Meena is Google’s first truly conversational AI

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Google is attempting to build the first digital assistant that can truly hold a conversation with an AI project called Meena.

Digital assistants like Alexa and Siri are programmed to pick up keywords and provide scripted responses. Google has previously demonstrated its work towards a more natural conversation with its Duplex project but Meena should offer another leap forward.

Meena is a neural network with 2.6 billion parameters. Google claims Meena is able to handle...

29 January 2020 | Google

Google CEO: We need sensible AI regulation that does not limit its potential

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai has called for sensible AI regulation that does not limit the huge potential benefits to society.

Writing in a FT editorial, Pichai said: “...there is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. It is too important not to.”

Few people debate the need for AI regulation but there are differing opinions when it comes to how much. Overregulation limits innovation while lack of regulation can pose serious dangers –...

21 January 2020 | Ethics

Google’s latest AI project may aid wildlife conservation

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Biologists and conservationists across the world have got their hard drives stuffed with millions of camera trap photos and it’s a time consuming process to go through all the images. Google has therefore announced a new program in partnership with several conservation organisations that simplifies the process by making use of artificial intelligence.

With the launch of Wildlife Insights, an online portal with more than 4.5 million photos dating back to 1990, anyone can access...

18 December 2019 | Google

DeepMind co-founder moves to Google to work on AI policy

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DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman has announced he's making the full jump to Google to work on AI policy at the company.

Google acquired DeepMind for $400 million in 2014 and the firm became a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet in 2015.

Suleyman co-founded DeepMind and originally became its chief product officer. After Google's acquisition in 2014, Suleyman became DeepMind’s head of applied AI.

In a tweet, Suleyman announced he's now moving to...

6 December 2019 | DeepMind

Project Nightingale: Google denies using private health data for its AI research

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Google has denied using private health data for its own AI research following The Wall Street Journal’s exposé of Project Nightingale.

Project Nightingale is Google’s codename for its partnership with Ascension, the US’ second-largest health system. The project enables Google to access the health information of around 50 million American patients.

Ascension reportedly did not tell doctors and patients that it was sharing data – including the names, histories,...

13 November 2019 | Ethics

Google Cloud AI Platform updates make it ‘faster and more flexible’

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Google has issued several updates for its Cloud AI Platform which aims to make it ‘faster and more flexible’ for running machine learning workloads.

Cloud AI Platform is Google’s machine learning platform-as-a-service (ML PaaS) designed for AI developers, engineers, and data scientists. The platform is end-to-end and supports the full development cycle from preparing data, to training, all the way to building and deploying machine learning models.

Among the most...

29 October 2019 | Cloud

Report: Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are ‘putting world at risk’ of killer AI

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A survey of major players within the industry concludes that leading tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft are putting the world ‘at risk’ of killer AI.

PAX, a Dutch NGO, ranked 50 firms based on three criteria:

If technology they’re developing could be used for killer AI.Their involvement with military projects.If they’ve committed to not being involved with military applications in the future.

Microsoft and Amazon are named among the world's ‘highest...

22 August 2019 | Amazon

Google Assistant wins IQ test, but Alexa and Siri are catching up

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Google Assistant continues to lead the virtual assistant pack, but its rivals are close behind according to a new IQ study by Loup Ventures.

Loup Ventures asked each of the three main virtual assistants – Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri – a total of 800 questions. The assistants understood almost every question, even if not all of the responses were correct/sufficient.

In terms of understanding the questions, these are the results:

Google Assistant – 100...

19 August 2019 | Amazon

Esteemed consortium launch AI natural language processing benchmark

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A research consortium featuring some of the greatest minds in AI are launching a benchmark to measure natural language processing (NLP) abilities.

The consortium includes Google DeepMind, Facebook AI, New York University, and the University of Washington. Each of the consortium’s members believe a more comprehensive benchmark is needed for NLP than current solutions.

The result is a benchmarking platform called SuperGLUE which replaces an older platform called GLUE...

15 August 2019 | Facebook

Google details Project Euphonia work to improve voice recognition inclusivity

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Google has provided details of its Project Euphonia work designed to improve the inclusivity of voice recognition for people with disabilities that impair their speech.

Degenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are known for causing speech impairments. Today's voice recognition systems often cannot recognise the speech of individuals suffering from such diseases, despite those individuals arguably set to benefit the most from the automation offered by the...

14 August 2019 | Google