AI & Robotics

Object recognition models have improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade, but they’ve got a long way to go where accuracy is concerned. That’s the conclusion of a joint team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and IBM, which recently released a data set — ObjectNet — designed to illustrate the performance gap between machine learning algorithms and humans. Unlike many…

An update on its way to Lenovo Smart Clock will add a Google Assistant option that can switch up the alarm ringtone based on factors such as the time of day and the weather. In fact, Google’s AI can create and curate the piano ringtones for you. Machine learning tech from the Magenta project powers the feature, which is called Impromptu. Google gave an example of a somewhat upbeat tune you…

Countless tech platforms are setting out to help call centers automate conversations with their customers. But U.S-Indian startup and Y Combinator alum Observe.ai is bucking that trend by using AI to help improve human call center workers, rather than replace them — and it today announced it has raised $26 million in a series A round of funding to help with its mission. Founded in 2017…

What do Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana have in common? They tell jokes of varying cleverness, most of which are the work of writing teams operating behind the scenes. They’re entertaining, but preliminary research suggests they also play a part in making interactions with assistants engaging. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. In pursuit of assistants capable of…