Industry breakthroughs
Artificial Intelligence More Accurate Than Lawyers for Reviewing Contracts, New Study Reveals – Feb. 26th, 2018 (PR Newswire)
- In a new study, LawGeex, the leading AI contract review platform, has achieved an average 94% accuracy rate at surfacing risks in Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), one of the most common legal agreements used in business. This compares to an average of 85% for experienced lawyers.
- The study pitted the LawGeex AI solution against 20 US-trained top corporate lawyers with decades of experience, specifically in reviewing NDAs. The participants’ legal and contract expertise spanned experience at companies including Goldman Sachs and Cisco, and global law firms including Alston & Bird and K&L Gates
- Both the lawyers and the LawGeex AI analyzed five previously unseen contracts, containing 153 paragraphs of technical legal language (“legalese”), under controlled conditions precisely modeled on the way lawyers review and approve daily contracts. This is the first time that an AI has been tested with a typical task undertaken by lawyers on a daily basis
- The highest performing lawyer in the study achieved 94% accuracy – matching the AI – while the lowest performing lawyer achieved an average 67% accuracy. The challenge took the LawGeex AI 26 seconds to complete, compared to an average of 92 minutes for the lawyers
Company developments
Rodolfo Rosini enters VC, joins AI and machine learning accelerator Zeroth.ai as Partner – Feb. 28th, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- He’s joined Zeroth.ai, the Hong Kong-based AI and machine learning-focused accelerator, as a Partner — a move Rosini tells me was inspired by the technology’s potential to drive “exponential growth” and his own learnings having founded three AI startups of his own, albeit with limited success
- On joining Zeroth.ai, Rosini says he is bullish about AI because “it’s a force multiplier, bigger than any previous tech revolutions”. But, as it stands, there isn’t a stable supply of smart capital going into early stage AI, which he is hoping to help alter
Ford is bringing its self-driving cars to Miami – Feb. 27, 2018 (The Verge)
- Initially, Ford will test two types of autonomous cars in Miami: the aforementioned blue-and-white research vehicles with hardware and software technology by Argo, a self-driving startup backed by Ford; and self-driving delivery cars that Ford last deployed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in partnership with Domino’s Pizza. Ford said it hoped to eventually have “thousands” of self-driving cars deployed in the city
- Miami will also serve as a testbed for Ford’s forthcoming Transportation Mobility Cloud, an open-sourced platform for cities and other transportation partners that it announced last month at CES. Companies that have announced partnerships with Ford, like Lyft and Postmates, will soon be able to provide ride-hailing trips and deliveries using Ford’s self-driving cars
Algorithmia launches Ethereum-based AI competition – Feb. 27th, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- The company is offering 3 Ethereum tokens (worth more than $2,500 as of this writing) to the team that can provide the best algorithm for determining voter preferences in the last presidential election, broken down by latitude and longitude. That contest, which has been coded into a smart contract, will last for 60 days. The first team to submit the most accurate model will be the winner
- This competition is really a proof-of-concept test of a system that could allow anyone to create their own smart contract and solicit a custom machine learning model to solve a particular problem. That could help organizations that want to apply machine learning to a particular problem but don’t have the resources to hire a data scientist
- Each task has a minimum accuracy requirement, a reward, a date when competition ends, and a dataset associated with the problem. Creators then use the smart contract to establish randomized pools of training data, which are publicly available for data scientists to apply to model creation, and test data, which is kept secret and used only when checking how well models perform
Singapore-Based Conversational Ai Startup Breaks Into North America With Key Bank Clients – Feb. 27th, 2018 (Global Newswire)
- Active.Ai is an enterprise platform for financial services that helps facilitate intelligent micro-conversations. Active.Ai has raised US$11.75m from marquee investors, seen notable success enabling India’s top-tier banks, including four of the country’s largest, as well as insurance companies in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. Its financial services have spanned into other verticals like wealth management and securities trading
- On the heels of launching projects with Axis Bank and CIMB Bank, Active.Ai now has its sights set on the North American market. The 24-month-old company has already established a strong foothold, having secured two new clients in the region
- Active.Ai runs on a proprietary artificial intelligence engine called Triniti that enables financial institutions to have a meaningful, intuitive engagement with their customers across multiple apertures, using messaging, voice, and IOT devices. This unique solution—built from the ground up by Active.Ai—includes Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Natural Language Generation
Pony.ai launches a self-driving ride-hailing fleet for public use in China – Feb. 26th, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Autonomous driving technology startup Pony.ai has become the first company to operate an autonomous ride-hailing service on public roads for public users in China. The company, just over a year-old, recently raised $112 million in a Series A round to help it accelerate its efforts, and its fleet is running a nearly two-mile route in Nansha, Guangzhou, where its China HQ is located
- This launch trial route is basically taking passengers from the Nansha municipal government building to the site of the Nansha Lantern Festival a the city’s civic square
- Its total fleet for testing includes four Lincoln MKZs, as well at two Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) Chuanqis. The GAC vehicles are important because Pony.ai is also announcing a new partnership with the Chinese automaker, with a collaboration covering autonomous driving tech development, as well as mobility services commercialization and operation.
OpenAI Releases Algorithm That Helps Robots Learn from Hindsight – Feb. 26th, 2018 (IEEE Spectrum)
- San Francisco-based AI research company OpenAI is releasing an open source algorithm called Hindsight Experience Replay, or HER, which reframes failures as successes in order to help robots learn more like humans
- The key insight that HER formalizes is what humans do intuitively: Even though you have not succeeded at a specific goal, you have at least achieved a different one. So why not just pretend that you wanted to achieve this goal to begin with, instead of the one that you set out to achieve originally?
- HER lets robots learn with sparse rewards, by treating every attempt as a success at something, changing the goal so that the robot can learn a little bit. Just imagine the robot not succeeding and then being like, “Yeah I totally meant to do that.” With HER, you’d say, “Oh, well, in that case, great, have a cookie!”
LG turns to EyeEm to add AI to its cameras – Feb. 24th, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- LG today announced an updated version of the V30 smartphone and it comes with a supercharged camera powered by a third-party AI system. LG turned to EyeEm to add new features to the camera. Now, thanks to the EyeEm platform, the LG V30S ThinQ and soon the original V30 can automatically detect the subject of the picture — being a hamburger or dachshund — the camera will adjust the settings to produce the best results
- EyeEm’s AI platform runs locally on the device and does not need to pull AI information from the cloud to help with identification. According to a meeting with LG, even though this platform runs locally, it still has the ability to improve its capabilities as its used more
- EyeEm is based out of Berlin, Germany and was founded in 2011. Since then, the company raised $24 million.
Cognoa’s AI platform for autism diagnosis gets first FDA stamp – Feb. 21st, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Cognoa has gained regulatory recognition for its machine learning software as a class II diagnostic medical device for autism — meaning the digital health startup is now positioned to submit an application for full FDA clearance
- It’s gathered enough data to be confident in using the ‘D’ word — having run a pilot with 250,000 parents, offering free screening for their children so it could gather more data to refine its machine learning models
- Cognoa has raised $20.4M to date. Its main investor is the Chinese private investment group Morningside. Vaughan tells TechCrunch it’ll likely be looking to raise another round by the end of this year
Sony Corp. to launch an AI-based taxi-hailing service in Japan – Feb. 20th, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Sony Corporation said today that it will build an AI-based ride-hailing system in Japan in partnership with five taxi companies. The service will use artificial intelligence to manage taxi dispatches and forecast demand based on factors like weather, traffic and local event
- Sony’s announcement came just before Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi, who is currently visiting Asia, said the company wants to form more partnerships with Japanese taxi companies. According to Bloomberg, Khosrowshahi, who joined Uber last August, said he believes Japan is an “incredible opportunity,” but that the company’s previous approach “frankly didn’t work
- Sony’s ride-hailing system will launch this spring in partnership with taxi companies Daiwa Motor Transportation, Hinomaru Kotsu, Kokusai Motorcars, Green Cab and Checker Cab Group
Fundraising / investment
UCL spinout MediaGamma receives £2m – Feb. 26th, 2018 (UK Tech News)
- The startup, which has built an enterprise-grade reinforcement machine learning platform, drew support from the UCL Technology Fund, ParkWalk Advisors and the London Co-Investment Fund
- Rael Cline, CEO, MediaGamma, commented: “This investment will enable us to harness the full potential of our technology by building a self-serve product. This takes advantage a growing appetite from companies to build their own machine learning capabilities, taking control and demanding transparency over the datasets
Vectra raises $36M for its AI-based approach to cybersecurity intrusion detection – Feb. 21st, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- With the trend of growing cybercrime showing no indication of abating, a startup called Vectra that has built an artificial intelligence-based system called Cognito to detect cyberattacks and mobilise security systems to respond to them has raised $36 million to expand its R&D and business development
- This Series D comes on the back of a strong year for the startup, with 181 percent growth in customer subscriptions between 2016 and 2017, and Vectra’s CEO Hitesh Sheth said he expects the same this year
- Typical customers are large enterprises (which is why you don’t see much about pricing on the site) and includes players in the financial, healthcare, government, tech and education sectors. The list the company disclosed to me includes LiveNation/Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Kronos, Tribune Media, Verifone, Agilent, Texas A&M University and DZ Bank in German
Tinyclues, the AI-driven campaign marketing solution, scores $18M Series B – Feb. 22nd, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Tinyclues, the French startup that offers an intelligent campaign marketing solution that uses AI to help push the right products to the right customers, has closed $18 million in Series B investment. Leading the round is EQT Ventures, with participation from existing backers Alven, Elaia Partners, and ISAI
- Using what it describes as “Deep AI technology,” the Tinyclues offering captures business and customer insights contained in first-party data, such as CRM or browsing and checkout history, and then uses this data to predict how buyers will behave with regards to future marketing campaigns
- To that end, Tinyclues says the new capital will be used for continued growth in North America and Europe (the startup has offices in France, U.K. and U.S.). The investment will also support “AI-first” product development to increase the range of intelligence marketing campaigns the brands it sells to can operate
Skelter Labs raises $9M to help put Korea on the global AI map – Feb. 21st, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Skelter Labs, which was founded in 2015 by the former head of tech at Google Korea, announced today that it has raised KRW 10 billion ($9.3 million). Korean internet and messaging giant Kakao is a major backer, investing in the round via both its “KakaoBrain” AI unit and its K-Cube VC firm, both of which are existing investors. Stonebridge Ventures and Lotte Homeshopping, the TV and internet shopping business owned by multi-billion dollar retail giant Lotte, also participated
- Skelter Labs started as a startup studio when it was founded by CEO Ted Cho, the former engineering site director at Google Korea. The company’s early products were based heavily around AI technology, including a flight booking app, chatbot framework and point-of-sale software, but now the company is developing its core AI technology in association with third-parties, too
StatusToday scores nearly $4M to grow its AI-powered ’employee insights’ service – Feb. 20th, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- StatusToday, a London startup that is building out AI tech that it claims can help companies better understand their employees and in turn improve productivity, is disclosing $3.91 million in seed investment. The round is led by LocalGlobe, with participation from Notion Capital and Firstminute Capital
- Founded in 2015 after graduating from company builder Entrepreneur First, StatusToday originally set out to use AI for cyber security, specifically by analysing a company’s internal online comms and other network activity to spot rogue employees or human lapses in security. However, the nascent company has since broadened out its offering, which launched in beta in the middle of last year, to be a more comprehensive employee insights service powered by AI
- Based on the premise that “most companies and managers do not understand their employees,” StatusToday currently plugs into various online company tools, such as those from Microsoft or Google. It then uses meta-data pulled in from these systems and artificial intelligence to analyse employee actions, thus enabling companies to gain better visibility of how their workforce is operating and to make improvements accordingly
Private Sector Partnerships
Microsoft Partners With Xiaomi to Push AI and Cortana in China – Feb. 27th, 2018 (Sanvada)
- In a bid to regain much of what it has lost in the consumer A.I. space, Microsoft has decided to partner with the Chinese company, Xiaomi, to work on several A.I. products and software
- Now, the giant from Redmond did not go into details, but it did state that one of the first products to come from Xiaomi will likely be a Cortana-powered Mi AI speaker. For those who might be unaware of what’s going on, the Mi AI speaker is a budget smart speaker from Xiaomi that is even cheaper than the Amazon Echo Dot
- At the moment, the Invoke is being sold for $150, while the Mi AI Speaker costs about a third of that value. The big downside here is the fact that the Mi AI Speaker is only available in China, but with this partnership and the availability of Cortana, Xiaomi will finally make a move to enter western markets in a big way
Telefónica in AI move with Facebook, Google and Microsoft – Feb. 26th, 2018 (Global Telecom Business)
- Telefónica has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-based service for consumers in six countries in association with Facebook, Google and Microsoft
- “It will help customers talk to the network. We have integrated different technologies into the ecosystem, said Telefónica’s chairman, José María Álvarez-Pallete, speaking on Sunday in Barcelona. “We have integrated Telefónica into a platform company. It is a platform of platforms
- The Aura service means that Telefónica will be able ultimately to work in a similar way to Amazon’s Alexa. Customers will be able to speak requests, prefixed by “OK, Aura”, initially about Telefónica services such as billing information or TV programmes, but eventually much more.
Government / policy
Victoria targets driverless cars – Feb. 26th, 2018 (Innovationaus)
- Legislation paving the way for trials of driverless cars on public roads in Victoria has been passed as competition grows between states to become the hub for the emerging technology in Australia
- The legislation also states that the legal burden for any accidents – or complications with the trial – would fall on the legal entity responsible for the trial
- The applicant must demonstrate that appropriate safety management mechanisms were in place, and a human supervisor would have to be on hand, either inside or outside of the vehicle, just as there is with a human learner driver
Oxfordshire will be government test site for driverless vehicles – Feb. 25th, 2018 (ITV)
- Innovate UK has today announced the award of £2.5 million to trial self-driving vehicles in and around Milton Park, the large, high-tech business and science hub near Didcot
- The 30-month MultiCAV project will be undertaken by a consortium of organisations with different sector backgrounds who are investing in the development of autonomous vehicles, and led by UK transport operator FirstGroup
Autonomous Cars With Remote Human Drivers Coming To Cali – Feb. 24th, 2018 (Android Headlines)
- The California Department of Motor Vehicles may allow autonomous cars with remote human backup drivers to hit the public roads as early as April
- All self-driving vehicles that are currently being tested in the state have human drivers physically present in them as backups but allowing a single operator to remotely monitor multiple vehicles and take control of them if necessary should not only accelerate the process of testing such solutions but also drive down its cost per an autonomous uni
- Should the situation develop in accordance with the estimated roadmap, the DMV may issue the first testing permits as early as April 2. Alphabet’s Waymo and Nissan are both likely to apply for having their driverless technologies approved for public testing as both companies have reportedly pursued such solutions for several years now. A number of startups such as Phantom Auto, Starsky Robotics, and Zoox have also been developing similar services and may benefit from the loosened regulations
Events
Automated Insights to Present on “Innovative Analytics in Action” Panel at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2018 – Feb. 27th, 2018 (Benzinga)
- Automated Insights (Ai), the leader in natural language generation for the enterprise, announced the company will attend, speak, and exhibit at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit March 5-8, 2018 in Grapevine, Texas. Adam Long, VP of Product at Ai, will participate in the panel session “Innovative Analytics in Action” on Sunday, March 4th at 3:30 CST
- During “Innovative Analytics in Action,” Long will discuss how Ai’s NLG platform, Wordsmith, turns data into insight and understanding through written analytics. Ai will also demonstrate how Wordsmith enables the enterprise to generate easy-to-understand, written business intelligence analysis that’s specific to each observer’s organizational role, a capability unique to the platform
- Through Ai’s Wordsmith platform, organizations are equipped with written analytics that update as viewers explore their BI dashboard, resulting in faster understanding of what the data is telling them and, more importantly, what they should do about it.
AI and machine learning in focus at SAS Summit – Feb. 26th, 2018 (Saudi Gazette)
- SAS, the leader in business analytics, hosted the SAS Analytics Summit on Feb. 21 at the Four Seasons Hotel, Kingdom Tower, Al Olay in Riyadh. In an age when analytics is the cornerstone of smarter decision-making, this one-day event aimed at helping regional organizations capitalize on data to gain greater business insights and develop advanced capabilities to innovate
- Themed ‘Bring the Analytics Economy and AI in Action’ SAS experts at the event, discussed various ways organizations can foster innovation through analytics, improve customer service by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine-learning, and more endorsed by speakers from SAS customers such as STC, Arab National Bank, and Saudia Airlines