Sep 11, 2019

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

The U.S. military is developing a new generation of automated weaponry. Some people are calling for automated generals as well.