Latest AI Articles:

1 - China’s Baidu Releases Its Artificial Intelligence Code

Baidu, China's equivalent of America's Google, released parts of its AI code to the public in an effort to keep up with Google, Facebook and other companies competing for the best AI algorithms to power its AI software. The company has aggressively invested in deep learning over the past few years, and recently developed a powerful speech-recognition system called Deep Speech 2. Baidu hopes that by releasing parts of its Warp-CTC code, that it will also invite the interests of researchers and startups who want to develop machine learning applications that are compatible with its technology.

China entered 2016 with a struggling stock market that made many analysts question the strength of the world’s largest economy. Despite this economic omen, China closed 2015 with a pretty stellar year in artificial intelligence and robotics, sparking what may be the beginning of a revolution.

Even folks without a remote interest in artificial intelligence understand that it's starting to surround them. The easy examples can be conjured by just about anyone walking the street: Siri, Amazon's recommendations, Pandora's playlists, Facebook's face-tagging and newsfeed, and Google's search results - these are the easy examples.

Episode Summary: Most of us forget that just about a decade ago, Facebook’s software was incapable of tagging people in a photo, but today can so without difficulty, sometimes without us even knowing. Machine vision has progressed to the point where it’s also common for computers to be able to pick out dogs from cats in images, another task that was not possible 10 years ago.

1 - Segway to Build Personal Robots with Intel, Xiaomi

Scooter manufacturer Segway announced its plans to enter the robotics industry in 2016, with initial plans to work with tech giants like Intel and smart-phone company Xiaomi. The announcement comes after the company's 2015 acquirement by Chinese-based Ninebot, at which point $80 million in funding was also invested by Xiaomi and Sequoia Capital. Funding by Intel and GIC, a Singapore-based investment firm, are the newest additions. The robotics industry only appears to be growing, with Boston Consulting Group predicting a $9 billion consumer market for personal robots by 2025.

This article was originally written in 2017 by Lauren D'Ambra, former editor at Emerj.com.

"Design fiction," as defined by MIT Media Lab, is "sparking imagination and discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of new technologies through design and storytelling." Storytelling, more specifically science fiction (and even popular nonfiction science) seems to be a natural gateway to this relatively new concept. A series of recent email interviews with science fiction writers inspired us to think more about the avenue of storytelling as an influence in shaping technology and human history in the making.

One of the world's oldest and most prestigious universities is offering a new study focus that sheds light on its progressive approach to academia. With a grant from the non-profit foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, academics at England’s Cambridge University will be able to study artificial intelligence ethics over the next ten years.

Episode Summary: Have you ever seen a humanoid robot and felt creeped out? In this episode, we talk with Robotics Engineer Derek Scherer about the psychology of the uncanny valley and our relationships with robots. Scherer talks about the factors in robotics that tend to spook people and provoke a feeling of disgust, and how we might be able to move beyond this resistance as they become a more active part of the social fabric of our society.

Machines like IBM’s Deep Blue and Watson are already capable of beating chess champs and Jeopardy! champs respectively, and prove that strategy and trivia are easily conquered by a machine. But this knowledge doesn’t necessarily transfer over into everyday use.

"Machine learning" is a term that's heard more often in startup and big data circles than "artificial intelligence", and interestingly enough, Google Trends confirms what's already heard through the technological grapevine: