The creep factor from China was pretty high this week. To start, ~30 of the brightest young minds in China have been recruited to develop AI weapons for the government. These kids aren’t even in college yet, and are already doing this kind of work.
Meanwhile surveillance in the country has reached a new level as the government is now able to identify people based on the way they walk. Looks like hiding your face won’t work anymore.
Finally, China revealed an AI news anchor for its state run media. It’s pretty weird and I don’t really know how to interpret this. Other than the awkward lip movements the AI is pretty solid. I see potential for this to become a common fixture for pushing propaganda 24/7 (since AI doesn’t need a break like us obviously), but hopefully I’m proven wrong. Other news this week can be found below:
Company developments:
Ford open to working with rivals on driverless cars, report says – Nov. 11, 2018 (Automotive News)
- Ford Motor Co. is open to working with foreign rivals to expand self-driving services internationally, the Financial Times reported. The company views collaboration in other regions as making ‘a lot of sense,” the paper reported, citing Ford Autonomous Vehicles CEO Sherif Marakby
- The autonomous vehicle development and business costs ‘billions and billions of dollars’ per region, so it is cost effective on ‘risk and the reward’ to work together to deploy the technology across territories, Marakby told the paper in an interview
Intel launches Xeon E-2100 series, previews Cascade Lake – Nov. 5, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Intel’s Xeon E-2100 series — which was first revealed in July — is designed on the company’s 14nm++ Coffee Lake process and aimed at small and medium-sized businesses and cloud service providers, Spelman explained on a conference call with reporters. It’s optimized for tasks like file-sharing, storage and backup, virtualization, and productivity tasks
- Every SKU in the Xeon E-2100 series has six cores clocked at a base frequency of 3.8GHz (and Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 4.7GHz), with a 12MB cache and thermal design point (TDP) of up to 95 Watts. All but three sport Intel’s HD Graphics P630, a midrange integrated graphics chip with 24 execution units clocked at 350MHz that lacks embedded DRAM
Fundraising / investment:
AFS raises $4 million for AI to profile foods and beverages – Nov. 8, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Artificial intelligence (AI) that can predict delicious food might seem ripped from the pages of science fiction, but New York startup Analytical Flavor Systems (AFS) claims to have pioneered it more than eight years ago. The result takes the form of Gastrograph, a full-stack platform for sensory data collection and machine learning-informed food insights. And according to CEO and founder Jason Cohen, it has attracted the attention of heavy-hitting investors, like AB InBev’s global innovation fund
- AFS today announced that it has raised $4 million in a Series A funding round led by Leawood Venture Capital and Global Brain, with participation from Hyperplane Venture Capital, Bits X Bites, Cornes Technology, and others. As part of the round, Karl Gemperli, Naoki Kamimaeda, Vivjan Myrto, and Eamonn Cary will join the startup’s board
Bonobo AI raises $4.5M seed round to help companies turn interactions with customers into valuable data – Nov. 8, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Bonobo AI, an AI-based platform that helps companies get insights from customer support calls, texts and other interactions, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by G20 Ventures and Capri Ventures. Founded in 2016 and led by co-founder and CEO Efrat Rapoport, the Tel Aviv-based startup claims that its technology has been used to analyze more than a billion interactions so far and that it has signed up a “few dozen” clients, including DreamCloud and Honeybook
- The idea behind Bonobo is that even though customer service texts and voice calls can provide companies with a trove of valuable information, these data points are difficult to aggregate and analyze at scale. Bonobo’s technology integrates into the platforms that its clients use to communicate with customers, like Gmail, Zendesk or Twilio) and CRM platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot. Then it analyzes interactions for “events of interest in calls,” Rapoport told TechCrunch, like “when customers ask for a discount, complain, ask for a missing feature, become dissatisfied, etc.”
HuiyiHuiying Closes Funding Round Led by Intel Capital – Nov. 7, 2018 (BioSpace)
- HuiyiHuiying (HY), a leading medical imaging artificial intelligence (AI) company in China, today announced the previous close of a strategic investment led by Intel Capital with participation of Beijing Singularity Power Investment Fund (SPC), marking the first investments by the firms in the medical AI sector in China. HY will use the funding proceeds to support its business development, product innovation and talent recruitment initiatives
- HY is collaborating with more than 800 medical institutions in China in clinical applications and scientific research projects, including the Chinese PLA General Hospital, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing Friendship Hospital and several medical associations. The company is expanding its business into overseas markets including the United States, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Europe
Taranis raises $20 million for AI-driven crop insights – Nov. 6, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Three-year-old Tel Aviv-based Taranis today announced a $20 million Series B funding round led by Viola Ventures, bringing its total raised to date to $30 million. Finistere Ventures, Vertex Ventures, OurCrowd, Eyal Gura, and Gal Yarden also participated in the round, as did strategic investors Nutrien, Cavallo Ventures, and Sumitomo Corporation Europe
- Taranis’ core product, the eponymous Taranis UHR, captures multispectral imagery — photographs produced by sensors that measure reflected energy within several bands of the electromagnetic spectrum — at 8-12cm using a proprietary sensor pod that minimizes motion blur. The company retains a fleet of 60 Cessna aircraft to perform that photography at scale, frequently at altitudes as low as 10-30m
Engineer.ai raises $29.5M Series A for its AI+Humans software building platform – Nov. 6, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- London and LA-based Engineer.ai launched in an invite-only manner two and a half years ago, bootstrapped by its founders. Its platform combines AI with crowdsourced teams of designers and developers to build bespoke digital products at — they say — twice the speed and less than a third of the cost of traditional software development
- “At a certain level we compete with Gigster albeit we have really taken a very different approach (assembly line and buying excess capacity from over 100 Dev shops in 10 timezones) whereas they are a modern-day consulting shop. This means we have massive scale with access to 32,000 devs and designers, we have over 500 building blocks that save our customers paying for features (code and designs) that we have already done. The dev shops thus also don’t compete with us as we buy capacity from them and will soon be offering them a way to partner on goto market.”
Aiden.ai raises a $1.6M seed round for its AI marketing analyst – Nov. 6, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- Aiden.ai, a London based AI analytics startup, has raised a $1.6M seed round to develop its “AI-powered marketing analyst” which, they claim, is like having an extra person on the marketing team for mobile apps. The round has been led by Partech. Other investors include Sophia Bendz, who previously led marketing at Spotify and Nicolas Pinto, founder of Perceptio, acquired by Apple
Tenzo raises $1.8 million to reduce restaurant food waste with AI – Nov. 5, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Food waste worldwide has reached staggering proportions. Roughly a third of the food produced in the world for human consumption — 1.3 tons — gets lost or wasted every year, amounting to about $680 billion in industrialized countries and $310 billion in developing countries. Altogether, the amount of food wasted annually is equivalent to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crop yield, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations
- That’s what drove former McKinsey associate partner Adam Taylor and Christian Mouysset, a graduate of computer science and economics at the University of Cambridge and previously head of U.K. fast-casual chain Hummus Bros, to found AI restaurant analytics firm Tenzo. The TechStars London 2016 alumnus today announced a $1.8 million funding round led by S28 Capital, with participation from Acequia Capital and Force Over Mass
Hyundai invests in Allegro.ai to bring deep learning to our cars – Nov. 5, 2018 (ZDNet)
- Hyundai has announced a strategic investment in Allegro.ai, a start-up focused on developing deep learning technologies for our future cars
- The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company, founded by Moses Guttman, Gil Westrich, and Nir Bar-Lev, raised initial investment led by Bosch and Samsung in early 2017. Allegro.ai has raised $11 million to date through a Series A funding round
Esperanto Technologies raises $58 million for 7-nanometer AI chips – Nov. 5, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- The artificial intelligence (AI) chips business is hot — red hot, by most accounts. Intel, Google, AMD, Arm, and others are vying for a market some analysts forecast will be worth $91 billion by 2025, and they’re not the only ones. Four-year-old San Francisco startup Esperanto Technologies has a stake in the race, too, and it’s making small but meaningful steps toward challenging the sector’s incumbents
- Esperanto this week announced a $58 million series B funding round led by “numerous” undisclosed venture and strategic capital investors, bringing its total haul to date to $63 million. CEO Dave Ditzel said the cash infusion will help to accelerate development of its first-generation chip lineup
Partnerships:
Daimler and Bosch lay out plans for autonomous taxi service in San Jose – Nov. 8, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- Today, the two jointly reaffirmed with a memorandum of understanding that in the second half of 2019, they’ll pilot “highly” and “fully” autonomous vehicles as part of an on-demand ride-hailing service revealed in July
- Assuming all goes smoothly, Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans capable of level 4/level 5 driving — automated navigation requiring little-to-no human input or oversight, as outlined by the Society of Automotive Engineers — will offer service to “selected user communities” in the San Carlos/Stevens Creek corridor between downtown and west San Jose. Intrepid riders will tap Daimler’s Car2Go car-sharing service — plus MyTaxi (which the automaker acquired in 2014) and Moovel, an app that compares the price and duration of ride- and bike-sharing services, public transit, and other means of transportation — to summon rides from designated pickup locations
Clarifai Partners with RichRelevance for Greater Personalization with Visual AI – Nov. 6, 2018 (Destination CRM)
- Clarifai, a visual recognition artificial intelligence company, and RichRelevance, a provider of experience personalization, have teamed up to extend RichRelevance’s Xen AI with Clarifai’s visual AI models to deliver a comprehensive, full-spectrum suite of AI personalization strategies
- “We’re committed to bringing our clients the cutting-edge AI capabilities they need to exceed customer expectations,” said Raj Badarinath, vice president of marketing and ecosystems at RichRelevance, in a statement. “Our ecosystem strategy is to bring together the specialists in the broad personalization AI market under one umbrella, enabling both customer and partner data science extensions. This partnership with Clarifai extends our Xen AI platform with state-of-the-art visual AI for today’s shoppers. Now brands and retailers have everything they need, from user behavior to deep-learning AI, in a single platform to deliver the most relevant shopping experience.”
Optimus Ride taps Nvidia for its level 4 autonomous cars – Nov. 5, 2018 (VentureBeat)
- The company plans to upgrade all of its autonomous vehicles deployed in Boston’s Seaport District and the Union Smart Point development in Weymouth, Massachusetts with Drive AGX Xavier. It is also looking to incorporate the hardware/software framework into future prototypes at yet-to-be-announced sites
- Optimus CEO and cofounder Ryan Chin, who formerly led the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, said Xavier will help the company build its first fully driverless fleet service for geofenced deployments. The cars will be capable of level 4 autonomous driving, meaning they’ll operate with limited human input and oversight in specific conditions and locations (as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers)
Robbie.AI and SureID Combine AI-Based Facial Recognition and Security Technology to Bring Holistic Biometrics Solution to U.S. – Nov. 5, 2018 (PR Newswire)
- Robbie.AI, a company that uses AI technology to provide facial recognition (identity) and emotion prediction (behavior) in natural settings and real time, today announced a partnership with SureID, a world-class biometrics and fingerprint services company. The companies are aligning on joint research and development that could result in the United States’ first nationwide biometrics gathering system for broad consumer-focused initiatives
- This innovative research is focused around further expansion of SureID’s network of fingerprinting kiosks: SureID currently delivers the only single-source nationwide network for fingerprint enrollments at scale. SureID may initially be using this technology to simplify fingerprint technician login and authentication upon initial login, to provide an additional layer of network security
Research / studies:
Autonomous vehicles will be moving brothels in no time, researchers predict – Nov. 9, 2018 (The Inquirer)
- Showcasing humanity’s unique ability to hijack any new technology for getting ends away, researchers from the University of Surrey and Oxford reckon that driverless cars will become mobile brothels in no time
- It’s not just about bumping uglies, though: the paper – ‘Autonomous vehicles and the future of urban tourism’ – covers other scenarios for tourists unperturbed by the sticky seats. The coach trip, for example, could go extinct as visitors opt for a private driverless car for their sightseeing instead
Walmart is building an AI lab inside one of its stores – Nov. 8, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- The idea is to test both associate and customer experiences. For example, Walmart wants to use artificial intelligence to better identify when items are running low on stock so that it can proactively replenish the stock. Led by an internal team called Kepler, Walmart also envisions using the technology to identify spills, better understand when shopping carts are running low near the entrance and identify when items are on the wrong shelf
Artificial intelligence predicts Alzheimer’s years before diagnosis – Nov. 6, 2018 (EurekAlert)
- The study’s senior author, Benjamin Franc, M.D., from UCSF, approached Dr. Sohn and University of California, Berkeley, undergraduate student Yiming Ding through the Big Data in Radiology (BDRAD) research group, a multidisciplinary team of physicians and engineers focusing on radiological data science. Dr. Franc was interested in applying deep learning, a type of AI in which machines learn by example much like humans do, to find changes in brain metabolism predictive of Alzheimer’s disease
- The researchers trained the deep learning algorithm on a special imaging technology known as 18-F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). In an FDG-PET scan, FDG, a radioactive glucose compound, is injected into the blood. PET scans can then measure the uptake of FDG in brain cells, an indicator of metabolic activity
Accenture to Open New R&D Lab in Shenzhen, China, with a Focus on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Industry X.0 – Nov. 5, 2018 (Businesswire)
- Accenture (NYSE: ACN) will open an Accenture Lab in Shenzhen, China, in the first half of 2019 that will specialize in applied research and development (R&D) activities in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, as well as Industry X.0, which is Accenture’s business area focused on helping companies redefine smart connected software and physical products
- The Accenture Lab will conduct leading-edge R&D in disruptive technologies with a mission to identify and develop the latest innovations in China. Accenture will accomplish this by collaborating closely with an ecosystem of partners that includes leading Chinese technology companies, emerging startups, academic institutions and other local organizations. This newest R&D lab will join a global network of 32 Accenture Labs and Nano Labs
Google open-sources its BERT system for NLP researchers – Nov. 5, 2018 (Innovation Enterprise)
- Google has made its natural language processing (NLP) pre-training model, bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), available as open source for NLP researchers
- According to Google AI research scientists Jacob Devlin and Ming-Wei Chang, the shortage of training data is one of the main challenges in NLP, which is a diverse and extensive field with distinct tasks, with most datasets containing only a few hundred or thousand human-labeled training examples. However, with modern deep learning-based NLP models, researchers can gain benefits from much larger amounts of data, the scientists said
Government / policy:
First self-driving cars coming to Israeli roads in 2019 – Nov. 11, 2018 (Israel21c)
- The proposal from Volkswagen Group, Intel subsidiary Mobileye and Champion Motors was accepted during the recent Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv
- The New Mobility in Israel joint venture calls for Volkswagen to provide the electric cars, Mobileye to bring the self-driving smarts and Champion Motors (which represents Volkswagen in Israel) to run the fleet operations and control center
Microsoft President Renews Call for Regulation of Facial Recognition – Nov. 9, 2018 (FindBiometrics)
- Smith made the case at this week’s Web Summit conference in Lisbon, sharing the stage with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. He noted that facial recognition could soon be used to let retailers identify consumers and their purchase history whenever they enter a store, and went on to suggest that this “pales in comparison” to how the state could use facial recognition for surveillance
- “Before we wake up and find that the year 2024 looks like the book ‘1984’, let’s figure out what kind of world we want to create, and what are the safeguards and what are the limitations of both companies and governments for the use of this technology,” he said
China’s state-run press agency has created an ‘AI anchor’ to read the news – Nov. 8, 2018 (The Verge)
- It’s not clear exactly what technology has been used to create the anchors, but they’re in line with the most recent machine learning research. It seems that Xinhua has used footage of human anchors as a base layer, and then animated parts of the mouth and face to turn the speaker into a virtual puppet. By combining this with a synthesized voice, Xinhua can program the digital anchors to read the news, far quicker than using traditional CGI. (We’ve reached out to AI experts in the field to see what their analysis is.)
Killer robots: Chinese university recruits talented ‘patriotic’ teens to help develop AI weapons – Nov. 8, 2018 (ABC News)
- A Chinese university has enlisted teenagers straight from high school to work on a new experimental program aimed at developing artificial intelligence (AI) weapons. The Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) group of teenagers included 27 boys and four girls chosen to train as the world’s youngest AI weapons scientists, according to the BIT website
- Those selected for the “experimental program for intelligent weapons systems” were all under the age of 18 and carefully chosen from a list of 5,000 candidates, the BIT website said
China can apparently now identify citizens based on the way they walk – Nov. 7, 2018 (TechCrunch)
- The technology was developed by Chinese AI startup Watrix, which recently picked up a $14.5 million funding round to further develop its systems. CEO Huang Yongzhen told the AP that it can ID individuals at up to 50 meters (165 feet) which, in conjunction with existing facial recognition technology, can help police and surveillance systems operate more efficiently in busy areas
China’s first AI theme park opens in Beijing – Nov. 5, 2018 (China.org.cn)
- China’s first artificial intelligence (AI) theme park opened to public in early November, after 10 months renovation of a municipal park in northern Beijing
- The district government of Haidian and Internet company Baidu signed an agreement in January to jointly explore “smart city” building. Haidian Park, which received about 1.2 million tourists last year, was chosen to run the pilot program