Microsoft warns its AI offerings ‘may result in reputational harm’

Microsoft has warned investors that its AI offerings could damage the company’s reputation in a bid to prepare them for the worst.

AI can be unpredictable, and Microsoft already has experience. Back in 2016, a Microsoft chatbot named Tay became a racist, sexist, generally-rather-unsavoury character after internet users took advantage of its machine learning capabilities

The chatbot was covered in media around the world and itself was bound to have caused Microsoft some...

6 February 2019 | Ethics

DeepMind’s AI bested in Atari game Montezuma’s Revenge

DeepMind’s AI has been setting records and beating humans in complex games for some time now, but it’s met its match in Montezuma’s Revenge.

Back in 2015, DeepMind attempted to play various Atari games. The AI was competent in most of the games and became as good at Video Pinball as a human player.

DeepMind notoriously struggled with Montezuma’s Revenge, a notoriously complex game from the 1980s. The AI was unable to learn a path and retrieve even the first...

1 February 2019 | Gaming

UN: China and the US are leading the way in AI race

A report from the United Nations highlights a dominance by China and the United States in the race to artificial intelligence supremacy.

The study, by the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), was published on Thursday.

US tech giant IBM is leading in AI patents with 8,920 filed. Microsoft followed with 5,930.

Japan’s Toshiba has the next highest number of patents (5,223), ahead of South Korea’s Samsung (5,102), and Japan’s NEC Group...

31 January 2019 | Government

Microsoft and MIT develop AI to fix driverless car ‘blind spots’

Microsoft and MIT have partnered on a project to fix so-called virtual ‘blind spots’ which lead driverless cars to make errors.

Roads, especially while shared with human drivers, are unpredictable places. Training a self-driving car for every possible situation is a monumental task.

The AI developed by Microsoft and MIT compares the action taken by humans in a given scenario to what the driverless car’s own AI would do. Where the human decision is more optimal, the...

28 January 2019 | Connected Cars

Joy Buolamwini: Fighting algorithmic bias needs to be ‘a priority’

Algorithmic Justice League founder Joy Buolamwini gave a speech during the World Economic Forum this week on the need to fight AI bias.

Buolamwini is also an MIT Media Lab researcher and went somewhat viral for her TED Talk in 2016 titled ‘How I’m fighting bias in algorithms’.

Her latest speech included a presentation in which Buolamwini went over an analysis of the current popular facial recognition algorithms.

Here were the overall accuracy results when...

24 January 2019 | Ethics

Facebook pumps $7.5m into an independent AI ethics centre

An independent AI ethics research centre is set to receive $7.5 million of funding courtesy of the folks at Facebook.

The new research centre is called the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence and was created in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Facebook, like many companies, is fighting outside concerns about the development of AI and its potential societal impact. The centre should help to ensure Facebook keeps up with ethical best...

21 January 2019 | Ethics

Speech and facial recognition combine to boost AI emotion detection

Researchers have combined speech and facial recognition data to improve the emotion detection abilities of AIs.

The ability to recognise emotions is a longstanding goal of AI researchers. Accurate recognition enables things such as detecting tiredness at the wheel, anger which could lead to a crime being committed, or perhaps even signs of sadness/depression at suicide hotspots.

Nuances in how people speak and move their facial muscles to express moods have presented a...

17 January 2019 | Face Recognition

Report: The public is unconvinced AI will benefit humanity

Decades of sci-fi flicks have instilled a fear of AI in some people – with a new report suggesting many remain unconvinced it will benefit humanity.

The report, from the Center for the Governance of AI based at Oxford University, reveals concerns artificial intelligence may harm or endanger humankind. 2,000 US adults were surveyed in 2018 for their views.

Baobao Zhang and Allan Dafoe, authors of the report, wrote in its summary:

“Public sentiments have...

10 January 2019 | Ethics

Capgemini: AI is a $340 billion opportunity for the retail sector

French digital consultation firm Capgemini predicts AI offers a yet untapped $340 billion opportunity for the retail sector.

Retail is a major focus of AI but there’s debate over whether it will have a positive or negative on society, especially with regards to jobs. Some believe AI will assist existing jobs while others take a view it will replace workers.

Capgemini found just one percent of retailers have achieved the level of AI deployment needed to reach its full...

2 January 2019 | Research

AI is at risk of bias due to serious gender gap problem

AI needs to be created by a diverse range of developers to prevent bias, but the World Economic Forum (WEF) has found a serious gender gap. Gender gaps in STEM careers have been a problem for some time, but it’s not often the end product matters what gender it was developed by. AI is about to be everywhere, and it matters that it’s representative of those it serves. In a report published this week, the WEF wrote:

“The equal contribution of women and men in...

18 December 2018 | Ethics