There’s something about the week after Labor day. It seems like every industry starts firing on all cylinders with deals, meetings, and new developments. The AI industry is no different as we saw a plethora of fascinating developments.
Highlights include Renesas’ $6.7bn purchase of IDT to expand further into autonomous vehicles, the Pentagon’s $2bn investment in AI, another Chinese AI startup pursuing an IPO, a meditation app making moves with an AI acquisition, and more.
This week also saw Elon Musk, Kai-Fu Li (Google’s former #1 in China), and Secretary of Defense James Mattis all separately criticize Trump’s lack of focus on a national AI strategy. Not trying to get political, but 45, please do something useful for once and get your act together on this one. It’s the ultimate way to “Make America Great Again”. Just make sure the algorithms aren’t too biased…
Company developments:
Cisco launches UCS system for AI, machine learning, deep learning – Sept. 10, 2018 (ZD Net)
- Cisco is expanding its Unified Computer System portfolio with optimized systems for artificial intelligence and machine learning using Nvidia’s latest GPUs
- Cisco rolled out the UCS C480 ML M5 Rack Server, which is designed for deep neural networks. The UCS C480 ML M5 Rack Server is 4U with the latest Intel Xeon processors and 8 Nvidia Tesla V100-32G GPUs with NVLink interconnects
Samsung launches a new artificial intelligence center in New York City – Sept. 10, 2018 (Sam Mobile)
- Samsung’s new AI Center is located in the heart of Chelsea. It will be led by Daniel D. Lee who is the executive vice president of Samsung Research. His work in this field has earned him praise across the globe. He joined Samsung in June last year. Daniel D. Lee will be aided by a leading authority in neuroscience-based AI technologies, H. Sebastian Seung, who is also an executive vice president of Samsung Research
- The company says that this particular AI Center will be focused on advanced artificial intelligence research in robotics. In addition to being an EVP, Seung is the Chief Research Scientist at Samsung as well and will advise the company on advanced AI search with a view to develop opportunities for future business growth
GM keeping “options open” for autonomous ride-sharing service – Sept. 8, 2018 (Axios)
- Speaking at an Axios event in Boston on Friday, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company is flexible when it comes to any partners for its on-demand driverless car efforts
- “We’ll deploy the technology in an urban environment, a ride-share environment, next year. We’ve said we’re either going to do that on our own [or] we’re going to do that with one or more partners. We’re keeping our options open right now.” – Mary Barra, CEO
Samsung to open up Bixby AI assistant to third-party developers – Sept. 4, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant has more than 30,000 apps, and estimates put the Google Assistant’s total at about 3,000. Now Samsung wants a slice of the pie. DJ Koh, CEO of Samsung’s mobile division, today told CNBC that the company will allow developers to build apps for Bixby later this year
- As previously announced, the South Korean electronics giant will introduce a software development kit (SDK) at the annual Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco on November 7 and 8, along with an API. The former will pack all the resources and documentation necessary to build apps for Bixby, while the API will allow third parties to integrate Bixby with new and existing apps
IBM’s new system automatically selects the optimal AI algorithm – Sept. 4, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Martin Wistuba, a data scientist at IBM Research Ireland, described in a recent blog post and accompanying paper the method. He claims it’s 50,000 times faster than other approaches, with only a small increase in error rate
- Here’s the crux of Wistuba’s “neuro-evolutional” system: Convolutional neural network architectures are treated as sequences of “neuro-cells,” which mutate — i.e., gain or lose layers — until a structure that improves their performance with a given dataset and task is identified. The mutations don’t affect the network’s predictions, and they substantially speed up training time, he wrote
Baidu Launches ‘No-Code’ Tool for Building Machine Learning Models – Sept. 4, 2018 (Top 500)
- According to the company’s press release, EZDL is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the kind of software expertise necessary to code machine learning applications, most of which rely on deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, to name a few. Although these frameworks offer some level of abstraction, they still require a fair amount of programmer proficiency
M&A:
Chipmaker Renesas goes deeper into autonomous vehicles with $6.7B acquisition – Sept. 10, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- The acquisition of IDT — which is being made at a 29.5 percent premium to its share price as of August 30 — is set to expand Renesas’ expertise on autonomous vehicles. The firm said it would also broaden its business into the “data economy” space, such as robotics, data centers and other types of connected devices
- Renesas produces microprocessor and circuits that power devices, and automotive is its core focus. It is second only to NXP on supply, and more than half of its revenue comes from automotive. IDT, meanwhile, includes power management and memory among its products, which focus on wireless networks and the converting and storing of data. Those are two areas that are increasingly important with the growth of connected devices and particularly vehicles which demand high levels of data streaming and interaction
Meditation app Headspace bets on voice and AI with Alpine.AI acquisition – Sept. 4, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Headspace, a meditation app with 31 million users that is valued at $320 million, is doubling down on voice and A.I. technology to help differentiate itself from the rest of the wellness pack. The company today has announced that it has acquired Alpine.AI (previously called VoiceLabs), one of the early players in the digital assistant market, to bring more voice interaction into its main app
- Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition includes both the team and the technology, Headspace said. The team joining will include Alpine.AI co-founder and CTO Alexandre Linares and three engineers. Alpine.AI CEO Adam Marchick will retain an advisory role going forward
Fundraising / investment:
ParkWhiz raises $20 million to help ready parking facilities for driverless cars – Sept. 7, 2018 (Chicago Tribune)
- Chicago-based ParkWhiz announced Friday that it has raised $20 million in new venture capital and plans to use the investment to fund its quest to ready parking facilities for driverless cars
- Pennsylvania-based NewSpring Capital led the most recent round of funding. Other investors include Chicago private equity firm Baird Capital, Chicago-based venture capital firm Jump Capital and international venture capital firm Beringea. Glenn Rieger, a general partner at NewSpring, will join ParkWhiz’s board of directors
FCA US Invests $30 Million in All-new Autonomous Driving and Advanced Testing Facility at Chelsea Proving Grounds – Sept. 5, 2018 (The Virginia Pilot)
- Fiat Chrysler dedicates all-new facility for testing of autonomous driving, Advanced Driver-assistance Systems (ADAS), advanced safety technology and assessment to third-party safety ratings6,500-square-foot command center houses vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, facility control and monitoring, and test vehicle support
- More than $30 million will be invested at its Chelsea Proving Grounds in southeast Michigan to further development and testing of autonomous vehicle and advanced safety technologies. The all-new facility, which begins testing programs in September, features a dedicated autonomous highway-speed track, 35-acre safety-feature evaluation area and a high-tech command center
China’s AI-Powered English Teacher LAIX Files For US$100M US IPO – Sept. 4, 2018 (China Money Network)
- Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm LAIX Inc. which operates the online English language learning platform Liulishuo, is planning to hit the US market with an initial public offering size of US$100 million, according to the prospectus
- LAIX had confidentially filed for floating IPO on June 13, 2018, without disclosing any financial terms. But the company had confirmed Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as the joint underwriters on the deal. The company would trade under the ticker symbol “LAIX”
Partnerships:
Machine learning helps UI Health Care reduce surgical site infection by 74%, save $1.2 million – Sept. 10, 2018 (Healthcare IT News)
- To date, the health system’s innovation with AI analytics has led to a 74 percent reduction in surgical site infection over a three-year period, which at scale is a $1.2 million cost savings – not including savings from value-based purchasing because of the reduced surgical site infection rate
- The university is co-developing the machine learning technology with vendor DASH Analytics. The system is called the DASH Analytics High-Definition Care Platform, or HDCP. Its proprietary design uses machine learning as it provides valuable data, metrics and decision support at critical moments during the point-of-care timeline
Driverless shuttle pilot project launches in Calgary – Sept. 5, 2018 (Global News)
- Dubbed “ELA” or “Electric Autonomous,” the month-long autonomous vehicle pilot project starts rolling Saturday. Federal and civic leaders were the first to test the shuttle on Wednesday
- A public-private partnership, the ELA shuttle is sponsored by Pacific Western Transportation, Telus, Atco, with a $50,000 grant from the federal government’s Program to Advance Connectivity and Automation in the Transportation System
Megvii, MediaTek, Himax Team Up to Deliver Cost-Effective 3D Facial Recognition to Android – Sept. 5, 2018 (Find Biometrics)
- The collaboration is between Himax, a fabless semiconductor component manufacturer; fabless chip maker MediaTek; and Megvii, a company specializing in AI-driven 3D facial recognition and face modelling. Together, the companies are developing an ‘Active Stereo Camera’ (ASC) 3D sensing reference design aimed at Android smartphones, which the companies say will offer cost benefits enabling smartphone makers to bring 3D facial recognition to mass market devices
Machine Learning Company Infinia ML Partners With Duke University to Help Emerging Entrepreneurs Make Business Impact – Sept. 5, 2018 (Business Insider)
- Infinia ML, an advanced machine learning company that delivers automation solutions and predictive analytics to enterprise businesses, today announced a partnership with Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering to integrate machine learning into the school’s entrepreneurial instruction
- Starting in the 2018-2019 school year, engineering students will attend lectures on machine learning from Infinia ML leaders including CEO Robbie Allen and executive chairman Mike Salvino. In addition, Infinia ML will work with Duke startups to implement machine learning in their businesses
Shiji and Fliggy partner to pioneer facial recognition hotel check-in and payment – Sept. 4, 2018 (Travel Daily News)
- Shiji working with Alibaba’s Fliggy (formerly known as AliTrip), have achieved a hotel industry first by integrating full facial recognition for hotel check-in including credit authorization for 50 hotels in Hainan district of China
- Fliggy provided the reservation and customer data with Shiji providing the integration, distribution, payment gateway and on-property systems to provide a seamless guest experience for the China travelers
Research / studies:
Researchers develop a method that reduces gender bias in AI datasets – Sept. 7, 2018 (Venture Beat)
- Researchers from the University of California developed a novel training solution that “preserve[s] gender information” in word vectors while “compelling other dimensions to be free of gender influence.” They describe their model in a paper (“Learning Gender-Neutral Word Embeddings“) published this week on the preprint server Arxiv.org
- “[P]rior studies show that … [machine learning] models learned from human-generated corpora are often prone to exhibit social biases, such as gender stereotypes,” the team wrote. “For example, the word ‘programmer’ is neutral to gender by its definition, but an embedding model trained on a news corpus associates ‘programmer’ closer with ‘male’ than ‘female.’ Such a bias substantially affects downstream applications.”
Machine learning predicts metabolism, helping drug developers and brewers – Sept. 5, 2018 (Phys.org)
- Machine learning algorithms that can predict yeast metabolism from its protein content have been developed by scientists at the Francis Crick Institute. The findings could provide a basis for brewers to have greater control over the flavour of their beer, and scientists to personalise treatments for metabolic disorder patients, in the future
- The latest study, published in Cell Systems, shows that to a large extent, the metabolism of brewer’s yeast (S. cerevisiae) is predictable by machine learning algorithms, if they are provided with large amounts of protein expression information
China-developed AI helps assess brain injury patients – Sept. 4, 2018 (China Daily)
- Chinese researchers and doctors have built an artificial intelligence (AI) model with medical imaging to help determine whether patients with severe brain damage might regain consciousness. Severe brain injury can lead to disorders of consciousness (DOC). Some patients can recover from an acute brain injury, but others fall into chronic DOC, also known as a vegetative state. They cannot communicate or act consciously
- To train the AI, developers fed it tens of thousands of brain images of 63 DOC patients at least one month after their brain injury. The model diagnosed patients who would recover consciousness and those who would not with an accuracy of 88 percent in 100 cases. The research was recently published in the international journal eLife. Reviewers of the journal were impressed by the sample size used in the paper, but Song thought more data was still needed to confirm the validity and reliability of the model
Two UCSB junior engineering faculty members receive the DARPA Young Faculty award – Sept. 4, 2018 (Phys.org)
- Two of UC Santa Barbara’s junior engineering faculty members have received the prestigious Young Faculty Award from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). William Wang, in the College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science, and Jonathan Klamkin, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, join 34 other up-and-coming researchers for 2018
Government / policy:
The Pentagon plans to spend $2 billion to put more artificial intelligence into its weaponry – Sept. 8, 2018 (The Verge)
- The Defense Department’s cutting-edge research arm has promised to make the military’s largest investment to date in artificial intelligence (AI) systems for U.S. weaponry, committing to spend up to $2 billion over the next five years in what it depicted as a new effort to make such systems more trusted and accepted by military commanders
- The agency sees its primary role as pushing forward new technological solutions to military problems, and the Trump administration’s technical chieftains have strongly backed injecting artificial intelligence into more of America’s weaponry as a means of competing better with Russian and Chinese military forces
Trump’s battle against Silicon Valley may create an opening for China in artificial intelligence – Sept. 8, 2018 (CNBC)
- A recent report indicated that Secretary of Defense James Mattis urged President Trump to focus on the threat from China’s artificial intelligence ambitions. Trump has been relentlessly attacking Silicon Valley’s leading tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Twitter
- The divide between Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley threatens a partnership that will be critical to maintaining the U.S. lead in AI as China invests heavily. On Friday, the military’s research arm, DARPA, announced its first major AI investment plan, $2 billion over five years
Elon Musk says China has an advantage because its politicians are better at science – Sept. 7, 2018 (CNBC)
- If American politicians were better at science, then it would help tech companies with innovation, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk
- Politicians in China, including the mayor of Beijing, were better at science, he said on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast called “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
- The role of government in the technology sector is a frequently debated topic around the world
Events:
Panasonic to demo facial recognition tech at Security Essen 2018 – Sept. 9, 2018 (Biometric Update)
- Panasonic will showcase its FacePRO facial recognition solution at the booth of its technology partner Genetec later this month at Security ESSEN 2018. Panasonic will demonstrate the benefits of facial recognition with the Genetec Security Center
- FacePRO can identify faces that are difficult to recognize with common video surveillance technology. These situations include reading faces at an angle of up to 45 degrees to the left or right or 30 degrees up or down, with a 90% accuracy rate when detecting faces partially hidden by sunglasses or face masks. FacePRO also has high accuracy reads in matching faces taken from up to ten-year-old passport images
Koch Disruptive Technologies’ Jason Illian to discuss investing in AI at VentureBeat’s Blueprint event – Sept. 7, 2018 (Venture Beat)
- Jason Illian, managing director of Koch Disruptive Technologies, is one of the speakers who will be appearing at VentureBeat’s upcoming Blueprint conference in York, Pennsylvania on October 9-11. At the event, speakers including Illian will discuss how both private companies and Heartland cities can prepare to capitalize on advancements in automation and AI
China is beating the US on AI, says noted investor Kai-Fu Lee – Sept. 5, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, Lee — who led Google in China before it left the country — said any lead America’s tech industry may have enjoyed is rapidly being eroded by hungry Chinese entrepreneurs who have oodles more data at their disposal to build, train and deploy AI systems
- “Now, China, as the largest marketplace with the largest amount of data, is really using AI to find every way to add value to traditional businesses, to internet, to all kinds of spaces. The Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem is huge so today the most valuable AI companies in computer vision, speech recognition, drones are all Chinese companies,” Lee added
Lockheed Martin offers $250K prize for first AI drone to beat human pilot – Sept. 5, 2018 (CNET)
- Lockheed Martin, the Drone Racing League and NVIDIA launched a challenge Wednesday called AlphaPilot, which asks participants to create artificial intelligence technology that allows autonomous drones to out-race human-piloted drones
- The challenge opens later this year and the races will be held during the Drone Racing League’s new Artificial Intelligence Robotic Racing Circuit starting next year. The grand prize winner will get $1 million. The first team to beat a drone piloted by a human in a race will win $250,000. More than $2 million in total prizes will be awarded to top participants, Lockheed Martin said on a website page announcing the competition