AnalysisMost neural networks are like people with savant syndrome: they have extraordinary capabilities in a very narrow range of tasks. Now a new system built by researchers at OpenAI is more of a polymath, and has learned to perform simple language tasks without human supervision nor task-specific training. Modern neural-network …

AnalysisNeural networks trained for object recognition tend to identify stuff based on their texture rather than shape, according to this latest research. That means take away or distort the texture of something, and the wheels fall off the software. Artificially intelligence may suck at, for instance, reading and writing, but it can …

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday kickstarting the American AI Initiative, a strategic plan to keep the nation ahead of its competitors in artificial intelligence. “Continued American leadership in Artificial Intelligence is of paramount importance to maintaining the economic and national security of …

RoundupHere's a quick summary of recent AI news to kickstart your week beyond what we've already reported. DeepMind sets its eyes on a new game: With Go, chess, old Atari games, and StarCraft under its belt, DeepMind is taking on a new challenge: the card game Hanabi. Unlike previous games, Hanabi is a cooperative game and players …

The common honeybee is clever enough to do simple arithmetic, according to research published on Wednesday. Bio-boffins at RMIT University and Monash University in Australia, and the University of Toulouse, France, claim to have discovered this ability in bees over a series of experiments. Fourteen nectar slurpers were …

What’s the latest game artificially intelligent software can play, you ask? Well, it’s Pictionary. AI researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), in Seattle, USA, have built Iconary, an “AI-powered drawing and guessing game” inspired by Pictionary. You can play against a bot, AllenAI, with one of you …

AI is the latest recruit in the ongoing efforts to stamp out the scourge of human trafficking – by helping police figure out which hotels victims are being held. Hundreds of thousands of people are shuttled across borders every year against their will and exploited, most of them young women coerced into prostitution. …

RoundupHere's a roundup of this week's other AI news. In short: experts continue to snub Amazon's facial recognition service Rekognition, and there's a new deepfake for you to stare at in horror. China and the US are miles ahead: A study compiled by the UN World Intellectual Property Organization found that China and the US both …

VidHere’s a robot you could take down the pub with you. It won’t bore you to death with politics and sport, nor add to your round, though it will kill time playing Jenga with you. Jenga needs no introduction, other than to say it requires dexterity and spatial awareness. Both of these things are pretty innate in humans but not so …

AI algorithms can help scientists process brain waves and convert them directly into speech, according to new research. "Our voices help connect us to our friends, family and the world around us, which is why losing the power of one's voice due to injury or disease is so devastating,” said Nima Mesgarani, senior author of the …

RoundupHello, here’s this week’s roundup of all things robot and AI-related. We’re talking delivery robots, self-driving cars, and a new natural language dataset to play with. Autonomous delivery robots are coming: Amazon is testing out an autonomous delivery service using a small, six-wheeled robot called Scout. Scout relies on …

AnalysisAlphaStar, DeepMind’s latest AI bot, crushed professional gamers playing popular strategy video game StarCraft II during a demonstration broadcast online Thursday. DeepMind has had its eyes on the StarCraft II for a while. Back in 2016, it announced a partnership with Starcraft creators Blizzard Entertainment, to work together …

Artificially intelligent software can help slash the wait times for patients anxious to see the results of their X-ray scans, it is claimed. Long waiting times are the bane of hospitals worldwide. And, so, researchers from the King’s College London and the University of Warwick in old Blighty believe they can alleviate the X- …

Pure Storage and Cisco have linked arms to build a converged FlashStack system for AI, a kind of AIRI microMINI but one that will run at half the speed. FlashStack is a line of reference architecture converged systems using Pure Storage all-flash arrays, Cisco UCS servers and Nexus switches. It has typically competed with the …

Reverse ferret. Months after Gartner researchers confirmed a pitifully low proportion of CIOs were actually unleashing AI into the wild, the latest survey paints an entirely different picture. Confused? So are we. Back in June, Gartner found that just 4 per cent of CIOs had invested in and deployed AI, the latest garment to be …

The human genome is hiding secrets that point to a mystery ancestor alongside our hominid cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans, according to AI software. Homo sapiens, the only surviving species in the homo genus, once bred with its extinct relatives Homo neanderthalensis and Homo denisova hundreds of thousands of years ago …

RoundupHello, here’s a very quick roundup of some of the interesting AI announcements from this week. Read on if you like robots and GPUs. Nvidia robotics lab opens: Nvidia’s AI robotics lab has officially opened its doors after CEO Jensen Huang paid a visit to its Seattle office. The lab was announced back in November last year …

VidRobots normally need to be programmed in order to get them to perform a particular task, but they can be coaxed into writing the instructions themselves with the help of machine learning, according to research published in Science. Engineers at Vicarious AI, a robotics startup based in California, USA, have built what they …