Letters
Pie & AI in Kuala Lumpur
Over the weekend, we hosted our first Pie & AI meetup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in collaboration with the AI Malaysia group, MDEC, and ADAX. The event was part of Malaysia’s AI & Data Week 2019.
Latest
Machine Learning Research
What Language Models Know
Watson set a high bar for language understanding in 2011, when it famously whipped human competitors in the televised trivia game show Jeopardy! IBM’s special-purpose AI required around $1 billion. Research suggests that today’s best language models can accomplish similar tasks right off the shelf.
Science
Chimp Recognition
AI is capable of picking faces out of the crowd — even if that crowd is squabbling over bananas in a jungle. Researchers at the University of Oxford developed a face recognition app that identifies individual chimpanzees in footage shot in the wilds of Guinea.
Tech & Society
Facing Down Deepfakes
Deepfakes threaten to undermine law and order, perhaps democracy itself. A coalition of tech companies, nonprofits, and academics joined forces to counter potential adverse impacts.
Machine Learning Research
Leveling the Playing Field
Deep reinforcement learning has given machines apparent hegemony in vintage Atari games, but their scores have been hard to compare — with one another or with human performance — because there are no rules governing what machines can and can’t do to win. Researchers aim to change that.
Business
Automation’s Frontier: Fast Food
Quick-service restaurants are experiencing record-high employee turnover, while labor advocates are pushing for higher wages. Some experts say these forces are propelling the fast food industry toward full automation.
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: Autonomous Nuclear Weapons?!, Fighting Deepfakes, Recognizing Chimps, Automating Fast Food
When it comes to artificial intelligence, one of the biggest mistakes large companies make is thinking tactically rather than strategically. What’s the difference? Some taxi companies thought they had the internet revolution...
Letters
Think Strategically, Not Tactically
When it comes to artificial intelligence, one of the biggest mistakes large companies make is thinking tactically rather than strategically. What’s the difference? Some taxi companies thought they had the internet...
Tech & Society
Can AI Wage War? Should It?
The U.S. military is developing a new generation of automated weaponry. Some people are calling for automated generals as well.
Machine Learning Research
Points Paint the Picture
Creating a virtual representation of a scene using traditional polygons and texture maps involves several complex operations, and even neural-network approaches have required manual preprocessing. Researchers propose a new deep-learning pipeline that visualizes scenes with far less fuss.
Tech & Society
How to Share Dangerous AI
OpenAI raised eyebrows in February when it announced — and withheld — the full version of its groundbreaking language model, GPT-2. Six months later, the company has re-examined the decision.
Science
Seeing Cancer
Microscopes outfitted with AI-driven augmented reality could improve the accuracy of cancer diagnoses. Google Health developed an attachment for analog microscopes that outlines signs of breast and prostate cancer in real time.