Emerging technology fields need industrywide metrics to measure progress. So a pun-loving chatbot startup called Pandorabots decided to put on a flashy Bot Battle. The Bot Battle consisted of two virtual beings chatting 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two weeks (unlike humans, AIs never tire). Viewers were invited to vote on the better chatbot.
The first contestant, “Mark Zuckerb0rg,” is…
AI Weekly: Tech, power, and building the Biden administration
November 26, 2020
After the defeat of Donald Trump, there was little time between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ celebratory speeches and the start of conversations about transition team members and key administration appointments.
Some of the first names to emerge include people with tech…
Many real-world problems require complex coordination between multiple agents — e.g., people or algorithms. A machine learning technique called multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has shown success with respect to this, mainly in two-team games like Go, DOTA 2…
As the pandemic wears on, humanoid robots that can perform general tasks could become increasingly important. They can move heavy objects in warehouses, assist with last-yard deliveries, and potentially be involved in other tasks where low human-to-human contact is preferable for safety reasons.
Agility Robotics is one of the companies making these helper robots. The company, which was spun out of…
Why AI can’t move forward without diversity, equity, and inclusion
November 26, 2020
The need to pursue racial justice is more urgent than ever, especially in the technology industry. The far-reaching scope and power of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) means that any gender and racial bias at the source is multiplied to the nth power in…
Google’s AI lets users search language-agnostic knowledge bases in their native tongue
November 26, 2020
Entity linking fulfills a key role in grounded language understanding. Given a text mention of an entity (e.g., the word “helpful”), an algorithm identifies the entity’s corresponding entry in a knowledge base (such as a Wikipedia article). To extend its usefulness…
How Google built its AI-powered Hum to Search feature
November 26, 2020
In October, Google announced it would let users search for songs by simply humming or whistling melodies, initially in English on iOS and in more than 20 languages on Android. At the time, the search giant only hinted at how the new Hum to Search feature worked. But in a blog post today, Google detailed the underlying systems that enable Google Search to find songs using only hummed…
Researchers claim AI algorithm uses heart rate and motion data to predict age, sex, and more
November 26, 2020
How much information about a person’s behavior can you ascertain from a wearable device? Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Alan Turing Institute sought to investigate this in a study involving over 280,000 hours of wrist accelerometer and wearable…
Escooter startup Voi uses AI to detect pedestrians and sidewalks
November 26, 2020
European electric scooter startup Voi is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to enable its vehicles to detect pedestrians and sidewalks, a move designed to ingratiate itself to municipalities worried about chaotic micromobility schemes.
Escooter (and ebike) sales have…
Researchers at Google claim to have developed a machine learning model that can separate a sound source from noisy, single-channel audio based on only a short sample of the target source. In a paper, they say their SoundFilter system can be tuned to filter arbitrary sound sources, even those it hasn’t seen during training.
The researchers believe a noise-eliminating system like SoundFilter could…
