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

DeepMind thrashed pro StarCraft 2 players in latest demo

DeepMind’s AI demonstrated last night how its prowess in StarCraft 2 battles against professional human players has grown in recent months.

The live stream of the showdowns was viewed by more than 55,000 people.

“This is, of course, an exciting moment for us,” said David Silver, a researcher at DeepMind. “For the first time, we saw an AI that was able to defeat a professional player.”

DeepMind created five versions of their ‘AlphaStar’ AI. Each AI...

25 January 2019 | Gaming

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

Why Microsoft leads the AI patent race going into 2019

There have been over 154,000 AI patents filed worldwide since 2010 with the majority being in health fields (29.5%), Industry-specific solutions (25.3%) and AI-based digital security (15.7%). AI-based marketing patents are the fasting growing global category, reaching a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.3% between 2010 and 2018. The second- and third-fastest growing global AI patent categories between 2010 and 2018 are AI-based digital security (23.4% CAGR) and AI-based mobility (23%...

24 January 2019 | Cloud

AI is sentencing people based on their ‘risk’ assessment

AI-powered tools for determining the risk of an individual are being used to make incarceration and sentencing decisions.

During the Data for Black Lives conference last weekend, several experts shared how AI is evolving America’s controversial prison system.

America imprisons more people than any other nation. It’s not just a result of the population of the country, the incarceration per head is the highest in the world at ~716 per 100,000 of the national...

22 January 2019 | Law Enforcement

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

Amazon doubles-down on AI with public re:MARS conference

Amazon has announced it will be holding an AI conference later this year called ‘re:MARS’ which is open for the public to attend.

The AI-focused conference will feature speakers, workshops, demonstrations, and roundtables.

Amazon has been holding a similar conference simply called MARS (Machine learning, Automation, Robotics, and Space) for the past three years. That event, however, was invite-only.

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon,...

18 January 2019 | Amazon

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

Trump speech ‘DeepFake’ shows a present AI threat

A so-called ‘DeepFake’ video of a Trump speech was broadcast on a Fox-owned Seattle TV network, showing a very present AI threat.

The station, Q13, broadcasted a doctored Trump speech in which he somehow appeared even more orange and pulled amusing faces.

You can see a side-by-side comparison with the original below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZLs11uSg-A&feature=youtu.be

Following the broadcast, a Q13 employee was sacked. It’s unclear if...

14 January 2019 | Deep Learning

Most-funded AI startup SenseTime wants another $2bn

Not content with being the world’s most-funded AI startup, Chinese facial recognition darling SenseTime is preparing a $2 billion financing round.

SenseTime raised more than $1.2 billion last year; including a round announced in May that valued it at more than $4.5 billion.

According to Bloomberg sources, the company is aiming for $2 billion more funding but the information is private. The sources claim investor Alibaba is working on the...

11 January 2019 | China