions and from all angles. By contrast…
Why Clearview AI is a threat to us all
February 12, 2020
When London’s Metropolitan Police Department announced its decision to adopt the controversial and intrusive ClearView AI surveillance system at the end of January, a global cacophony of protest erupted. Concerns, fear and trepidation surrounding facial recognition…
This eye-tracking system uses AI to diagnose multiple sclerosis
February 12, 2020
For decades, doctors have used eye movement to quickly triage brain health, as eye movement patterns can point to conditions like concussion or stroke. Now, C. Light Technologies, a neurotech and AI company that grew out of the Berkeley Skydeck accelerator, wants to help…
CybelAngel raises $36 million to fight data breaches with AI
February 12, 2020
It’s estimated that data breaches exposed over 4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019 and that 62% of businesses experienced disruptive phishing and social engineering attacks in 2018. Perhaps unsurprisingly, worldwide spending on cybersecurity is forecast to reach $133.7 billion in 2022. It’s in this seller’s market that CybelAngel — a digital risk management platform that provides…
