AI Day: Elon Musk unveils ‘friendly’ humanoid robot Tesla Bot

During Tesla’s AI Day event, CEO Elon Musk unveiled a robot that is “intended to be friendly”.

Musk has been one of the most prominent figures to warn that AI is a “danger to the public” and potentially the “biggest risk we face as a civilisation”. In 2017, he even said there was just a “five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe]”.

Speaking about London-based DeepMind in a New York Times interview last year, Musk said: “Just the nature...

20 August 2021 | Robotics

Baidu debuts Brain 7.0 alongside mass production of Kunlun II chip

Baidu has debuted version 7.0 of its open AI platform Brain alongside reporting that mass production has begun of its second-gen Kunlun chip.

The tech giant is often considered as “China’s Google” and, just like its Western counterpart, is one of the largest AI companies in the world.

"AI technology is growing increasingly complex, and integrated innovation has made AI more powerful," said Haifeng Wang, CTO of Baidu.

“As AI technology plays an expanding...

19 August 2021 | Deep & Reinforcement Learning

Social media algorithms are still failing to counter misleading content

As the Afghanistan crisis continues to unfold, it’s clear that social media algorithms are unable to counter enough misleading and/or fake content.

While it’s unreasonable to expect that no disingenuous content will slip through the net, the sheer amount that continues to plague social networks shows that platform-holders still have little grip on the issue.

When content is removed, it should either be prevented from being reuploaded or at least flagged as...

17 August 2021 | Ethics & Society

Ram Chakravarti, CTO, BMC Software: On the benefits of AIOps and autonomous digital enterprises

Businesses around the world are looking to AI technologies to increase productivity, minimise risks, and, ultimately, gain a competitive advantage.

AI plays a key role in making what BMC Software calls an ADE (Autonomous Digital Enterprise). These cutting-edge businesses know how to wield the latest technologies to minimise manual tasks and maximise the use of uniquely human talents.

AI News joined Ram Chakravarti, CTO of BMC Software, to discuss autonomous digital...

13 August 2021 | Enterprise

City of Melbourne trials Nokia’s AI tech to keep streets clean and safe

The City of Melbourne is trialing AI technology from Nokia to help increase the cleanliness and safety of the area’s streets.

The local government area is located in Victoria, Australia, and has an area of 37 square kilometers and a population of around 183,756. Illegal waste dumping in the city is a problem that causes both hygiene and safety problems.

Using Nokia’s Scene Analytics AI technology, the city hopes to gain a deeper understanding of waste disposal...

12 August 2021 | Legislation & Government

Cognizant: A “vicious cycle” is holding AI deployments back

A new study from Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work has found that a “vicious cycle” is holding AI deployments back, with just 20 percent considered leaders that are powering ahead.

Few businesses are at the top of the “AI maturity curve,” according to Cognizant’s framework. Just 20 percent are considered AI leaders while the majority (61%) are “implementers” (defined as making progress, but not yet mature) or beginners (19%).

Respondents in the...

9 August 2021 | Enterprise

Going for gold: Britain can set the standard in ethical AI

A study by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT has found the UK can set the “gold standard” in ethical artificial intelligence.

The UK – home to companies including DeepMind, Graphcore, Oxbotica, Darktrace, BenevolentAI, and others – is Europe’s leader in AI. However, the country is unable to match the funding and support available to counterparts residing in countries like the US and China.

Many experts have instead suggested that the UK should tap its...

5 August 2021 | Ethics & Society

UK considers blocking Nvidia’s $40B acquisition of Arm

Bloomberg reports the UK is considering blocking Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm over national security concerns.

Over 160 billion chips have been made for various devices based on designs from Arm. In recent years, the company has added AI accelerator chips to its lineup for neural network processing.

In the wake of the proposed acquisition, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said:

“ARM is an incredible company and it employs some of the greatest engineering...

4 August 2021 | Companies

Aussie court rules AIs can be credited as inventors under patent law

A federal court in Australia has ruled that AI systems can be credited as inventors under patent law in a case that could set a global precedent.

Ryan Abbott, a professor at University of Surrey, has launched over a dozen patent applications around the world – including in the UK, US, New Zealand, and Australia – on behalf of US-based Dr Stephen Thaler.

The twist here is that it’s not Thaler which Abbott is attempting to credit as an inventor, but rather his AI...

3 August 2021 | Legislation & Government

Twitter turns to HackerOne community to help fix its AI biases

Twitter is recruiting the help of the HackerOne community to try and fix troubling biases with its AI models.

The image-cropping algorithm used by Twitter was intended to keep the most interesting parts of an image in the preview crop in people’s timelines. That’s all good, until users found last year that it favoured lighter skin colours over dark and the breasts and legs of women over their faces.

When researchers fed a picture of a black man and a white woman into...

2 August 2021 | Applications