Katyanna Quach

Roundup Hello, welcome to this week's roundup in AI. The machines have been sending us spooky messages on Google Translate, Facebook is hiring more academics to start new labs and some prat decided to step on a self-driving car in California. AI sends us secret apocalyptic messages: What’s that Google? Jesus is going to return when …

NSFW Artificially intelligent software is used more and more to automatically detect and ban nude images on social networks and similar sites. However, today's algorithms and models aren't perfect at clocking racy snaps, and a lot of content moderation still falls to humans. Enter an alternative solution: use AI to magically draw …

Scientists believe they have captured direct evidence of a star feasting on its own planets for the first time. RW Aur, a binary star system located in the Auriga constellation 450 light years from Earth, has long puzzled astronomers. The light from one of its stars, RW Aur A, repeatedly dims and flickers back to life every …

Machine learning can help robots perform chemistry experiments faster than fleshy boffins, according to research published in Nature. Researchers have been exploring how algorithms can predict the outcome of chemical reactions for a while, but this project goes one step further and actually uses a real robot to carry out some …

Hundreds of organisations and thousands of techies, including Elon Musk, Demis Hassabis from Google's DeepMind, and the head of the Chocolate Factory's AI lab Jeff Dean have promised never to support the development of autonomous weapons. The pledge was organised by the Future of Life Institute, an outreach geroup focused on …

An engineer is suing Pinscreen, a startup that supposedly uses AI to generate cartoon avatars of people, claiming he was illegally fired and assaulted after confronting the CEO about its allegedly faked technology. In a court document filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, in the US, Iman Sadeghi, accused his former …

Video AI can help neurologists automatically map the connections between different neurons in brain scans, a tedious task that can take hundreds and thousands of hours. In a paper published in Nature Methods, AI researchers from Google collaborated with scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology to inspect the brain of …

Jupiter already had the most moons in the Solar System, but now scientists have discovered twelve new ones bringing the total up to 79. They were first spotted last year by a team of astronomers originally on the hunt for the elusive Planet Nine, a hypothetical body speculated to exist beyond Neptune. Unfortunately, they …

Roundup Hello, here are some quick AI announcements from this week. A researcher reminds us to be wary of the hype around Montezuma's Revenge, there are some new framework updates from Google and Microsoft, and a new Google Brain office in Amsterdam. Montezuma’s Revenge isn’t solved yet: OpenAI and DeepMind researchers have boasted …

Microsoft has urged US Congress to regulate the American government's use of facial-recognition technology provided by, er, Microsoft and others. This plea comes just weeks after the Windows giant came under heavy fire for offering facial-recognition services to Uncle Sam's controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( …

AI can help scientists spot tiny folding protein crystals, and thus one day potentially assist eggheads in designing new drugs, according to a paper published in PLOS One. To demonstrate this form of boffinry is possible, a large team of researchers from academia and industry, including bods at Duke University in the US and …

Machine learning algorithms can help scientists predict chemical toxicity to a similar degree of accuracy as animal testing, according to a paper published this week in Toxicological Sciences. A whopping €3bn (over $3.5bn) is spent every year to study how the negative impacts of chemicals on animals like rats, rabbits or …

Mars was once covered in hundreds of giant dunes as big as the US Capitol Building billions of years ago, according to new research. A pair of scientists from the University of Washington have discovered more than 300 crescent-shaped structures wedged into the eastern side of Hellas Planitia, an impact crater measuring over 2, …

The US Department of Defense is exploring whether or not it's worth using artificially intelligent software to suggest levels of classification for information – and control who gets access to it. A sneak peek into the military's formal request for ideas on the matter, filed back in May, and the recent responses from tech …

Video Don’t worry if the lighting is a bit off in your photos – artificially intelligent software can fix that. Computer scientists from Nvidia, Aalto University in Finland, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, have trained a neural network to restore images marred by flecks of noise. Computer vision algorithms …

The US tax authority – the Internal Revenue Service – is looking at how AI can secure and protect taxpayers’ data held on its servers. It recently filed a request for information aimed at experts that can help guide the IRS into possibly developing a platform that uses machine learning to sniff out and react to threats. The …

Scientists have spotted the brightest ancient quasar formed when the universe was less than billion years old, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. The newly discovered quasar, known by its not very catchy name PSO J352.4034-15.3373 or P352-15, also shoots out huge jets of plasma that appear extremely …

Roundup Hello, here's a quick roundup of some announcements from the world of AI this week. OpenAI researchers reach the highest score yet on the computer game Montezeuma's Revenge through reinforcement learning, DeepMind teaches its bots to play Capture the Flag on Quake III Arena and the US Department of Education are exploring the …

Video Spiders can detect the Earth’s electric field, and use it to lift off and fly through the air, according to new research. The creepy creatures raise their legs and point their bulbous bodies to the sky before shooting lines of silk, using the material to float away in a gentle breeze. The process known as ballooning can carry …

Scientists have built neural networks from DNA molecules that can recognise handwritten numbers, a common task in deep learning, according to a paper published in Nature on Wednesday. It’s pretty easy for traditional convolutional neural networks. Now, scientists are testing wackier models on the MNIST database of training …

Around eight to ten billion years ago, a neighbouring dwarf galaxy known as the Sausage galaxy smashed into the Milky Way leaving a smattering of gas, dust, and stars. A team of astrophysicists have traced back the leftover debris to piece together the cosmic catastrophe detailed in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of …

Roundup Welcome to this week's AI roundup – a mix of news and links beyond what we've already published this week. State of AI: Time to get clued up on artificial intelligence. Two investors interested in machine learning have put together a review of today's technologies, and how it will shape our future. Nathan Benaich, a venture …

The International Space Station will get its first AI-powered friend-droid by next week, after it was bundled into a Dragon capsule and launched into orbit aboard a Space X Falcon Rocket on Friday. It’s a weird looking circular unit measuring five kilograms with no arms or legs, just a rectangular screen, kind of like a giant …

AI may help people with diabetes monitor their blood sugar levels without puncturing their own skin, according to a research from the University of Waterloo. Most diabetics have to prick their fingers multiple times a day to draw a drop of blood to be dabbed onto a strip of test paper, before it is fed into a blood glucose …

Pic 'Oumuamua, the odd elongated cigar-shaped interstellar object zipping through the Solar System, continues to flummox scientists. What is that thing? At first, there were a group of fantasists who believed it was an alien starship. Those claims were quickly debunked by researchers who classified it as an interstellar asteroid …