What’s happened in AI: December 24th-31st

By | January 1, 2019

Last weekly update for 2018. Thanks to all the readers and visitors here. Let’s all hope for continued positive progress in the AI world this new year.

Company developments:

Google Escapes Suit Over Facial Recognition Software – Dec. 31, 2018 (Bloomberg)

  • Alphabet Inc.’s Google has dodged a lawsuit by two users who claimed the world’s largest search engine violated their privacy by using facial recognition technology
  • The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois cited a lack of “concrete injuries” to the plaintiffs. The suit, initially filed in March 2016, alleged Google collected and stored biometric data from user photos, running afoul of a unique Illinois law against using a person’s image without permission

Placer.ai analyzed New Year’s Eve 2017 foot traffic to find the most popular destinations – Dec. 31, 2018 (VentureBeat)

  • Placer.ai, a Los Altos and Tel Aviv startup that uses smartphone tracking data to help businesses make decisions, crunched the numbers from last year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations to uncover the holiday’s most popular hangouts. To make things easier, Placer’s data scientists focused on five city districts: Times Square, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Gramercy, and Flatiron
  • The first trend the scientists discovered? The tourist-to-local ratio wasn’t as disproportionate as might be expected. Out-of-towners outnumbered New York City residents almost 2:1 in Times Square, but roughly 25 percent of New Year’s Eve partygoers lived in the city. Both groups arrived hours early; Placer says that last year Times Square reached peak capacity by 9 p.m. ET, with most people having come by 6 p.m

Alexa Urges User To ‘Kill Foster Parents’ In Unsettling Incident – Dec. 28, 2018 (Silicon)

  • Amazon’s program of allowing its Alexa customers to access experimental chatbots has resulted in a number of outer incidents in which AI-powered speakers have discussed offensive topics or urged users to kill, the company has acknowledged
  • The incidents, reported by Reuters, emphasize the lengths to which Amazon is prepared to go to maintain its lead in the market for smart speakers, in which it competes with the likes of Google and Apple, as well as IBM, which offers a similar AI system that businesses can offer under their own brands

NexTech Adds IBM Machine Learning To Platform – Dec. 27, 2018 (Media Post)

  • NexTech AR Solutions is integrating IBM Watson’s machine-learning algorithms into its augmented reality (AR) ecommerce platform, the firm announced on Thursday
  • Scheduled for rollout in February 2019, the new features will allow ecommerce brands to scan the body, hands, feet and facial features of shoppers to understand their sizes and preferences, the firm says

Yandex to operate self-driving cars in Israel – Dec. 26, 2018 (Globes)

  • Having received permission from the Transport Ministry, Yandex said that Israel will be the third country, in which it is testing self-driving vehicles
  • Yandex cited several favorable dynamics that make Israel a prime location to continue developing its self-driving technologies. In addition to being a leading tech hub with high-quality roads, Israeli cities have a highly developed infrastructure that makes the country an ideal location for testing

Autonomous driving startup AutoBrain to start Level-3 car sales in 2020 – Dec. 26, 2018 (TechNode)

  • Beijing-based autonomous driving company AutoBrain and Chinese auto manufacturer Great Wall Motors have developed a prototype Level 3 (L3) self-driving car, which they plan to release on the market by 2020, reports 36Kr
  • The safety of Level 3 systems has been questioned. US internet giant Google decided against taking the self-driving technology to market after it found in testing that human drivers were too trusting and slow to take over control from the system when an emergency arose. Google instead decided to pursue higher levels of autonomy

Chinese girl idol group SNH48 creates digital clones built by AI – Dec. 25, 2018 (South China Morning Post)

  • In the latest Christmas music video released by Chinese girl idol group SNH48, six of the group’s most popular stars sing and dance with some special partners – digital copies of themselves based on their looks, voices and body language
  • The four-minute music video, co-produced by Tencent-backed artificial intelligence (AI) start-up ObEN, claims to be the world’s first commercially released song co-starring human singers and their AI 3D avatars

Fundraising / investment:

Samsara banks $100M at a $3.6B valuation for its internet-connected sensors – Dec. 28, 2018 (TechCrunch)

  • Sensor data platform Samsara confirmed this morning that it had closed a new round of funding from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst that values the startup at $3.6 billion
  • The news was first reported by Cheddar, which spotted a filing with the state of Delaware on December 21 disclosing Samsara’s intent to raise a $100 million round at more than double the valuation it garnered upon its $50 million Series D this March

Partnerships:

Google Announces Joint AI Research Venture with Princeton University – Dec. 30, 2018 (Interesting Engineering)

  • In a press release, posted by Elad Hazan and Yoram Singer research Scientists at Google AI, the technology giant has announced that it is entered a joint venture with the historic and prestigious Princeton University, with the aim to dive deeper into the promising scientific field of artificial intelligence
  • “By fostering closer collaborations with faculty and students at Princeton, the lab aims to broaden research in multiple facets of machine learning, focusing its initial research efforts on optimization methods for large-scale machine learning, control theory, and reinforcement learning”, says the Google and Princeton team

Research / studies:

Researchers claim AI system can distinguish between dyslexic and skilled readers – Dec. 31, 2018 (VentureBeat)

  • Dyslexia — a language-based learning disability that includes poor word reading, word decoding, oral reading fluency, and spelling — is fairly common. Some surveys estimate that one in 10 people, or about 40 million people in the U.S. and 700 million children and adults worldwide, have dyslexia. And according to the Dyslexia Center of Utah, 70 to 80 percent of people with poor reading skills are likely dyslexic
  • It’s hardly a death sentence, but if left untreated, dyslexia can severely impede tasks like organization, planning and prioritizing, and timekeeping. And unfortunately, there’s no single test to diagnose it

AI can easily break text CAPTCHA: new research – Dec. 24, 2018 (China.org.cn)

  • A new study suggested that text-based CAPTCHAs, one of the most widely used website security mechanisms, are no longer safe when facing smarter artificial intelligence
  • Text-based CAPTCHA uses a jumble of distorted or blurred letters, characters and numbers to distinguish humans from computer programs, to block the latter from accessing polls and auctions disguised as a human user. This reverse Turing test builds on the belief that people are more adept at recognizing these symbols than machines

Government / policy:

Israel, Bolsonaro Discuss Sale of Drones With Facial Recognition, Senior Diplomatic Source Says – Dec. 31, 2018 (Haaretz)

  • Israeli officials discussed a drone sale with President Jair Bolsonaro, a senior diplomatic source told Israeli journalists accompanying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delegation in Brazil on Monday
  • Answering a question by Haaretz, the source said that in the discussions with Brazil Israel has not limited the use of Israeli drones to be sold to Brazil to any use, including policing and crime-fighting. Brazil’s murder rate is 30 times that of Israel’s, the source noted

China releases first short video AI production platform – Dec. 28, 2018 (Xinhua)

  • China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency and internet giant Alibaba on Thursday jointly launched the country’s first short video intelligent production platform to improve news reporting efficiency
  • At the conference, the platform gave a real-time demonstration of the short video intelligent production process. On Thursday morning alone, it produced 186 short videos, among which 97 were produced by AI and the other 89 by man-machine collaboration

Events:

AI, rollables and voice-controlled gadgets galore expected at CES 2019 as US-China trade war threat looms – Dec. 29, 2018 (South China Morning Post)

  • January 9 sees the year’s biggest global tech convention –the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) – kick-off as more than 4,500 companies gather under several vast roofs to show-off their gadgets and products in an effort to get noticed
  • Chinese companies are increasingly important at CES, and will account for more than 40 per cent of the 4,500 exhibitors. Traditionally, their advantage has been in manufacturing, but that’s changing as the tech industry shifts towards artificial intelligence (AI)