Artificial intelligence identifies skin cancer as well as trained doctors
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Every year tens of millions of people around the world are diagnosed with skin cancer, and Stanford’s artificial intelligence app could save tens of thousands of lives. It’s scary enough making a doctor’s appointment to see if a strange mole could be cancerous so...
Descartes Labs new AI visual search tool lets you find everything on Earth
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF People have been using satellites to take photos of the Earth for decades but until now you’ve never been able to search it to find things of interest, or combine it with other data to identify patterns. Recently a company called Planet increased the...
No humans required, the fully autonomous AI running a Wall Street hedge fund
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Companies that use artificial intelligence to augment their human workers is nothing new, but companies that are run by artificial intelligence, without any human input, are. I’ve been documenting the emergence of fully autonomous organisations – organisations that are able to run and scale...
Microsoft’s AI has learnt how to write it’s own code and create its own programs
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An AI that can code and build new computer programs from scratch could change the world, give rise to a whole new generation of entrepreneurs. And put a lot of people out of jobs… For many of us the digital world’s an alien place....
Researchers use artificial intelligence to automatically age faces
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability to age people accurately is one of the cornerstone abilities that can help people find missing persons. People have been fascinated with age ever since, well, perhaps forever, and for many people being able to get a glimpse of how they’ll look...
Google let its AI loose on the internet to slaughter gamers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Compared to the sterile environment of a lab, for an artificial intelligence the internet must seem like a playground. If you ever wondered what would happen if an artificial intelligence (AI) ever got online then you’re about to get your answer thanks to Google...
Hunting terrorists and preventing suicides, inside Zuckerberg’s plan for AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Facebooks human operators can’t police everything on the network fast enough, so Zuckerberg is prioritising artificial intelligence In a letter published earlier this week Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, the company that one day wants to be the world’s largest telepathic network, will be...
Google RAISR sharpens photos and gives you super vision
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sight is one of our most crucial senses, now one technology promises infinite zoom and super crisp images. Let’s face it – the last thing many of us want it to take what we think is a great family photo only to find out...
Google tests AI’s natural killer instincts, discovers society must be very, very careful
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As artificial intelligence is embedded into more of our world’s digital fabric inevitably AI’s will come into conflict with one another, but rules might help us stave off armageddon – or bring it about. If climate change, nuclear weapons or pandemics don’t kill us...
So long Asimov’s Laws, say hello to the 23 Laws of Robotics
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Whether they’re hardware based, or software based, machines are getting increasingly capable, creative, intelligent and resilient – and that has experts worried, so now they’ve created a new set of laws to try to guide the technology’s development and trajectory. Ever since people first...
Liberatus AI whips world’s top poker players to take $1.7m pot
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Poker is unpredictable, and noone predicted an AI would beat four of the world’s top players – not even its creators. An artificial intelligence (AI) called Libratus from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has beaten four of the world’s best poker players in a gruelling...
Robo-lawyers want to automate the entire legal world
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Most lawyers and legal professionals agree that their profession hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years, but now artificial intelligence, and the rise of “robo-lawyers” is beginning to change all that. To many people, lawyers, like doctors, optimise the pinnacle of what it means...
Google’s AI’s are learning how to build new AI’s
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Logically speaking getting AI’s to build AI’s makes sense, but as AI’s continue to proliferate and be woven into the digital fabric of our society it opens up a dangerous pandoras box. As many companies, large and small will tell you, creating a good artificial...
Bach lives again, in AI form
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Trying to emulate human skills and talents isn’t easy – even for humans – but increasingly AI is muscling in on what we once considered to be unique human traits. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing parking its caravan on humanity’s lawn. Traits that we...
Mark Zuckerberg shows off Jarvis, the AI that runs his home
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There’s a good chance that Jarvis, Mark Zuckerberg’s in house digital assistant, is more than just a quirky hobby to pass the time, it could be a beta test for a new Facebook product or feature At the beginning of this year, Facebook CEO...
Intels Nervana chip shows the giant is serious about owning the AI market
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many of the AI breakthroughs over recent years have only been possible because of the exponential increase in the amount of computing power available to support them, now Intel and other chip companies are in an arms race to own the future of AI ...
Walk in. Shop. Walk out. Amazon unveils its new cashless cashierless store
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Most companies understand the concept of the “Frictionless customer experience” but very few of them are any good at it, Amazons latest store demonstrates what you can achieve if you have vision and a willingness to experiment. No cash? No time to wait? No...
Google has taught its DeepMind AI to dream
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Researchers are trying to find new ways to speed up and enhance new AI’s capacity to learn, and just as dreaming plays an important role in human learning Google hopes it will do the same for its AI What happens when you sleep? Sleeping...
MIT researchers have taught their AI to recognise sounds
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Developing AI’s that can recognise and understand raw sound could have implications for autonomous vehicles, elderly care, entertainment, home security and much more In recent years, computers have gotten remarkably good at recognizing speech and images. Think of the dictation software on most smartphones,...
MIT’s latest breakthrough? Getting AIs to explain their decisions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly running more and more of our world, and its digital fabric, but in many cases just how they make their decisions is a “Black Box”, this research aims to develop a new AI architecture that will help AI’s explain their...
