Watch your mouth, Google’s DeepMind lip reads better than humans
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Machines and computer systems that can lip read accurately will help enhance the lives of people living with hearing impairments, but it will also help organisations and “institutions” invade people’s privacy and listen in on otherwise private conversations. Even professional lip readers can figure...
Facebooks new app gives your smartphone AI super powers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Pushing artificial intelligence to the edge of the network – to the device, and untethering it from the datacenter, will help make devices smarter and revolutionise the software that runs on them, making it exponentially more powerful and capable In a speech today at...
Elon Musk says advanced AIs will take down the internet
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As artificial intelligence improves in capability it is inevitable that it will eventually be weaponised, humans need to be aware of the risks and we must work together to mitigate them. The internet is about to become a vicious, chaotic battlefield, and Elon Musk...
Silicon Valley and TNC use AI to monitor every catch in the Pacific
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Wanted: A machine that can tell the difference between Tuna and Turtles Conservationists are increasingly turning to technology to help them protect Earth’s valuable bounty of plants, animals and resources – whether it’s robot deer to catch poachers in the northern states, or Tuna...
Google AIs learnt how to encrypt their communications to stop people spying on them
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence is being embedded into every device and service, AIs that can dynamically encrypt their own communications could help to increase the security of those services exponentially. If you were worried about the news that AIs are already building other AIs then the...
World first as AI “Judge” succesfully predicts the outcomes of 79% of cases in the European Court
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence has a problem with nuance but that didn’t stop it from correctly predicting the outcome of most of the cases. An artificial intelligence system has correctly predicted the outcomes of hundreds of cases heard at the European Court of Human Rights, researchers...
Stephen Hawking says creating AI is the biggest event of our civilisation
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence can do great good, or great evil. Speaking at the launch of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), a new artificial intelligence (AI) think tank based in Cambridge, that aims to help shape how AI is developed, used and...
Pittsburgs AI traffic lights help commuters get there faster
In Pittsburg even the traffic lights are intelligent Idling in rushhour traffic can be mind-numbing. It also carries other costs. Traffic congestion costs the US economy $121 billion a year, mostly due to lost productivity, and produces about 25 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions, Carnegie Mellon University professor of...
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...
