The number of people of all ages who are visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million globally, of whom 39 million are blind. In an effort to provide assistance where it can, Microsoft in 2016 launched Project Tokyo, a partnership among researchers in the U.S., U.K., China, Japan, and India to explore technologies that might help those with impairments interact with the world around them. Four…
VentureBeat’s Tech Showcase is back at Transform 2020: Accelerating your business with AI, July 15-16 in San Francisco. We’re on the lookout for disruptive AI companies of all sizes that are ready to present their tech on the main stage.
Those selected to present will do…
Meena is Google’s attempt at making true conversational AI
January 29, 2020
Conversational AI is a catch-all term for natural language models for artificial intelligence that can interpret human words, speak to people, or carry out tasks or computation with natural language.
But talk to any of the best-known AI assistants today — Alexa, Siri…
AI Weekly: Calls for facial recognition moratorium highlight need for protection from surveillance tech
January 29, 2020
The debate over whether to ban or place moratoriums on the use of facial recognition started last year in cities like San Francisco, but the debate reignited this week when Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he’s open to a moratorium on facial recognition.
“It [facial recognition regulation] can be immediate, but maybe there’s a waiting period before we really think about how it’s…
ProBeat: Why Google is really calling for AI regulation
January 24, 2020
On Sunday, the Financial Times published an op-ed penned by Sundar Pichai titled “Why Google thinks we need to regulate AI.” Whether he wrote it himself or merely signed off on it, Pichai clearly wants the world to know that as the CEO of Alphabet and Google, he believes…
Amazon’s AI automatically dubs videos into other languages
January 24, 2020
Ever wish you could automatically dub foreign film dialogue into another tongue? Amazon’s on the case. In a paper published this week on the preprint server Arxiv.org, researchers from the tech giant detailed a novel “speech-to-speech” pipeline that taps AI to align…
While most of the world focuses on deploying and improving the performance of early 5G networks, small groups of telecom engineers are working to establish what 6G networks will bring a decade from now. As one of the earliest cellular pioneers, Japanese carrier NTT Docomo today weighed in with predictions on what 6G will look like in 2030, and they’re intriguing: 6G will bring AI everywhere…
Boston Dynamics gives its robot dog a developer SDK
January 24, 2020
Now that Spot is more clever and polite, Boston Dynamics is ready to set it free. The Softbank-owned robotics company announced that it’s making Spot’s SDK available to anyone who wants it via GitHub, starting today. The release will allow developers and…
AISense raises $10 million for AI transcription tool Otter
January 24, 2020
There’s plenty in the way of competition with respect to the audio transcription market, which is estimated to be worth $31.82 billion by 2025. But AISense — the startup behind speech-to-text service Otter — managed to carve out a niche for itself in the four years…
Intel CEO: We’re confident in the future, we generated $3.8 billion in AI revenue in 2019
January 24, 2020
Intel reported strong fourth-quarter earnings and revenues that beat Wall Street’s expectations today. And Bob Swan, CEO of the biggest maker of PC and datacenter processors, said in an analyst call today that the company had gained market share and was confident in its future.
In 2019, Swan said Intel generated $3.8B in AI-based revenue. The AI market opportunity is expected to be $25 billion…
