Futurist keynote, Vienna: The Future of FMCG and Innovation, Henkel Innovation Summit
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In the next decade the world of FMCG will be irrevocably altered by the new technologies and autonomous retailers who design, manufacture and deliver goods autonomously, at speed, and on demand. This Monday I was supposed to be delivering a keynote in Vienna, Austria,...
MIT researchers read a neural networks mind to boost its performance
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Neural networks are incredibly powerful and increasingly capable but they’re a black box, now a team from MIT has figured out a way to read their minds. Neural networks, which learn to perform computational tasks by analysing huge sets of training data, have been...
DeepMind’s self-learning AI took four hours to learn and master chess
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Generalised AI’s that can learn and master complex subjects within hours will have wide ranging benefits for industry and society alike. As most people will happily tell you Chess isn’t an easy game, at least by human standards, but for an Artificial Intelligence (AI)...
Google’s AI is helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the human genome
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF With the advent of personalised medicine and new revolutionary gene treatments, being able to interpret and make sense of the vast volumes of human genomic data in order to better predict disease indicators and outcomes, and provide patients with better treatments, will become increasingly crucial....
DeepMind unveils the world’s first test to assess dangerous AI’s and algorithms
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI is being strapped into everything from self-driving cars and autonomous weapons systems and until now we had no way to assess how dangerous, or how much of a threat, those AI’s could become. Earlier this year a group of world experts convened to...
IBM’s AI learns how to predict the outcomes of chemical reactions
WHY THIS MATTERS BRIEF Chemistry is the basis and foundation of everything on Earth and being able to predict the outcomes of new chemical reactions will help industries create new compounds and new materials faster than ever before. By thinking of atoms as letters and molecules as words an...
DeepMind’s newest AI learns by itself and creates its own knowledge
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An AI that can learn by itself, with no human interaction, and that can “create its own knowledge” could give us a new perspective on issues affecting the world, and transform industry, innovation and society. A couple of month’s ago Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI)...
MIT’s new AI is helping scientists design new, futuristic materials
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Materials are a fundamental building block of everything in existence today, whether it’s cells, our power plants or our smartphones and devices, now researchers have built an AI to help them automate the discovery of new materials and it could revolutionise everything. Over the...
Researchers have developed an AI that can identify masked individuals
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Technology is increasingly helping governments and multi-nationals strip away our anonymity and privacy, and the pros and cons depend on which side of the fence you sit, but one thing is certain, in the future there will be no such thing as privacy – online...
Researchers have found a way to successfully debug neural networks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A bug in your self-driving car’s AI software caused it to drive you off a cliff and you’re dead, you’re probably now wishing that it’d been debugged – and now it can be. If you listen to the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley then...
Nvidia’s newest AI is creating scarily realistic photos of fake celebrities
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial Intelligence is getting more creative and better at creating realistic images and photos that fool even the most cynical experts, and it will bring about a new era in content creation. One of the more unexpected outcomes of today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution...
Tech giants team up to create the world’s first Deep Learning standard
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many of today’s technology companies are creating proprietary AI’s that can’t interoperate with each other but a new framework from Facebook and Microsoft is setting out to change that. As Artificial Intelligence (AI), and in this case more specifically Machine Learning becomes more pervasive...
Microsoft unveils it’s new real time AI engine
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s that can analyse data in real time will become increasingly important as we come to rely on them more and more to help us make, and automate, decisions It’s probably fair to say that in many cases, whether it’s the new breed of...
The sixth Game of Thrones book is being written by an AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Learning how to write novels is difficult enough for a human, but now some AI’s are trying tackle the task. Alas for all of those among you who love fire breathing Dragons, that aren’t the Mother-in-Law kind, and weird zombie ice creatures, the seventh...
AI is helping create realistic “Fake news!” videos and it’s going to be a problem
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability of “unethical actors” to create realistic looking video and audio of famous people to generate “Fake news!” is accelerating exponentially and politicians are already way behind the curve. Over the past couple of years, even before “Fake news!” became the monster topic...
Amazon is building a creative AI that can design clothes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Most experts think that we are decades away from creating machines that are capable of “creation” and “innovation” but they’re arriving now and many companies around the world could suddenly find themselves being out innovated at an inconceivable pace. Over the past couple of...
Brace yourselves AI is about to make the “Fake News!” problem a whole lot worse
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are approaching a dangerous threshold where one day, in the next few years, you won’t be able to trust what you see, or easily distinguish fake news from real news, and it could have big consequences on democracy and society. Over the past...
New all seeing cameras will revolutionise computer vision as we know it
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagine a camera that can see and analyse every part of the visible and non-visible spectrum at the same time, now imagine it’s in a search and rescue drone, or a hunter killer robot… Hey, I know you like hearing about the grand things that...
New shark spotter algorithm saves lives, and sharks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sharks get a bad rap and it’s in part because they eat people, not many and it’s statistically insignificant, but nevertheless people don’t like being eaten, now though an AI might finally put a stop to them snacking between meals Artificial Intelligence (AI) and...
Google DeepMind has given its AI the ability to imagine and ultimately innovate
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagination is thought to be a uniquely human trait, but now that AI’s are being taught how to imagine not only will it make them better at understanding the consequences of their actions but it could make them better innovators too. Researchers at Google’s...
