Items tagged with AI
IBM took its most recent AI system, dubbed Project Debater, and entered it into a competition against human debating champions. The event was held at the IBM Watson West site in San Francisco, California. Project Debater started by preparing arguments for and against the following statement: “We should subsidize space exploration.” The IBM AI and its human opponent, Noa Ovadia, each delivered a four-minute opening statement, four-minute rebuttal and a two-minute summary. IBM notes that Project Debater made an opening argument that supported the statement with facts including the benefits...
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Google has been able to train its various DeepMind AIs to do some very cool things. The AlphaZero AI was able to destroy the highly acclaimed Stockfish chess program over a 100-game match, winning 28 of the matches outright and tying the other 72 matches for a no loss record. DeepMind certainly isn’t the only AI that has performed some cool and impressive feats, however. With respect to a pure gaming venue, EA has developed an AI that is able to successfully battle human players in Battlefield 1. And yet another AI, inspired by the human visual cortex, was recently demonstrated as having...
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After months of internal and public testing (via the Windows Insider program), Microsoft released the Windows 10 April 2018 Update on the very last day of April. Microsoft rolled the update out in phases to help minimize install failures and hardware incompatibilities (which did tend to pop up on occasion). Today, Microsoft announced that the April 2018 Update is now available for all Windows 10 PCs. The company says that it was able to achieve broad availability in a relatively short period of time thanks in part to machine learning. "Our AI approach intelligently selects...
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MIT has created a new AI that we sincerely hope never escapes into the wild because this IS how you get Skynet. This AI is called Norman and it is a psychopath. How did Norman turn into a psycho? All the image data MIT fed Norman came from what it calls "an infamous subreddit" that the researchers refuse to name specifically due to its graphic content. However, the team does say that this subreddit is "dedicated to documenting and observing the disturbing reality of death." The goal with Norman was to prove that when people say that an AI can be biased and unfair, the fault isn't the algorithm...
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Amazon and Google are massive tech giants, for vastly different reasons. Google is the leading search engine provider, a smartphone platform juggernaut, and huge advertising machine, while Amazon is the largest e-tailer in the world and a cloud services powerhouse, though Google is coming up strong. Though they are different animals, these two companies find themselves locked in heated battle with their respective Google Home and Amazon Echo devices; a battle for AI dominance that could determine who will ultimately control a good chunk of the Smart Home market. The Smart Home market has massive...
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It appears that the naysayers have won out this time at Google with regards to its involvement in Project Maven, a Department of Defense program involving aerial drones used in military operations. Google has reportedly decided against renewing its contract with the Pentagon after facing immense backlash both inside and outside of the company. At a meeting with employees on Friday dubbed the "Weather Report", Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene broke the news saying that Google will not renew its contract once it expires in 2019. The meeting, which were first reported by Gizmodo,...
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Google caused a bit of a firestorm after details leaked that it was forging a relationship with the United States Department of Defense to develop AI software for aerial drones. However, it's important to note that Google wasn't going to be involved with developing AI that would power killer Skynet robots on the battlefield; instead its AI would be used to examine images and video footage captured by the drones. Google's involvement in the program, called Project Maven, prompted more than a dozen employees to resign. In addition, another 4,000 employees signed a letter to CEO Sundar...
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iOS 11.4 is rolling out to iPhone and the iPad today, and it will bring with it support for Messages in the Cloud and AirPlay 2 (among other things). The first feature will allow all of your text messages and iMessages (which can often be quite large in size) via iCloud. The latter is a bigger deal for those with multi-room audio setups in their home. AirPlay 2 will allow you to, for example, sync the HomePod in your kitchen with the HomePod in your upstairs loft, allowing you to enjoy the same music as you move through different areas of your home. Not only can you use AirPlay 2 to sync...
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Earlier this week we talked a bit about an issue with an Amazon Echo device that had recorded an audio clip of a woman's conversation and then set the clip to a random contact on her contacts list. The woman was rightfully fearful of the Alexa voice powered device after that incident, and had vowed to never use it again and wanted a refund. Amazon confirmed early on, according to reports, that it had gone through her logs and verified that the incident did, in fact, occur just as she claims. Amazon has now reached out to HotHardware and other tech publications with an update on the situation...
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A woman from Portland, Oregon has claimed that her Amazon Echo recorded part of her conversation and sent it to a random person on her contact list. The woman claims that she learned about the issue when a person who worked for her husband contacted her at her home after receiving the message and told her that she was “hacked.” Amazon has confirmed that this issue happened and issued the statement, “Amazon takes privacy very seriously,” an Amazon representative told Fox. “We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are taking...
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Microsoft wants to improve its AI tech and is acquiring smaller firms to do just that. The software giant says that we are only at the start of teaching computers to understand the full context of human communications. Today these intelligent AI bots and assistants, like Cortana, are only able to respond to simple commands and queries. This allows the AI to tell the user weather reports, play a song, or share a reminder. What Microsoft wants in the future is a "rich and effective" communication that allows the AI assistant to have a natural dialog with the user rather than just responding to commands....
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NVIDIA is talking up some new AI techniques that well help robots to more efficiently work alongside humans. The research was led by NVIDIA researchers Stan Birchfield and Jonathan Tremblay. The duo was able to develop a deep learning-based system that is said to be the first of its kind that can teach a robot to complete a task simply by observing the actions of a human. NVIDIA says that the research is meant to enhance communications between humans and robots while furthering research that allows people to work alongside robots seamlessly. "For robots to perform useful tasks in real-world settings,...
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It's safe to say that the most impressive thing shown off at Google I/O this year was the awesome demo of Google Duplex and the Google Assistant interacting with humans to book hair appointments and dinner reservations. Despite the potential of such a mind-blowing demo, some complained that the AI hadn’t identified itself and that it was unethical to have humans in the dark about the computer on the other end of the phone. Google later said that it would identify when the AI was calling in the future. Now some are crying foul about Google's demo with allegations that the entire...
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In April we learned that a petition was circulating at Google signed by workers who wanted the search giant to sever ties with the Pentagon and stop working on a military AI project. That AI project is called Project Maven, which is a Pentagon effort to create an AI capable of sorting through footage taken from drones. When we first learned about the petition in April, it had been signed by over 3,100 Google employees. The petition read in part "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war." Reports are claiming that at least a dozen Google employees have now resigned in protest...
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