Tag: Artificial Intelligence

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AI2 challenge puts computer vision to the test

Charades Challenge
For AI2’s Charades Challenge, visual systems had to recognize and classify a wide variety of daily activities in realistic videos. This is just a sampling of the videos. (AI2 Photos)

Some of the world’s top researchers in AI have proved their mettle by taking top honors in three challenges posed by the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

The institute, also known as AI2, was created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2014 to blaze new trails in the field of artificial intelligence. One of AI2’s previous challenges tested the ability of AI platforms to answer eighth-grade-level science questions.

The three latest challenges focused on visual understanding – that is, the ability of a computer program to navigate real-world environments and situations using synthetic vision and machine learning.

These aren’t merely academic exercises: Visual understanding is a must-have for AI applications ranging from self-driving cars to automated security monitoring to sociable robots.

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Zuck and Musk trade zingers over AI fears

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg
Tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are feuding over AI. (SpaceX / Facebook Photos)

Techies, grab some popcorn: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk are throwing shade at each other over what Musk considers the scariest issue facing humanity: the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.

It all started last week at the National Governors Association’s summer meeting in Rhode Island, where Musk complained that policymakers and tech leaders weren’t sufficiently worried about AI.

“I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street, killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal,” he said.

Over the weekend, Zuckerberg basically said Musk was being reckless.

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Elon Musk on self-driving cars and AI’s perils

Elon Musk
Elon Musk surveys the future of technology during a fireside chat at the National Governors Association summer meeting. (C-SPAN via YouTube)

In the year 2037, non-autonomous vehicles will be as much of a curiosity as riding a horse is today, tech billionaire Elon Musk says.

Musk also says that the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is “really like the scariest problem for me,” and that the government has to set up something like the Federal Artificial Intelligence Administration before it’s too late.

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla laid out his latest vision for the future of transportation, AI and space exploration over the weekend at the National Governors Association’s summer meeting in Providence, R.I. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, whose state hosts Tesla’s first battery-producing Gigafactory, served as the emcee for the July 15 fireside chat.

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Boeing HorizonX backs SparkCognition AI

Predictive maintenance for wind turbines
One of SparkCognition’s AI products, SparkPredict, is designed to predict wind turbine failures before they occur. (SparkCognition via YouTube)

Boeing’s recently established venture arm, HorizonX, has joined with other investors in a $32.5 million funding round for SparkCognition, a Texas-based company focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning in the fields of information technology security and industrial operations.

The Series B round is being led by Verizon Ventures. Boeing said it was among a group of strategic investors in SparkCognition, which counts aerospace and defense among its target markets.

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How AI picks up our all-too-human biases

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Princeton researcher Aylin Caliskan demonstrates how Google’s automatic translation program shows signs of gender bias. (Princeton University via YouTube / Aaron Nathans)

There’s fresh evidence that artificial intelligence software absorbs human biases about race and gender, and it may be due to the very structure of languages.

Scientists came to that conclusion after creating a statistical system for scoring the positive and negative connotations associated with words in AI-analyzed texts.

A similar system, known as the Implicit Association Test or IAT, has suggested that humans harbor biases about the comparative status of different races, as well as men and women, even though they don’t explicitly acknowledge them.

Princeton University’s Aylin Caliskan and her colleagues adapted the IAT for a textual analysis tool they call the Word-Embedding Association Test, or WEAT. They describe the method, and its application, in research published today by the journal Science.

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Elon Musk backs venture to link brains and AI

Elon Musk
Elon Musk muses at SpaceX’s Mission Control. (SpaceX Photo)

Billionaire brainiac Elon Musk is following up on his interest in (and wariness about) artificial intelligence by backing Neuralink Corp., a company devoted to developing neural implants, The Wall Street Journal says.

Business filings suggest that Neuralink would build devices designed to treat or diagnose neurological conditions, and conceivably augment human cognitive powers.

The Journal quoted entrepreneur-futurist Max Hodak as confirming Musk’s involvement in Neuralink, which Hodak said was still an “embryonic” venture.

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Treasury chief downplays AI impact on jobs

Donald Trump and Steven Mnuchin
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during his White House swearing-in ceremony in February. (White House via YouTube)

Experts say the potential impact of automation and artificial intelligence could be one of the biggest economic issues of the 21st century, but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says it’s not on his radar screen.

Mnuchin made his comments during a “News Shapers” sitdown with Axios’ Mike Allen. His observations are pointed enough, and brief enough, that they’re worth an extended quote:

Mnuchin: “In terms of artificial intelligence taking over American jobs, I think we’re like so far away from that, not even on my radar screen.”

Allen: “How far away?”

Mnuchin: “Far enough that it’s …”

Allen: “Seven more years?”

Mnuchin: “Seven more years? I think it’s 50 or 100 more years.”

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Paul Allen’s AI institute rises to the next level

Oren Etzioni
Oren Etzioni, the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, asks the audience at a TEDx talk to raise their hands if they think AI is evil. (TEDx Seattle via YouTube)

Three years after its founding, Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is racking up recognition in the field of AI research – and some of its research will have an impact on the burgeoning AI market.

The institute, known as AI2, was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2014 with longtime computer science researcher Oren Etzioni as its CEO. Since its founding, AI2 has spawned two spin-offs: Kitt.ai, which was created a little more than a year ago; and Xnor.ai, which made its debut this month.

AI2 has built its workforce up to 75 people, which Etzioni says makes it the largest nonprofit AI research center in North America. And AI2 is building up its street cred as well.

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Ford invests in Argo AI for self-driving cars

An artist’s conception shows a Ford autonomous vehicle that has a heads-up display, but no steering wheel. (Ford via YouTube)
An artist’s conception shows a Ford autonomous vehicle that has a heads-up display, but no steering wheel. (Ford via YouTube)

Ford Motor Co. says it’s investing $1 billion over the next five years in a Pittsburgh startup called Argo AI to develop the virtual-driver system for Ford’s autonomous vehicles.

Argo AI was founded only a few weeks ago by CEO Bryan Salesky, who directed hardware development for Google’s self-driving cars; and chief operating officer Peter Rander, who led Uber’s program to develop self-driving cars.

Salesky and Rander, as well as other Argo AI executives, have worked on robotics and AI at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which helps explain the placement of the startup’s headquarters.

The technology coming out of the collaboration could be licensed to other companies, Ford President and CEO Mark Fields said today in a statement announcing the deal.

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Should we hook up AI to our brains?

AI graphic
The Beneficial AI conference developed 23 guiding principles for AI. (Future of Life Institute)

Hundreds of AI researchers, business leaders and just plain geniuses have signed onto a statement of cautionary principles for artificial intelligence, including a requirement to build in the ability for human authorities to audit how an AI platform works.

The 23 Asilomar AI Principles were drawn up this month at the Beneficial AI conference, conducted in the same California locale where a famous meeting to define the limits of biotech was held in 1975.

This Asilomar conference focused on concerns about the rapid rise of AI, voiced by luminaries ranging from British physicist Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk called attention to the findings today in a series of tweets that ended up endorsing the idea of building AI tools into devices that interface with the human brain.

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