Jun 26, 2019
Robots rely on GPS and prior knowledge of the world to move around without bumping into things. Humans don’t communicate with positioning satellites, yet they’ve wandered confidently, if obliviously, for millennia. A new navigation technology mimics that ability.
The Batch Newsletter
Last Friday, I attended the International Conference on Machine Learning. I spoke at the AI and Climate Change workshop on projects we’re doing to model methane emissions and on wind turbines. John Platt gave an overview of climate issues.
Jun 19, 2019
Tech giants have slowed down their hiring for pure AI research. But don’t let that cool your ambitions. A journalist spoke with six industry insiders about hiring trends. His sources said their companies no longer are building huge research teams. Instead, they’re staffing up AI engineering.
Jun 19, 2019
Images produced by generative adversarial networks can be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a GAN-made 3D representation could be worth a million.
Jun 19, 2019
Neuroscientists developed a system that, they say, can detect subtle signs of psychosis in conversational speech.
Jun 19, 2019
Typical deep reinforcement learning requires millions of training iterations as the network stumbles around in search of the right solution. New research suggests that AI can learn faster by considering its mistakes.
Jun 19, 2019
U.S. representatives mulled over legal precedents for — and impediments to — regulating the realistic computer-generated videos known as deepfakes.
Jun 19, 2019
Drone maker DJI released a toy robot tank that shoots splattering pellets, skitters on omnidirectional wheels, and learns to navigate the playroom battlefield.
The Batch Newsletter
I spoke last week at re:MARS, Amazon's conference focusing on machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. I heard great talks from Jeff Bezos, Kate Darling, Ken Goldberg, Marc Raibert, and others.
Jun 12, 2019
The most widely used image-recognition systems are better at identifying items from wealthy households than from poor ones.
Jun 12, 2019
Generative adversarial networks can synthesize images to help train computer vision systems. But GANs are compute-hungry and don’t always produce realistic output. Now there’s a more efficient and true-to-life alternative.
Jun 12, 2019
Here’s a conundrum: Deep learning could help address a variety of intractable problems, climate change among them. Yet neural networks can consume gargantuan quantities of energy, potentially dumping large amounts of heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere.