If you’re going to throw megabucks at a show about AI, you’d better make sure you’ve got the right host for it — and most would agree that YouTube’s decision to get Robert Downey Jr, aka Iron Man, on board for their multimillion dollar The Age of AI endeavor was a pretty good shout. Announced last year, the eight-part show lands on YouTube on December 18th. Episodes…
Google Assistant's interpreter mode is coming to iOS and Android
December 12, 2019
Early this year, Google brought its real-time translation feature, interpreter mode, to Assistant-enabled smart displays and speakers. Now, the feature is rolling out to Assistant-enabled Android and iOS phones worldwide.
To use interpreter mode, you’ll say something…
Google Assistant can now interpret 44 languages on smartphones
December 12, 2019
In January during the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Google debuted interpreter mode, a real-time translation feature for Google Home speakers and third-party smart displays like those from JBL, Sony, LG, and Lenovo. The tech giant said at the time that…
Can mechanical abnormalities in a combustion engine, a fan, or a pneumatic press be inferred from the sound they produce alone? As it turns out, yes — and with great precision. Patterns embedded within the noise communicate valuable information, some of which foretell trouble.
Inspired by this idea, software developer Gal Shaul and analog signal processing engineer Saar Yoskovitz cofounded…
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…
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 service. But because most of the models share the same synthesis approaches in common — this is, they generate a…
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…
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 search for a news topic will now see an article carousel at the top of the results page. When there are multiple stories…
