In a study published this week on the preprint server Arxiv.org, Google and University of California, Berkely researchers propose a framework that combines learning-based perception with model-based controls to enable wheeled robots to autonomously navigate around obstacles. They say it generalizes well to avoiding unseen buildings and humans in both simulation and real-world environments and that…
Google and the Oxford Internet Institute explain artificial intelligence basics with the ‘A-Z of AI’
March 25, 2020
Artificial intelligence (AI) is infiltrating just about every facet of society, from detecting fraud and surveillance to helping countries battle the current COVID-19 pandemic. But AI is a thorny subject, fraught with complex terminology, contradictory information, and…
Fritz brings on-device AI to Android and iOS
March 25, 2020
Fritz AI, a startup providing an AI and machine learning development platform for Android and iOS, today announced that it has raised $5 million. CEO Dan Abdinoor says that the capital will accelerate Fritz’s expansion as it launches its product out of early access, which…
Pinterest launches Today tab with curated topics, fights coronavirus misinformation with AI
March 25, 2020
In a bid to brighten the mood as the torrent of COVID-19 news continues unabated, Pinterest has announced the launch of Today in the U.S. and U.K., a new tab with curated topics and trending topic pins. While information from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control about topics like handwashing is slated to feature prominently in the coming weeks, the Today tab will also show…
ePlane taps AI to match aerospace sellers with buyers
March 25, 2020
Aircraft parts and repair marketplace ePlane today announced that it has raised $9 million, the bulk of which it expects to spend on international expansion. Assuming all goes well, ePlane will further develop its aerospace industry sourcing and business intelligence market…
A cross-disciplinary group of researchers used AI as part of an analysis of photos posted online that recognizes an association between happiness, life satisfaction, and nature. Researchers from universities in Australia and Singapore say the analysis demonstrates the…
A paper published by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, San Francisco research firm OpenAI, Facebook AI Research, the University of California at Berkeley, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University describes a paradigm that scales up multi-agent reinforcement learning, where AI models learn by having agents interact within an environment such that the agent population increases in size over time.
Miso Robotics, a startup developing robots that can perform basic cooking tasks in commercial kitchens, today announced that it has deployed new tools to its platform in CaliBurger restaurants intended to improve safety and health standards. The hope is to minimize the…
MIT CSAIL’s VISTA autonomous vehicles simulator transfers skills learned to the real world
March 24, 2020
In a recent study, researchers hailing from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Toyota Research Institute describe Virtual Image Synthesis and Transformation for Autonomy (VISTA), an autonomous vehicle development platform that uses a…
Google researchers recently published a paper describing a framework — SEED RL — that scales AI model training to thousands of machines. They say that it could facilitate training at millions of frames per second on a machine while reducing costs by up to 80%, potentially leveling the playing field for startups that couldn’t previously compete with large AI labs.
Training sophisticated…
