World first as Microsofts speech recognition software becomes as accurate as humans
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF After almost forty years of research speech recognition systems are now as good as humans. Microsoft have announced that they have made a major breakthrough in speech recognition and created a technology that, finally, recognises the words in conversational speech as well as humans do –...
Apples CEO Tim Cook speaks out the future of AI
Apples latest announcements on its plans for AI are, well, boring Pixar founder George Lucas might have given the world the word “Droid” before he sold the company to Apple’s Steve Jobs but now Apple CEO Tim Cook is making no secret of the fact that he wants the company to play...
Google’s DeepMind team have created a human like memory for their AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Memory fills the gaps in information that even todays best AI algorithms can’t. Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab does more than just develop computer programs capable of beating the world’s best human players in the ancient game of Go. The DeepMind unit has also been working...
US Presidential report on AI tries to prepare society for what’s coming
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF US Government report lays out guidance for AI use and regulation and puts regulating super AI’s in the too hard bucket. Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and development is starting to reach critical mass and new breakthroughs are being announced almost every day. Now a new report from...
Techs biggest names are working together to regulate AI research
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI, the Genie we’ve let out of the bottle is on the cusp of improving at an exponential rate and we need to talk about the potential consequences. Artificial intelligence is hitting its stride, already giving us machines that can drive themselves, talk to...
Sit down, the creative machines are innovating chairs
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Machines might not have a consciousness, per se, but they’re becoming increasingly “innovative and creative” Innovation is an algorithm… Earlier this year I wrote a post discussing how we were beginning to see the emergence of the first signs of creative machines – and...
Google and UK NHS team up to use AI to improve cancer treatment
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Machine learning could cut the time it takes to plan a patient’s radiotherapy treatment by hours. Working out how to zap a tumour with radiation is a laborious process for physicians and Google’s machine learning division, DeepMind, thinks AI can help ease the burden. When...
Microsoft wants to democratise Artificial Intelligence
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Microsoft wants to to give everyone access to artificial intelligence and a supercomputer. Earlier this year, Google’s DeepMind artificial brain conquered a world class champion at the game of Go — a feat that even amazed Elon Musk. But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is less impressed, at...
Machine learning boosts Google’s translation capabilities to near human levels
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The technology behind Google’s AlphaGo is about to give Google Translate a major upgrade and it’s within a whisker of being as good at it as humans are. Last year, a computer system built by a team of Google engineers beat one of the world’s...
Researchers have created synthetic artificial skin
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF New artificial skin can transmit different amounts of pressure, just like real skin. Many of us take our sense of touch for granted, perhaps because we can never turn it off, but it’s surprisingly complex. An intricate network of nerves brings different types of...
Google’s new AI image recognition software still has a Cock of the Rock problem
Google’s machine learning based image software has come a long way but nature still has it baffled Google has just released the latest version of its open source image recognition software based on machine learning algorithms that the company first started developing back in 2014 and it’s now 93.9 percent accurate. this...
DeepMinds AI based WaveNet tech makes computers sound human
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Allowing people to converse with machines is a long standing dream of human computer interaction, now it’s a lot closer. Is that the President of the United States you’re talking to!? No, it’s WaveNet. Computer systems that sound like the real deal are edging...
Rule the world and destroy humanity? The AI says “Meh”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s might destroy other AI’s but at least humanity is safe…? The chief scientist leading Facebook’s research into Artificial Intelligence (AI) doesn’t believe the technology is a threat to human existence – unless we are very stupid. So there’s still a chance then… ...
OpenAI trains its bots to speak using Reddit
The best way apparently to train one of the world’s best AI’s is to point it at two billion posts about cats Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company OpenAI just received a package that took $2 billion to develop when Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang delivered the first DGX-1 supercomputer to the non-profit organisation,...
Your new kindergarten teacher is a small, green dinosaur
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Can AI help children learn better? Perhaps… What is green, very small, sounds like Yoda and boasts almost endless wisdom? The answer is Elemental Path’s CogniToys small talking and listening dinosaur that taps into IBM Watsons powerful AI and Cognitive Computing smarts to help children learn – or that,...
Facebooks AI’s are building more AI’s
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Facebook have kick started a trend of AI’s building more AI’s and it’s only going to accelerate. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are taking over the internet. DNNs, unlike their more basic pattern matching Machine Learning cousins are able to learn and replicate human like tasks by...
Samsung uses IBM’s brain chip to build a digital eye
IBM’s TrueNorth, a cognitive “neuromorphic” computing chip whose architecture resembles that of the human brain – although it switches neurons for transistors, is being trialled by Samsung to improve the Dynamic Vision Sensors (DVS) in their next generation gadgets, essentially helping them to build the equivalent of a digital eye that is far...
Guardian angel AUDREY keeps firefighters safe
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Our first responders put their lives on the line for us every day, now they have a new guardian angel AI. Todays firefighters only have their wits and five senses to rely on inside a burning building but research developed in part by NASA’s Jet Propulsion...
How Artificial Intelligence will shape the future of management
The field of artificial intelligence has been static for quite a while; AI funding started plunging in the late seventies after the US government became frustrated with the slow progress on efforts such as automated robots. The market finally collapsed in the mid-eighties, when personal computers from IBM and Apple...
DeepMind AI reduces Googles data centre cooling bills by 40%
The amount of energy consumed by the world’s largest hyper scale data centers has always posed the technology companies that run them with a conundrum. On the one hand the companies need more compute power to continue supporting their growing empires and on the other hand more servers and more...
