Long wait times for patients can be the undoing of a large clinic or a hospital system. According to a recent survey, 84% of patients consider a reasonable wait somewhat or very important to a quality experience, and 30% say they’ve left a medical appointment because of an inordinately long wait. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a strong correlation between offices with longer average wait…
Incorporating AI and machine learning technologies into everyday workflows isn’t as easy as the testimonials would have you believe. That’s the top-level finding from a survey of 750 business decision makers conducted by Algorithmia, which found that while machine…
Microsoft’s FastSpeech AI speeds up realistic voices generation
December 11, 2019
State-of-the-art text-to-speech models can produce snippets that sound nearly human-like on first listen. In point of fact, they underpin the neural voices available through Google Assistant, as well as the newscaster voice that recently came to Alexa and Amazon’s Polly…
Why explainable AI is indispensable to Zillow’s business
December 11, 2019
Zillow, an online marketplace that facilitates the buying, selling, renting, financing, and remodeling of homes, employs lots of AI technologies to do things like estimate home prices. But the output of AI systems like these can be opaque, creating a “black box” problem where practitioners and customers can’t audit the systems properly. Without transparency, serious problems like algorithmic…
Life insurance isn’t as popular as it once was, despite the fact that a majority of people consider it to be important. Over 80% of consumers agreed in a recent survey that people need a life insurance policy, yet just 62% say they have one themselves. In fact, only 44% of…
Google taps AI to improve news results in Search
December 11, 2019
Google says it’s implementing AI and machine learning techniques to improve story suggestions in Google Search. In a blog post this morning, the tech giant announced that users in the U.S. in English (with more languages and locations to come in the next few months) who…
AI Index 2019 assesses global AI research, investment, and impact
December 11, 2019
Leaders in the AI community came together to release the 2019 AI Index report today, an annual attempt to examine the biggest trends shaping the AI industry, breakthrough research, and AI’s impact to society.
It also examine trends like AI hiring practices, private investment, AI research contributions by nation, researchers leaving academia for industry, and how much AI plays a role in specific…
LeanDNA raises $15 million for AI factory inventory and delivery management software
December 11, 2019
Factories regularly face inventory shortages and missed deliveries, but they’re wounds of a self-inflicted nature. Just ask Richard Lebovitz, the founder of LeanDNA, who previously founded Factory Logic, which was acquired by SAP for an undisclosed amount. He’s the…
ELLIS launches $220 million initiative to keep AI talent in Europe
December 11, 2019
The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) today announced the selection of 17 cities in 10 European countries and Israel where it’s establishing project that it hope grows into AI research institutes keen on societal impact.
Each selected site…
Gosu.ai’s raises $2.8 million for AI-based coaching for gamers in League of Legends
December 10, 2019
Gosu.ai, the AI-driven video game coach, has raised $2.8 million for its AI-based video coach that helps players get better at playing League of Legends.
The news comes after the company last week unveiled its plans for a desktop voice assistant that proactively offers strategy, tactics, and feedback to gamers as they play League of Legends.
Gosu.ai’s virtual assistant uses machine learning to…
