AI & Robotics

The global pandemic put a sharp brake on venture capital deals for AI startups in Q1 2020, as investors fled early-stage deals and doubled down on the very largest private companies. According to a new report by CB Insights, AI startups globally raised $8.4 billion in the first three months of 2020, up from $5.58 billion in the previous quarter and roughly flat compared to Q2 and Q3 2019. However…

During the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020 this week, which as a result of the pandemic took place virtually, Turing Award winner and director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms Yoshua Bengio provided a glimpse into the future of AI and machine learning techniques. He spoke in February at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2020 in New…

Google’s second-generation Pixel Buds go on sale today in the U.S. for $179. Second-generation Pixel Buds were announced by the Made by Google team last fall and come with improvements in sound quality, hands-free access to Google Assistant, and touchpad gestures for playback and call control. The earbuds promise 5 hours of listening time and up to 24 hours of total battery use, and they…

There seems to be a tendency to hastily use imperfect and questionable data to train an AI solution for COVID-19, a dangerous trend that not only does not help any patient or physician but also damages the reputation of the AI community. Dealing with a pandemic — as significant as it is — does not suspend basic scientific principles. Data has to be curated by medical experts, full and rigorous…