TechHearTS

Google has decided not to renew its contact for a controversial Department of Defense program known as Project Maven, which involved Google helping the US government analyze drone footage using artificial intelligence. The news,  reported today by  Gizmodo , was announced internally today by Google Cloud chief Diane Greene at a meeting with employees. The contract allegedly expires in 2019. Greene’s announcement comes just days after  news that Google will be announcing  a new set of ethical principles to guide the development of military AI, which is set to be revealed next week. Google was not immediately available for comment. The decision should calm unrest at Google that has been growing for months since the company’s involvement with Project Maven was revealed in March in an  investigation by Gizmodo . The report noted at the time how employees were “outraged” the company was using them and the software they helped develop to aid a government program...

“TensorFlow is by far the most popular tool among our respondents, with Keras in second place, and PyTorch in third. Other frameworks like MXNet, CNTK, and BigDL have growing audiences as well” As if businesses today didn’t already have enough to worry about, then along comes a new wave of game-changing technologies that they must master quickly if they are not to fall behind their competitors, with pressure mounting to start using AI. . Artificial Intelligence is the most visible of these technologies – and arguably the most important. Open a newspaper, and it might seem as if every business is making great strides towards developing and using AI applications that will transform their operations and enable them to deliver new products and services to their customers. It’s easy for businesses yet to achieve success by using AI – or even to get started on their journey – to get despondent about the ...

The inevitable march toward automation continues, analysts from the McKinsey Global Institute and from Tata Communications wrote in separate reports this week. Artificial intelligence’s growth comes as no surprise — a survey from Narrative Science and the National Business Research Institute conducted earlier this year found that 61 percent of businesses implemented AI in 2017, up from 38 percent in 2016 — but this week’s findings lay out in detail the likely socioeconomic impacts in the coming decade. The McKinsey models predict that 70 percent of companies will adopt at least one form of AI — whether computer vision, natural language, virtual assistants, robotic process automation, or advanced machine learning — by 2020. And Tata found unbridled enthusiasm among business leaders for an AI-dominated future; in a survey of 120 of them, 90 percent said they expect AI to enhance decision-making. McKinsey and Tata both contend that’s a good thing. Mc...

Google, from Day One, got big by getting into the business of finding information. Years later, Google is talking serious business about datasets. Google is launching a new search engine to help scientists find the datasets they need.   On Wednesday, Google AI research scientist Natasha Noy announced Google's launch of Dataset Search . You now get easy access to datasets, if you are scientist, or just data "geek" in another type of pursuit, looking for data for your work and for your stories and for your intellectual curiosity. The goal is to bring you more of a single interface. Jon Fingas in Engadget looked at how it can benefit data searching. "The tool provides more direct access to data presented in an open standard that makes it clear who created the info, how it was collected and how you're allowed to use it. You could not only track down climate data for a report, but make sure that it's relevant and legal to use....

Recently, I( Peter H. Diamandis ) picked up Kai-Fu Lee’s newest book,  AI Superpowers . Kai-Fu Lee is one of the most plugged-in AI investors on the planet, managing over $2 billion between six funds and over 300 portfolio companies in the US and China. Drawing from his pioneering work in AI, executive leadership at Microsoft, Apple, and Google (where he served as founding president of Google China), and his founding of VC fund Sinovation Ventures, Lee shares invaluable insights about: The four factors driving today’s AI ecosystems; China’s extraordinary inroads in AI implementation; Where autonomous systems are headed; How we’ll need to adapt. With a foothold in both Beijing and Silicon Valley, Lee looks at the power balance between Chinese and US tech behemoths—each turbocharging new applications of deep learning and sweeping up global markets in the process. In this post, I’ll be discussing Lee’s “Four Waves of AI ,” an excellent framework for discus...

In 2012, artificial intelligence researchers revealed a big improvement in computers’ ability to recognize images by feeding a neural network millions of labeled images from a database called ImageNet. It ushered in an exciting phase for computer vision, as it became clear that a model trained using ImageNet could help tackle all sorts of image-recognition problems. Six years later, that’s helped pave the way for self-driving cars to navigate city streets and Facebook to automatically tag people in your photos. In other arenas of AI research, like understanding language, similar models have proved elusive. But recent research from fast.ai , OpenAI , and the Allen Institute for AI suggests a potential breakthrough, with more robust language models that can help researchers tackle a range of unsolved problems. Sebastian Ruder, a researcher behind one of the new models, calls it his field’s “ImageNet moment.” The improvements can be dramatic. The most widely tested mode...

As the number of vehicles rise, so do traffic, pollution and road fatalities. But, data analytics could play a huge role in reducing these, and so will better utilisation of public transport, say experts. For instance, Intel has partnered with NITI Aayog and Tata Institute for the first international Centre for Transformation of AI (ICTAI) to build the platform to use Artificial Intelligence to build innovative solution in the space of mobility, agriculture and health. Intel India is also working on a solution to predict blind spots on roads at intersections and turnings, where the probability of accidents is high, across Telangana and Goa in collaboration with the local governments. Nivruti Rai, Country Head, Intel India, said, he system sends warning alerts to drivers when approaching the spot, helping them make a quick decision. Governments can use the data to fix the problem. Intel India is also partnering with IIIT-Hyderabad to make a data set of Indian drivin...