Jun 10, 2020

Last week, I wrote about the diversity problem in AI and why we need to fix it. I asked you to tell us about your experiences as a Black person in AI or share the names of Black colleagues you admire.

The ocean contains distinct ecosystems, but they’re much harder to see than terrestrial forests or savannas. A new model helps scientists better understand patterns of undersea life, which is threatened by pollution, invasive species, and warming temperatures.

Machine learning researchers report better and better results, but some of that progress may be illusory. Some models that appear to set a new state of the art haven’t been compared properly to their predecessors, Science News reports based on several published surveys.

Reinforcement learning can beat humans at video games, but humans are better at coming up with strategies to master more complex tasks. New work enables neural networks to connect the dots.

Machines took another step toward doing the work of journalists. Microsoft laid off dozens of human editors who select articles for the MSN news service and app. Going forward, AI will do the job.

Vendors of face recognition are updating their tech as people don masks to protect against Covid-19. Police are bound to take notice. Companies that provide computer vision systems, including at least one that supplies law enforcement agencies, are training models to recognize obscured faces.

Last week, I wrote about the diversity problem in AI and why we need to fix it. I asked you to tell us about your experiences as a Black person in AI or share the names of Black colleagues you admire. Thank you to everyone who responded.

In any training dataset, some classes may have relatively few examples. A new technique can improve a trained model’s performance on such underrepresented classes. Researchers introduced a method that synthesizes extracted features of underrepresented classes.