Letters
Why AI Projects Fail, Part 4: Small Data
In this series exploring why machine learning projects fail, let’s examine the challenge of “small data.” Given 1 million labeled images, many teams can build a good classifier using open source.
Latest
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: Self-Driving Cars That Can't See Pedestrians?! Evolutionary Algorithms, Fish Recognition, Fighting Fraud
In this series exploring why machine learning projects fail, let’s examine the challenge of “small data.” Given 1 million labeled images, many teams can build a good classifier using open source.
Machine Learning Research
Robotic Control, Easy as Apple Pie
Robots designed to assist people with disabilities have become more capable, but they’ve also become harder to control. New research offers a way to operate such complex mechanical systems more intuitively.
Tech & Society
Who’s Minding the Store?
Amazon, watch your back. There’s a new player in the book business and, unlike Jeff Bezos, it doesn’t need eight hours of sleep a night. The online bookstore Booksby.ai is run entirely by AI. Neural networks write the books, create the cover art, price the merchandise, even write the reviews.
Business
Banking on Automation
The UK’s banking industry is using AI in many facets of the business. A survey of financial firms in the UK found that nearly two-thirds of respondents have deployed machine learning technology. Many said they expect their use to double in the next two years.
Machine Learning Research
Unfinished Artwork? No More
Generative networks can embroider sentences into stories and melodies into full-fledged arrangements. A new model does something similar with drawings.
Tech & Society
Take That, Humans!
At the BlizzCon gaming convention last weekend, players of the strategy game StarCraft II stood in line to get walloped by DeepMind’s AI. After training for the better part of a year, the bot has become one of the world’s top players.
Letters
Why AI Projects Fail, Part 3: Robustness
Building AI systems is hard. Despite all the hype, AI engineers struggle with difficult problems every day. For the next few weeks, I’ll explore some of the major challenges. Today’s topic: The challenge of building AI systems that are robust to real-world conditions.
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: DeepMind Masters StarCraft 2, AI Attacks on Amazon, A Career in Robot Management, Banks Embrace Bots
Building AI systems is hard. Despite all the hype, AI engineers struggle with difficult problems every day. For the next few weeks, I’ll explore some of the major challenges. Today’s topic: The challenge of building AI systems that are robust to real-world conditions.
Tech & Society
AI Winter Sets In
Could the flood of hype for artificial intelligence lead to a catastrophic collapse in funding? AI will fail to deliver on promises inflated by businesses and researchers. Investors will migrate to greener pastures, and AI Winter will descend.
Tech & Society
Machines Take Everyone’s Job
From blue collar laborers to lab coated professionals, is any job safe from AI? AI will exceed human performance at a wide range of activities. Huge populations will become jobless.
Tech & Society
Biased Data Trains Oppressive AI
Will biases in training data unwittingly turn AI into a tool for persecution? Bias encoded in software used by nominally objective institutions like, say, the justice or education systems will become impossible to root out.