Linguists, update your resumes because Baidu thinks it has cracked fast AI translation

AI can translate between languages in real time as people speak, according to fresh research from Chinese search giant Baidu and Oregon State University in the US. Human interpreters need superhuman concentration to listen to speech and translate at the same time. There are, apparently, only a few thousand qualified simultaneous interpreters and the job Read more about Linguists, update your resumes because Baidu thinks it has cracked fast AI translation[…]

Alexa heard what you did last summer – and she knows what that was, too: AI recognizes activities from sound

Boffins have devised a way to make eavesdropping smartwatches, computers, mobile devices, and speakers with endearing names like Alexa better aware of what’s going on around them. In a paper to be presented today at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) in Berlin, Germany, computer scientists Gierad Laput, Karan Ahuja, Mayank Read more about Alexa heard what you did last summer – and she knows what that was, too: AI recognizes activities from sound[…]

Twitter releases all foreign election campaign influencing tweets and media for you to study

n line with our principles of transparency and to improve public understanding of alleged foreign influence campaigns, Twitter is making publicly available archives of Tweets and media that we believe resulted from potentially state-backed information operations on our service. Examples of the content include:   While this dataset is of a size that a degree Read more about Twitter releases all foreign election campaign influencing tweets and media for you to study[…]

NASA and Google using AI to hunt down potentially habitable planets

Astrobiologists are mostly interested in rocky exoplanets that lie in the habitable zone around their parent stars, where liquid water may exist on its surface. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has spotted a handful of these in the so-called Goldilocks Zone – where it’s not too cold or too hot for life. As such, a second team Read more about NASA and Google using AI to hunt down potentially habitable planets[…]

The US military wants to teach AI some basic common sense

Wherever artificial intelligence is deployed, you will find it has failed in some amusing way. Take the strange errors made by translation algorithms that confuse having someone for dinner with, well, having someone for dinner. But as AI is used in ever more critical situations, such as driving autonomous cars, making medical diagnoses, or drawing life-or-death Read more about The US military wants to teach AI some basic common sense[…]

Google’s AI Bots Invent New Legs to Scamper Through Obstacle Courses

Using a technique called reinforcement learning, a researcher at Google Brain has shown that virtual robots can redesign their body parts to help them navigate challenging obstacle courses—even if the solutions they come up with are completely bizarre. Embodied cognition is the idea that an animal’s cognitive abilities are influenced and constrained by its body Read more about Google’s AI Bots Invent New Legs to Scamper Through Obstacle Courses[…]

Stanford AI bot to negotiate sales for you with Craigslist

Artificially intelligent bots are notoriously bad at communicating with, well, anything. Conversations with the code, whether it’s between themselves or with people, often go awry, and veer off topic. Grammar goes out the window, and sentences become nonsensical. […] Well, a group of researchers at Stanford University in the US have figured out how to, Read more about Stanford AI bot to negotiate sales for you with Craigslist[…]

AI lifeline to help devs craft smartmobe apps that suck a whole lot less… battery capacity

Artificial intelligence can help developers design mobile phone apps that drain less battery, according to new research. The system, dubbed DiffProff, will be presented this week at the USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation conference in California, was developed by Charlie Hu and Abhilash Jindal, who have a startup devoted to better battery Read more about AI lifeline to help devs craft smartmobe apps that suck a whole lot less… battery capacity[…]

DoNotPay App Lets You ‘Sue Anyone By Pressing a Button’. Success rate: 50%

a new, free app promises to let you “sue anyone by pressing a button” and have an AI-powered lawyer fight your case. Do Not Pay, a free service that launched in the iOS App store today, uses IBM Watson-powered artificial intelligence to help people win up to $25,000 in small claims court. It’s the latest Read more about DoNotPay App Lets You ‘Sue Anyone By Pressing a Button’. Success rate: 50%[…]

Introducing MLflow: an Open Source Machine Learning Platform for tracking, projects and models

MLflow is inspired by existing ML platforms, but it is designed to be open in two senses: Open interface: MLflow is designed to work with any ML library, algorithm, deployment tool or language. It’s built around REST APIs and simple data formats (e.g., a model can be viewed as a lambda function) that can be Read more about Introducing MLflow: an Open Source Machine Learning Platform for tracking, projects and models[…]

Building your own PC for AI is 10x cheaper than renting out GPUs on cloud, apparently

Jeff Chen, an AI techie and entrepreneur at Stanford University in the US, believes that a suitable machine can be built for about $3,000 (~£2,300) without including tax. At the heart of the beast is an Nvidia GeForce 1080Ti GPU, a 12-core AMD Threadripper processor, 64GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD card for data. Read more about Building your own PC for AI is 10x cheaper than renting out GPUs on cloud, apparently[…]

Google is using AI to predict floods in India and warn users

For years Google has warned users about natural disasters by incorporating alerts from government agencies like FEMA into apps like Maps and Search. Now, the company is making predictions of its own. As part of a partnership with the Central Water Commission of India, Google will now alert users in the country about impending floods. Read more about Google is using AI to predict floods in India and warn users[…]

Hadoop and NoSQL backups timed by AI

Machine learning data management company Imanis Data has introduced an autonomous backup product powered by machine learning. The firm said users can specify a desired RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and its SmartPolicies tech then set up the backup schedules. The tech is delivered as an upgrade to the Imanis Data Management Platform (IDMP) product. SmartPolicies Read more about Hadoop and NoSQL backups timed by AI[…]

AI’s ‘deep-fake’ vids surge ahead in realism

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Facebook Reality Lab are presenting Recycle-GAN, a generative adversarial system for “unsupervised video retargeting” this week at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) in Germany. Unlike most methods, Recycle-GAN doesn’t rely on learning an explicit mapping between the images in a source and target video to perform a Read more about AI’s ‘deep-fake’ vids surge ahead in realism[…]

Wow, great invention: Now AI eggheads teach machines how to be sarcastic using Reddit

It’s tricky. Computers have to follow what is being said by whom, the context of the conversation and often some real world facts to understand cultural references. Feeding machines single sentences is often ineffective; it’s a difficult task for humans to detect if individual remarks are cheeky too. The researchers, therefore, built a system designed Read more about Wow, great invention: Now AI eggheads teach machines how to be sarcastic using Reddit[…]

Facebook creates an AI-based tool to automate bug fixes

SapFix, which is still under development, is designed to generate fixes automatically for specific bugs before sending them to human engineers for approval. Facebook, which announced the tool today ahead of its @Scale conference in San Jose, California, for developers building large-scale systems and applications, calls SapFix an “AI hybrid tool.” It uses artificial intelligence Read more about Facebook creates an AI-based tool to automate bug fixes[…]

Social Mapper – A Social Media Mapping Tool that correlates profiles via facial recognition

Social Mapper is a Open Source Intelligence Tool that uses facial recognition to correlate social media profiles across different sites on a large scale. It takes an automated approach to searching popular social media sites for targets names and pictures to accurately detect and group a person’s presence, outputting the results into report that a Read more about Social Mapper – A Social Media Mapping Tool that correlates profiles via facial recognition[…]

AI builds wiki entries for people that aren’t on it but should be

Human-generated knowledge bases like Wikipedia have a recall problem. First, there are the articles that should be there but are entirely missing. The unknown unknowns. Consider Joelle Pineau, the Canadian roboticist bringing scientific rigor to artificial intelligence and who directs Facebook’s new AI Research lab in Montreal. Or Miriam Adelson, an actively publishing addiction treatment Read more about AI builds wiki entries for people that aren’t on it but should be[…]

AI identifies heat-resistant coral reefs in Indonesia

A recent scientific survey off the coast of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia suggests that some shallow water corals may be less vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. Between 2014 and 2017, the world’s reefs endured the worst coral bleaching event in history, as the cyclical El Niño climate event combined with anthropogenic warming to Read more about AI identifies heat-resistant coral reefs in Indonesia[…]

MS Sketch2Code uses AI to convert a picture of a wireframe to HTML – download and try

Description Sketch2Code is a solution that uses AI to transform a handwritten user interface design from a picture to a valid HTML markup code. Process flow The process of transformation of a handwritten image to HTML this solution implements is detailed as follows: The user uploads an image through the website. A custom vision model Read more about MS Sketch2Code uses AI to convert a picture of a wireframe to HTML – download and try[…]

AI sucks at stopping online trolls spewing toxic comments

A group of researchers from Aalto University and the University of Padua found this out when they tested seven state-of-the-art models used to detect hate speech. All of them failed to recognize foul language when subtle changes were made, according to a paper [PDF] on arXiv. Adversarial examples can be created automatically by using algorithms Read more about AI sucks at stopping online trolls spewing toxic comments[…]

​Google just put an AI in charge of keeping its data centers cool

Google is putting an artificial intelligence system in charge of its data center cooling after the system proved it could cut energy use. Now Google and its AI company DeepMind are taking the project further; instead of recommendations being implemented by human staff, the AI system is directly controlling cooling in the data centers that Read more about ​Google just put an AI in charge of keeping its data centers cool[…]

How AI Can Spot Exam Cheats and Raise Standards

AI is being deployed by those who set and mark exams to reduce fraud — which remains overall a small problem — and to create far greater efficiencies in preparation and marking, and to help improve teaching and studying. From a report, which may be paywalled: From traditional paper-based exam and textbook producers such as Read more about How AI Can Spot Exam Cheats and Raise Standards[…]

Oi, clickbait cop bot, jam this in your neural net: Hot new AI threatens to DESTROY web journos

Artificial intelligent software has been trained to detect and flag up clickbait headlines. And here at El Reg we say thank God Larry Wall for that. What the internet needs right now is software to highlight and expunge dodgy article titles about space alien immigrants, faked moon landings, and the like. Machine-learning eggheads continue to Read more about Oi, clickbait cop bot, jam this in your neural net: Hot new AI threatens to DESTROY web journos[…]