Tag: Artificial Intelligence

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Biologists use AI to flesh out cell’s inner workings

3-D cell model
A 3-D view of human cells is color-coded to highlight substructures. (Allen Institute for Cell Science)

What happens when you cross cell biology with artificial intelligence? At the Allen Institute for Cell Science, the answer isn’t super-brainy microbes, but new computer models that can turn simple black-and-white pictures of live human cells into color-coded, 3-D visualizations filled with detail.

The online database, known as the Allen Integrated Cell, is now being made publicly available — and its creators say it could open up new windows into the workings of our cells.

“From a single, simple microscopy image, you could get this very high-contrast, integrated 3-D image where it’s very easy to see where all the separate structures are,” Molly Maleckar, director of modeling at the Seattle-based Allen Institute, told GeekWire.

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XNOR.ai raises $12M and unveils new AI tool

XNOR.ai object recognition
XNOR.ai’s computer vision tool can recognize objects using software that resides on a smartphone rather than in the cloud. (XNOR.ai Illustration)

“AI for Everyone, Everywhere” may sound like a science-fiction slogan, but it’s actually the name given to software from XNOR.ai that’s already making devices smarter in the real world.

The self-service software development platform is a new product for the Seattle startup, which is also announcing a $12 million Series A funding round led by Madrona Venture Group.

XNOR CEO Ali Farhadi says the new investment will help his company, which was spun out from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence last year, develop a high-end version of the “AI for Everyone, Everywhere” platform for enterprise-level applications.

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Facebook opens AI labs in Seattle and Pittsburgh

Facebook Seattle
Facebook is upgrading the status of its Seattle AI research operation. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

After months of work to beef up its artificial intelligence research teams in Seattle and Pittsburgh, Facebook is acknowledging that those two cities are getting official status as AI labs in their own right.

“Facebook AI Research is opening two new labs in Seattle and Pittsburgh, which will join the existing sites in Menlo Park, New York, Paris, Montreal and Tel Aviv,” Yann LeCun, Facebook’s chief AI scientist, said in a posting on May 4.

LeCun’s statement confirms what sources told GeekWire in March about Facebook’s growing Seattle presence in AI research, as well as rumors we heard back then about the social-media giant’s plans for Pittsburgh.

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Policy experts seek intelligent ways to regulate AI

AI panel
The World Economic Forum’s Kay Firth-Butterfield, Carnegie Mellon University’s Lorrie Faith Cranor and Wired’s Tom Simonite discuss AI governance during a conference at Carnegie Mellon. (CMU via YouTube)

Regulations for the proper use of artificial intelligence are almost as inevitable as the rise of AI itself — but the way it’ll be done is far from clear.

“This isn’t as simple as just ‘trust,’ ” said Kay Firth-Butterfield, project head for AI and machine learning at the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “This is more complex, because the technology itself is very fast, changing all the time, and is complex as well.”

Firth-Butterfield and other policy experts weighed in on the challenges of regulating AI, and dropped some hints about the road ahead, today at the Carnegie Mellon University – K&L Gates Conference on Ethics and AI in Pittsburgh.

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Microsoft is turning down some sales over AI ethics

Eric Horvitz
Microsoft Research Lab’s Eric Horvitz speaks at Carnegie Mellon University. (CMU via YouTube)

Concerns over the potential abuse of artificial intelligence technology have led Microsoft to cut off significant sales, says Eric Horvitz, technical fellow and director at Microsoft Research Labs.

Horvitz laid out Microsoft’s commitment to AI ethics today during the Carnegie Mellon University – K&L Gates Conference on Ethics and AI, presented in Pittsburgh.

One of the key groups focusing on the issue at Microsoft is the Aether Committee, where “Aether” stands for AI and Ethics in Engineering and Research.

“It’s been an intensive effort … and I’m happy to say that this committee has teeth,” Horvitz said during his lecture.

He said the committee reviews how Microsoft’s AI technology could be used by its customers, and makes recommendations that go all the way up to senior leadership.

“Significant sales have been cut off,” Horvitz said. “And in other sales, various specific limitations were written down in terms of usage, including ‘may not use data-driven pattern recognition for use in face recognition or predictions of this type.’ ”

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Elon Musk touts scary movie about AI

Elon Musk
Elon Musk talks about AI in “Do You Trust This Computer?” (Cinetic / Papercut Films via YouTube)

If you want to get really scared about the future, you could see “A Quiet Place” this weekend at your local theater — or you could stream “Do You Trust This Computer?”

The latter movie, about the potential threat posed by artificial intelligence, comes with a thumbs-up from Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who has long voiced serious concerns about AI.

Musk is one of the prominent interviewees in “Do You Trust This Computer?” — which was made by Chris Paine, the filmmaker behind “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Paine’s new 78-minute documentary had its premiere on April 5.

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Report dials down the risk to jobs from automation

Fulfillment center
An automated guided vehicle trundles packages inside an Amazon fulfillment center in Dupont, Wash. Automation is expected to affect a wide range of occupations. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

A working paper written for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that about 14 percent of the jobs in 32 OECD countries, including the U.S., are at high risk of being automated.

That raw figure may not sound as dire as some of the previous numbers cited for the effect of automation and artificial intelligence on employment, and that’s what’s been grabbing the headlines over the past couple of days. But a close reading of the report, published last month, shouldn’t lead anyone to brush off the issue — as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did last year.

The authors of the study, Ljubica Nedelkoska and Glenda Quintini, say the level of automation risk varies widely from country to country. Slovakia comes in on the high side (33 percent), while the projected risk is only 6 percent in Norway.

The high-risk percentage for the U.S. is 10 percent, which is significantly lower than the 47 percent that was cited in a provocative 2013 study by Oxford researchers. But even 10 percent translates to about 15 million U.S. jobs.

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Facebook escalates AI talent wars

Facebook Seattle
Facebook already has a significant presence in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Facebook has made a high-profile hire as part of a plan to expand its AI research team in Seattle — adding to an already-fierce competition for talent in the artificial intelligence field.

The social network has signed up Luke Zettlemoyer, a computer science professor at the University of Washington who was most recently a senior research manager at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, or AI2.

Zettlemoyer is considered a rising star in the AI field, and was among the researchers featured last November in a New York Times article about the bidding war for artificial intelligence talent. He left AI2 last week and began at Facebook this week.

His move comes as the Allen Institute, created by Paul Allen, looks to ramp up its own hiring in a tight market for AI talent with help from an additional $125 million in funding from the Microsoft co-founder.

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Tech experts get real about automation and jobs

Automation panel
Artefact Group CEO Rob Girling moderates a panel on the social effects of automation. The panelists include Google Research’s Dan Liebling, Uber’s Caleb Weaver, Microsoft Research’s Ece Kamar, Microsoft veteran Cesar Keller and Avanade’s Aaron Reich. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

It’s a thrilling time for technology, with innovations in artificial intelligence and robotics propelling society ever faster forward. But is it too fast?

That’s a question that came up more than once on March 21 during a panel discussion on automation’s impacts on society and work, presented at Seattle University by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest.

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Policymakers say they need to be smarter about AI

Cantwell and Young
Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Todd Young, R-Ind., discuss the policy implications of artificial intelligence. (Washington Post via Twitter)

It’s high time for government officials to get up to speed on the promise and potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence, two U.S. senators leading the charge said today.

“I think we’re entering an age where artificial intelligence is going to provide great benefits,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said during an AI conference presented in Washington, D.C., as part of The Washington Post’s Transformers program.

Cantwell compared the state of the AI field to the state of the internet or the drone industry during the early days, when policymakers weren’t completely sure how those technologies were going to be used.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., acknowledged that members of Congress aren’t sufficiently equipped to deal with all of the issues raised by AI. “I like a measure of humility from our legislators,” he said.

To remedy that gap, Cantwell and Young are among the sponsors of a bill known as the FUTURE of AI Act. (The title is an acronym standing for “Fundamentally Understanding The Usability and Realistic Evolution of Artificial Intelligence.”)

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