Japan will welcome Pope Francis with a song partly composed by AI

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A Japanese artist will use a song partly composed by AI to welcome Pope Francis, who recently shared his concerns about the technology.

The song, “Protect all Life - The Signs of the Times,” is written by Jun Inoue.

Inoue is a Catholic himself and created an AI program which can generate a song in just a few seconds.

“I thought I should give everything I had to the song, so I decided to put in all the cutting-edge technology I had,” Inoue told...

20 November 2019 | Japan

LG ThinQ: Our experience with AI so far and what’s next for the industry

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AI News spoke with LG corporate vice president Samuel Chang about ThinQ, the company’s brand for products and services incorporating AI.

Chang played a major role in this year’s AI & Big Data Expo in Santa Clara last week, taking part in both a solo presentation on “Process Automation from IoT Data” and a panel discussion on “Data and the Customer”.

Following the event, AI News decided to catch up with Chang to discuss LG’s current experience in...

18 November 2019 | Adoption

Gaming legend John Carmack is stepping back at Oculus to focus on AI

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Gaming industry legend John Carmack is stepping back from his role at Oculus to focus on AI development.

Carmack made his name in the video game industry after being responsible for groundbreaking titles such as Wolfenstein, DOOM, and Quake. He took up the role of CTO at Oculus to help bring about the next big thing in gaming, VR.

While not entirely stepping down from Oculus, Carmack is transitioning into a "Consulting CTO" role. This role, he says, will enable him to...

14 November 2019 | AGI

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

Deepfake has Johnson and Corbyn advocating each other for Britain’s next PM

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A think tank has released two deepfake videos which appear to show election rivals Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn advocating each other for Britain’s top role.

The clips are produced by Future Advocacy and intend to show that people can no longer necessarily trust what they see in videos, not just to question what they read and hear.

Here’s the Johnson video:

Boris Johnson has a message for you.#GE2019...

12 November 2019 | Deepfakes

Report: UK leads AI developments in Europe, Iran in Middle-East

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The latest Scimago Institutions Rankings (SIR) indicates the UK is leading AI developments in Europe while Iran is leading in the Middle-East.

SIR has ranked global research and education institutions since 2009. The ranking is based on their performance and the number of articles they’ve published in highly-regarded publications.

In the field of AI, the UK ranks number one in Europe and fourth globally. Iran ranks number one in the Middle-East and is ninth overall...

11 November 2019 | Europe

Nvidia comes out on top in first MLPerf inference benchmarks

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The first benchmark results from the MLPerf consortium have been released and Nvidia is a clear winner for inference performance.

For those unaware, inference takes a deep learning model and processes incoming data however it’s been trained to.

MLPerf is a consortium which aims to provide “fair and useful” standardised benchmarks for inference performance. MLPerf can be thought of as doing for inference what SPEC does for benchmarking CPUs and general system...

7 November 2019 | Benchmark

Applause’s new AI solution helps tackle bias and sources data at scale

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Testing specialists Applause have debuted an AI solution promising to help tackle algorithmic bias while providing the scale of data needed for robust training.

Applause has built a vast global community of testers for its app testing solution which is trusted by brands including Google, Uber, PayPal, and more. The company is leveraging this relatively unique asset to help overcome some of the biggest hurdles facing AI development.

AI News spoke with Kristin Simonini, VP...

6 November 2019 | Applications

Samsung boosts AI and 5G investments to ‘lay the ground’ for innovation

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Samsung has said it will increase its efforts in AI and 5G to drive innovation across the South Korean tech giant’s business.

As the world’s largest smartphone and memory chip manufacturer – along with being a key player in many consumer devices including TVs, washing machines, fridges, and more – Samsung has established itself as a tech leader.

The convergence of powerful emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and the cloud, have the potential to radically...

5 November 2019 | Samsung

ABI Research: USA reclaims the top spot from China for AI investments

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A year after China overtook the USA as the number one country for AI investments, the Americans have reclaimed pole position.

According to figures published by ABI Research, the United States received 52.3 percent of global AI investments in 2018.

In 2018, investments in US-based AI technologies reached a total of $9.7 billion. This represents a staggering 120 percent year-on-year growth.

Huge AI investments from companies such as Zoox, Cruise Automation,...

1 November 2019 | Adoption