Altoida raises $6.3 million in series A funding round to further AI-enabled healthcare goals

Georgia-based healthcare firm Altoida Inc has raised $6.3 million (£5m) in a series A funding round conducted by German pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA-owned capital venture firm M Ventures, with participation from Grey Sky Venture Partners, VI Partners AG, Alpana Ventures, and FYRFLY Venture Partners.

Altoida, which is led by a team of esteemed neuroscientists, physicians and computer scientists, utilises digital biomarkers to drive better clinical outcomes for brain disease....

24 June 2019 | Funding

Google discusses new reinforcement learning model in new “off-policy classification” paper

A team of AI researchers at Google has recently published a paper titled “Off-Policy Evaluation via Off-Policy Classification” on its blog. The paper talks about “off-policy classification” or OPC -- as the researchers call it -- which assesses the performance of AI-driven agents by treating evaluation as a classification problem.

The team says that their approach, which involves a variant of reinforcement learning that uses rewards to drive software policies toward goals,...

21 June 2019 | Google

Volvo picks up Nvidia to assist with AI for self-driving vehicles

Volvo and Nvidia have formed a partnership that will see the pair collaborate on AI technology for self-driving vehicles.

Speaking to investors and media at Volvo’s annual event for the capital-markets community, Volvo Group CEO Martin Lundstedt said:

“Partnership is the new leadership. If we are to succeed in the future with speed, quality, and safety – and to gain benefits of autonomous driving – we need to partner up with the best guys. In this world of...

18 June 2019 | Connected Cars

Accenture: How automation, augmentation and innovation will mean success in AI initiatives

According to a report from Accenture, artificial intelligence is forecast to double economic growth by 2035. The opportunity is a big one; the chance to transform business, as well as society in general, is there – but overcoming ethical and technological roadblocks needs to occur before progress is truly made.

Cyrille Bataller (left), managing director of emerging technology innovation at Accenture, has been involved with artificial intelligence in some capacity for the...

18 June 2019 | Enterprise

Adobe has trained an AI to detect photoshopped images

Adobe has trained an AI to detect when images have been photoshopped which could help in the fight against deepfakes.

The software giant partnered with researchers from the University of California on the AI. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained to spot changes made to images using Photoshop’s Face-Aware Liquify feature.

Face-Aware Liquify is a feature designed to adjust and exaggerate facial features. Photoshop automatically detects facial features to...

17 June 2019 | Deepfakes

Spy connected with targets on LinkedIn using AI-generated pic

A spy used a profile pic generated by AI to connect with targets on LinkedIn, further showing how blurred the lines between real and fake are becoming.

Katie Jones was supposed to be a thirty-something redhead who worked at a leading think tank and had serious connections.

Connections included people with political weight like a deputy assistant secretary of state, to groups ranging from the centrist Brookings Institution to the right-wing Heritage Foundation. It’s the...

14 June 2019 | Society

San Francisco hopes AI will prevent bias in prosecutions

San Francisco will soon implement AI in a bid to prevent bias when prosecuting a potential criminal.

Even subconscious human biases can impact courtroom decisions. Racial bias in the legal system is particularly well-documented (PDF) and often leads to individuals with darker skin being prosecuted more, or with tougher sentencing, than people with lighter skin tones accused of similar crimes.

Speaking during a press briefing today, SF District Attorney George Gascón...

13 June 2019 | Law Enforcement

Zuckerberg is deepfaked a month after Facebook refused to remove others

A deepfake of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is making the rounds a month after his company refused to remove similar videos.

Last month, Facebook refused to remove a deepfake video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Rather than making Pelosi appear to say things she never did, the video aimed to portray her as being intoxicated.

Deepfakes have the potential to spread misinformation and damage the reputation of individuals. Particularly in the world of politics and...

12 June 2019 | Society

Research: AI is a ‘welcome boost’ that could add millions to GDP

New research from McKinsey and Quantumblack suggests UK businesses adopting AI could see their value increase by 120 percent within a decade.

AI overall could provide a 22 percent GDP boost worth millions to the UK economy, according to the research.

However, the report warns that firms which do not integrate AI into their day-to-day business risk around 20 percent of their cash flow today.

In separate research last year, McKinsey wrote:

“By 2030,...

11 June 2019 | Europe

Apple reportedly wants to ‘acqui-hire’ self-driving car startup Drive.ai

Apple is reportedly mulling a purchase of self-driving car startup Drive.ai in an ‘acqui-hire’ deal to grab its talent.

Drive.ai is full of skilled personnel after being founded in 2016 by a pioneering team of graduates from Stanford’s AI lab. With AI talent in short supply, it seems Apple is considering purchasing a whole company to get the skills on its side.

Apple would not get any of Drive.ai’s intellectual property as part of the deal, only the minds behind...

10 June 2019 | Apple