1. Meena is Google’s attempt at making true conversational AI
Conversational AI is a catch-all term for natural language models for artificial intelligence that can interpret human words, speak to people, or carry out tasks or computation with natural language. But talk to any of the best-known AI assistants today — Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant — and they’re not exactly conversational. They can tell you jokes, answer factual questions, and even respond to multiple queries without the need to keep repeating a wake word, but a conversation or chit-chat is still very much a human endeavor Weekly Top 10 Automation Articles
Author: Khari Johnson
Read More On: VentureBeat
2. GOOGLE SAYS ITS CHATBOT IS CAPABLE OF NEAR-HUMAN CONVERSATION
If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with a chatbot, you know that even today’s state-of-the-art systems aren’t exactly eloquent, regularly doling out nonsensical or painfully generic responses. Now, though, Google has created Meena, a chatbot it says is better than any other it’s tested — a claim the company supports using a new metric it developed specifically to measure an AI’s conversational abilities.
Author: Kristin Houser
Read More On: Futurism
3. What are Important AI & Machine Learning Trends for 2020?
Companies ranging from high-tech startups to global multinationals see artificial intelligence as a key competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive and technical market. But, the AI industry moves so quickly that it’s often hard to follow the latest research breakthroughs and achievements, and even harder to apply scientific results to achieve business outcomes.
Author: Mariya Yao
Read More On: Forbes
4. Soft robotic hands may soon have a firm grip on the industry
Soft Robotics, a company that develops enterprise-level soft robotic grippers for a variety of materials handling and pick and place applications, is on a roll. After securing a high-level strategic partnership in 2019, the company has announced an oversubscribed Series B worth $23M.
Author: Greg Nichols
Read More On: ZDnet
5. AI Helps Warehouse Robots Pick Up New Tricks
Some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence, including two godfathers of the machine learning boom, are betting that clever algorithms are about to transform the abilities of industrial robots. Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, who shared this year’s Turing Prize with Yoshua Bengio for their work on deep learning, are among the AI luminaries who have invested in Covariant.ai, a startup developing AI technology for warehouse bin-picking bots.
Author: will knight
Read More On Wired
6. RealityEngines launches its autonomous AI service
RealityEngines.AI, an AI and machine learning startup founded by a number of former Google executives and engineers, is coming out of stealth today and announcing its first set of products. When the company first announced its $5.25 million seed round last year, CEO Bindu Reddy wasn’t quite ready to disclose RealityEngines’ mission beyond saying that it planned to make machine learning easier for enterprises.
Author: Frederic Lardinois
Read More On TechCrunch
7. Why the smartest AI is still dumber than a toddler — and how we can fix that
Artificial intelligence is, undeniably, one of the most important inventions in the history of humankind. It belongs on a fantasy ‘Mt. Rushmore of technologies alongside electricity, steam engines, and the internet. But, in its current incarnation, AI isn’t very smart.
Author: Tristan Greene
Read More On: The Next Web
8. Cortex Labs helps data scientists deploy machine learning models in the cloud
It’s one thing to develop a working machine learning model, it’s another to put it to work in an application. Cortex Labs is an early-stage startup with some open-source tooling designed to help data scientists take that last step. The company’s founders were students at Berkeley when they observed that one of the problems around creating machine learning models was finding a way to deploy them.
Author: Ron Miller
Read More On: TechCrunch
9. Why asking an AI to explain itself can make things worse
Upol Ehsan once took a test ride in an Uber self-driving car. Instead of fretting about the empty driver’s seat, anxious passengers were encouraged to watch a “pacifier” screen that showed a car’s-eye view of the road: hazards picked out in orange and red, safe zones in cool blue.
Author: Will Douglas Heaven
Read More On: MIT Technology Review
10. Microsoft takes wraps off $40M ‘AI for Health’ initiative
When the topics of Microsoft and global health overlap, one tends to think about the Gates Foundation, but the company itself is doing good work along these lines as well. The latest such effort is AI for Health, a $40 million, five-year outgrowth of Microsoft’s AI for Good program that aims to help apply the benefits of AI with an eye to bettering the health of the less fortunate worldwide Weekly Top 10 Automation Articles.