DeepMind Founders and Other AI Leaders Pledge to Not Develop Lethal Weapon Systems

A few days ago, London-based developer DeepMind (an Alphabet company) and thousands of other tech leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) signed a pledge vowing to never develop any “lethal autonomous weapon.” The group, which included Elon Musk, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, and AI researchers Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, and Jürgen Schmidhuber, wrote in their letter that “We […]
Nvidia Uses Machine Learning to Magically Fix Flaws in Photos

New technology from Nvidia can help professional photo retouchers save some time and studio equipment. But it may also upset photographers who painstakingly put watermarks on their photos to stop the theft of their work. AI-Powered Picture Cleaning The company developed machine learning algorithms using over 50,000 before-and-after photos to remove graininess, text, watermarks, and […]
Smart Cities May Merge AI and IoT, but Who Wants to Live in Them?

Google wants to transform part of Toronto into a tech-filled city of the future. But while some citizens see it as an opportunity to build a second Silicon Valley north of the border, others are worried it may spiral out of control to resemble a data-fueled dystopian “1984” setting instead. Innovation from the Internet Up […]
Can We Avoid Flaws in Machine Learning?

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues evolving, it goes without saying that it is going to need tweaks and patches along the way. Unfortunately, as several tech titans recently discovered, their AI systems have some serious problems revolving around gender and race. Bias Is Moving Us Backwards Research shows that language-processing AI can show signs of […]
How Can We Prepare for the Coming Era of Automation?

How do we prepare for the upcoming age of automation? It’s a question that’s difficult to answer, and frankly, one that economists Andy Sumner and Lukas Schlogl think we haven’t spent enough time pondering. In a recently published paper from the pair, they discuss the potential effects that artificial intelligence (AI) could have on the global […]
AI Is Already Having a Huge Impact on Jobs in the U.S. Heartland

Across the United States, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are already having profound effects on the economies of towns and cities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the U.S. heartland. Once stimulated by older industries, many of these communities are now turning their attention and hope of reinvigorating their economies with disruptive tech. […]
Can Machine Learning Stop Uber Drivers From Getting Scammed?

Uber is having trouble taking care of a particular crime problem. The San Francisco-based developer of the eponymous ride-hailing app is no stranger to scams; recently, it’s been utilizing machine learning, a subset of AI, to deal with con artists. But can it apply this technology to thwart this new trend targeting drivers? Built on […]
Can You Beat AI in an Argument?

It wasn’t long ago that Google’s Duplex made headlines for an unsettling demonstration in which its AI tricked an innocent human into thinking that it was human as well. Not to be one-upped, IBM has revealed an AI capable of arguing — and maybe even sometimes winning against humans. Holding Its Own Headquartered an hour […]
MIT Created a Psychopath AI to Demonstrate the Dangers of Bias

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided to make an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm into a psychopath. Why? For science! Specifically, the AI is being used to demonstrate the dangers of introducing biases to AI. You Are What You Eat MIT researchers Manuel Cebrian, Iyad Rahwan, and Pinar Yanardag trained the algorithm by […]
Google Ends Involvement With Controversial U.S. Government Project

Due to backlash from employees and academia, Google has decided to pull out of its involvement with Project Maven, a controversial project that would help the U.S. government strengthen its drone surveillance with artificial intelligence (AI). Do the Right Thing “Don’t be evil” was a motto used within Google’s corporate code of conduct for quite […]