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…
Systems that monitor vital signs are critically important in any health system with seriously ill patients; it’s estimated that about 53% of U.S. hospitals have computerized remote patient monitoring systems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the remote patient monitoring market is…
Keeping abreast of shopping trends online is straightforward enough — whole categories of startups achieve this with predictive modeling. But what about when that shopping takes place in-store? Tracking the behaviors of mall, outlet, and department store shoppers is of…
Amazon researchers use AI to improve Alexa’s joke selection
December 9, 2019
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…
Medical imaging is among the most popular application of AI and machine learning, and with good reason. Computer vision algorithms are naturally adept at spotting anomalies experts sometimes miss, in the process reducing wait times and lightening clinical workloads. Perhaps…
This week marks the kickoff of Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), one of the largest AI and machine learning conferences globally. NeurIPS 2017 and NeuIPS 2018 received 3,240 and 4,854 research paper submissions, respectively, and this year’s event — which…
Nvidia trains AI to transform 2D images into 3D models
December 9, 2019
Nvidia Research created an AI system that can predict 3D properties of 2D images without any 3D training data. The work will be presented at the annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, where researchers in academia and industry share the latest in cutting-edge machine learning. Now in its 33rd year, the conference formerly known as NIPS will take place this week in Vancouver…
AI Weekly: Amazon plays the long game in health care AI
December 6, 2019
Today concludes Amazon’s re:Invent 2019 conference in Las Vegas, where the Seattle company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) division unveiled enhancements heading down its public cloud pipeline. Just Tuesday, Amazon announced the general availability of AWS Outposts, a fully…
AI-powered Lego sorter knows the shape of every brick
December 6, 2019
For some people, rummaging through a bunch of Lego bricks is part of the fun. But if you’ve got an enormous collection or take on complicated builds, you probably have a system for sorting your pieces. Your solution probably doesn’t involve AI, though. YouTube…
Facebook taught an AI the 'theory of mind'
December 6, 2019
When it comes to competitive games, AI systems have already shown they can easily mop the floor with the best humanity has to offer. But life in the real world isn’t a zero sum game like poker or Starcraft and we need AI to work with us, not against us. That’s why a research team from Facebook taught an AI how to play the cooperative card game Hanabi (the Japanese word for fireworks)…
