machine learning
Could AI take control of human birth?
Instead of looking up at the sky to see whether you need an umbrella, people increasingly ask virtual assistants such as Alexa. And they may be wise to do so. AI methods are powerful – capable of anything from analysing astrophysical data to detecting tumours or helping to manage diabetes. An algorithm that analyses shopping patterns recently detected that a teenage girl was pregnant, earlier than...[Read More]
Are phones listening to us? What they can learn from the sound of your voice
The vast majority of people in developed countries now carry a smartphone everywhere. And while many of us are already well aware of privacy issues associated with smartphones, like their ability to track our movements or even take surreptitious photos, an increasing number of people are starting to worry that their smartphone is actually listening to everything they say. There might not be much e...[Read More]
Even self-driving cars need driver education
What do self-driving cars and teenage drivers have in common? Experience. Or, more accurately, a lack of experience. Teenage drivers – novice drivers of any age, actually – begin with little knowledge of how to actually operate a car’s controls, and how to handle various quirks of the rules of the road. Their first step in learning typically consists of fundamental instruction conveyed by a teache...[Read More]
How to get culture right when embedding it into AI
If, like Rip Van Winkle, you’ve been asleep for the last decade and have just woken up, that flip phone you have has become super-popular among retro technologists and survivalists alike, and, oh yeah, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is either going to kill you or save you. AI is the latest in a long line of technology buzzwords that have gripped society, and if we are to believe the people at the re...[Read More]
Light Start – Samsung flip-phone, metal machine, Stranger Things 3, and Batman Ninja
Samsung will be launching a new luxury flip phone, the W2018, next year You know that Samsung still makes flip-phones, right? They’re generally for the Asian market, where that type of device never really went away. In fact, it has surged in popularity to the point where Samsung can make something like the newly announced W2018 — a luxury flip-phone. Luxury how? Dual 4.2in HD AMOLED di...[Read More]
Machine learning is solving real problems, from saving energy to combatting blindness
Millions of people go blind every year from a preventable eye disease caused by diabetes. Called diabetic retinopathy, it is devastating to its sufferers and takes an ophthalmologist to diagnose. This is a particular problem in a country like India, which has a huge population and a high prevalence of diabetes but not enough ophthalmologists. “India is set to emerge as the diabetic capital o...[Read More]
The school of hard knocks: driverless cars should learn lessons from crashes
Learning how to drive is an ongoing process for we humans as we adapt to new situations, new road rules and new technology, and learn the lessons from when things go wrong. But how does a driverless car learn how to drive, especially when something goes wrong? That’s the question being asked of Uber after last month’s crash in Arizona. Two of its engineers were inside when one of its autonomous ve...[Read More]
Artificial intelligence: here’s what you need to know to understand how machines learn
From Jeopardy winners and Go masters to infamous advertising-related racial profiling, it would seem we have entered an era in which artificial intelligence developments are rapidly accelerating. But a fully sentient being whose electronic “brain” can fully engage in complex cognitive tasks using fair moral judgement remains, for now, beyond our capabilities. Unfortunately, current developments ar...[Read More]
Google’s teaching computers to learn in Zurich
Machine learning (ML) and deep neural networks are the systems that make it possible to perform voice searches on phones, translate webpages or street signs on the fly, beat human Go masters, or search Google Photos for pictures of cats and actually get useful results. They’re also the key drivers behind artificial intelligence (AI), which is why Google has announced a new, dedicated researc...[Read More]
Machine learning and big data know it wasn’t you who just swiped your credit card
You’re sitting at home minding your own business when you get a call from your credit card’s fraud detection unit asking if you’ve just made a purchase at a department store in your city. It wasn’t you who bought expensive electronics using your credit card – in fact, it’s been in your pocket all afternoon. So how did the bank know to flag this single purchase as most likely fraudulent? Credit car...[Read More]
Google’s release of TensorFlow could be a game-changer in the future of AI
The development of smarter and more pervasive artificial intelligence (AI) is about to shift into overdrive with the announcement by Google this week that TensorFlow, its second-generation machine-learning system, will be made available free to anyone who wants to use it. Machine learning emulates the way the human brain learns about the world, recognising patterns and relationships, understanding...[Read More]