We’ve finished up our first week in 2019 with numerous AI developments to kick things off. In the autonomous vehicle arena we witnessed perhaps the most bizarre developments as Waymo’s vehicles continue to face attacks from pedestrians. It’s quite a situation and just another reminder of how weird humans can be (let’s hope the AI doesn’t fully resemble us!). It seems like although these are random incidents, they pose a threat to public perception of the safety of autonomous vehicles.
Company developments:
Tencent AI Lab loses key executive – Jan. 3, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- Chinese internet giant Tencent just lost a leading artificial intelligence figure. Zhang Tong, who previously worked at Yahoo, IBM and Baidu, has stepped down after directing Tencent’s AI Lab for nearly two years
- The scientist will return to academia and continue research in the AI field, Tencent confirmed with TechCrunch on Thursday, adding that it hasn’t appointed a successor
Zoomlion Leads New Future in Intelligent Manufacturing with ZValley OS – Jan. 2, 2019 (PR Newswire)
- ZValley Industrial Internet Company (ZValley), a subsidiary of Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co., Ltd. (Zoomlion), has officially launched ZValley OS (a powerful platform of Industrial loT), which enables traditional companies and organizations especially in manufacturing, agriculture, smart city, and industrial fin-tech areas to harness the power of emerging digital technologies
Waymo’s Autonomous Vehicles Are Reportedly Facing Ongoing Attacks in Arizona – Jan. 1, 2019 (Gizmodo)
- The New York Times reported Monday that more than 20 incidents of vandalism on the vehicles have occurred since 2017, when Waymo arrived in Chandler, Arizona
- The attacks on Waymo vans, first reported on by the Arizona Republic last month, have involved everything from slashed tires to a pointed gun and reckless driving aimed at running the vans off the road. Citing police reports, the Times reported that some individuals have also thrown rocks at the vans
Fundraising / investment:
SenseTime Adds To Series A Round In Chinese Self-Driving Start-Up WeRide.ai – Jan. 5, 2019 (China Money Network)
- New investors include Sensetime and ABC International Holdings
Sophia Genetics bags $77M Series E, with 850+ hospitals signed up to its ‘data-driven medicine’ – Jan. 4, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- The Series E was led by Generation Investment Management . Also investing: European private equity firm, Idinvest Partners. Existing investors, including Balderton Capital and Alychlo, also participated in the round
- When we last spoke to Sophia Genetics it had around 350 hospitals linked via its SaaS platform, and was then adding around 10 new hospitals per month. Now it says its Sophia AI platform is being used by more than 850 hospitals across 77 countries, and it claims to have supported the diagnosis of more than 300,000 patients
Baraja — Maker of LiDAR for Autonomous Vehicles — Closes Series A with $32 Million – Jan. 3, 2019 (Business Wire)
- Baraja, the creator of Spectrum-Scan LiDAR for autonomous vehicles, announced today a Series A investment of $32 million from Sequoia China, Blackbird Ventures, and the CSIRO Innovation Fund managed by Main Sequence Ventures
- “Baraja’s Spectrum-Scan LiDAR solution is a completely new category of LiDAR technology that dispenses with expensive, spinning lasers,” Ji said. “Everyone understands the challenges for traditional LiDAR. They’re prohibitively expensive, difficult to manufacture at scale, and need to be incredibly robust. These problems need to be solved for the fully-autonomous vehicle to become a reality, which is why we’re so excited to be working with Baraja.”
CarePredict raises $9.5 million for AI wearable that monitors seniors’ health – Jan. 2, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- CarePredict claims its platform can surface actionable insights that predict a UTI up to 3.7 days ahead of clinical diagnosis and depression two weeks ahead of diagnosis. The startup also claims it has managed to reduce falls by 25 percent in senior communities
- Those stats have investors impressed, it seems. CarePredict today announced that it has secured $9.5 million in Series A financing led by Secocha Ventures, Las Olas Ventures, and Startup Health Ventures. This brings its total raised to $19.7 million, following a $4 million seed fund round in December 2017 and a grant from the National Science Foundation
Partnerships:
TomTom partnerships developing intelligent, autonomous driving solutions – Jan. 4, 2019 (ITBusiness)
- TomTom is working with Japanese automotive manufacturer Denso Corp. to add combine it’s HD digital map product with Denso’s software platform made for autonomous vehicles. According to a press release the map will work with Denso’s “in-vehicle sensors such as cameras and radars to power the localization, perception, and path planning functions,” which are needed to help create “complete autonomous driving systems.”
- The goal is to help bring to market Denos’s software for Level 2, (or fully autonomous but driver monitored) automated driving systems
GM’s Cruise partners with DoorDash to test autonomous food delivery – Jan. 3, 2019 (The Verge)
- Cruise Automation, the self-driving unit of General Motors, is teaming up with DoorDash to test a food delivery service in San Francisco using autonomous vehicles. The pilot will commence in “early 2019,” the companies said, but it will only be available in the section of the city where Cruise has been testing its vehicles
- The news comes just two days after GM president Dan Ammann formally assumed his new role as CEO of Cruise, replacing founder Kyle Vogt. (Vogt is now president and chief technology officer of Cruise.) It’s a sign that GM is exploring different revenue streams around self-driving cars as it nears its promised launch of a ride-sharing service in 2019
IBM and Medtronics’ IQcast AI helps diabetics forecast blood sugar dips – Jan. 3, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- IBM and medical device company Medtronic have teamed up to develop IQcast, a predictive tool built into Metronics’ Sugar.IQ app for diabetic patients who require multiple daily injections
- By applying machine learning algorithms to readings from Medtronics’ Guardian Connect continuous glucose monitoring system, IQcast can predict the likelihood that a person will experience a low-glucose event within 1-4 hours and recommend proactive steps to reduce the chances of future dips
Research / studies:
Massachusetts General’s AI can spot brain hemorrhages as accurately as humans – Jan. 4, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- A paper (“An explainable deep-learning algorithm for the detection of acute intracranial hemorrhages from small datasets”) published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering last month, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston describe a deep learning algorithm that can detect acute intracerebral hemorrhages, or ICHs, with a high degree of accuracy
- “It is somewhat paradoxical to use the words ‘small data’ or ‘explainable’ to describe a study that used deep learning,” Hyunkwang Lee, a graduate student at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and one of the two lead authors of the study, told MedicalXpress. “However, in medicine, it is especially hard to collect high-quality big data. It is critical to have multiple experts label a dataset to ensure consistency of data. This process is very expensive and time-consuming.”
Researchers create AI worker so real it even cheats when given tough tasks – Jan. 2, 2019 (Tech 2)
- The AI, called CycleGAN, was programmed to translate satellite imagery into street maps and back again to satellite images as accurately as possible. For example, consider an app that processes sketches of dogs to create a realistic interpretation of a real dog. Programs like this need a whole lot of experimentation and training before they begin to work acceptably
- The first signs that something was off was when researchers observed that the AI working well – a little too well. Suspicions were raised after the software began to reconstruct images from street maps (the simplified maps) with details that were removed from the initial street map layout. For instance, the roofs of buildings had skylights that weren’t in any of the street maps it was fed with
Government / policy:
Artificial intelligence used to upgrade power grid may bring cyberattack risks – Jan. 3, 2019 (CBS News)
- A massive power plant near Niagara Falls, New York, is upgrading its systems with artificial intelligence in a move that’s raising concerns among some security experts about the dangers from hackers
- New York state’s largest power plant harnesses the awesome energy of the Niagara River and now the New York Power Authority– or NYPA – is connecting that plant and miles of transmission lines with tens of thousands of sensors that can essentially “think,” reports CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett
Penang launches facial recognition system to identify criminals – Jan. 3, 2019 (Borneo Bulletin)
- Penang has become the first state in Malaysia to launch a facial recognition system capable of detecting faces of criminals through closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, in a bid to improve public safety in the state
- Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said the technology which uses artificial intelligence developed by IBM would enhance the 767 CCTVs installed by the Penang City Council (MBPP)
Events / other:
Machine-Learning Wizards Vie for Zillow’s $1 Million Prize – Jan. 5, 2019 (IEEE)
- Some 4,000 groups participated in the first round of Zillow’s home-valuation competition, which launched in 2017. One hundred teams moved on to compete in the second and final round, which is being judged now. The grading criterion is how accurately the contestants’ systems were able, in July 2018, to predict the actual sales prices of a large set of U.S. homes that were sold in September and October
Autonomous Vehicle Company Imagry Debuts Latest Version of Groundbreaking Mapless Platform at CES 2019 – Jan. 4, 2019 (PR Newswire)
- “Imagry is pioneering a real-time mapless driving solution that provides a more efficient alternative to the marketplace,” said Adham Ghazali, founder and CEO of Imagry. “As of now, the only way to enable a driverless vehicle outside of Imagry’s technology is to map every road the vehicle can possibly drive on. We see our mapless technology as the future of autonomous vehicles, and we’re proud to be leading the way.”
AI predictions for 2019 from Yann LeCun, Hilary Mason, Andrew Ng, and Rumman Chowdhury – Jan. 2, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Amid a recap of the year and predictions for the future, some said they were encouraged to be hearing fewer Terminator AI apocalypse scenarios, as more people understand what AI can and cannot do. But these experts also stressed a continued need for computer and data scientists in the field to adopt responsible ethics as they advance artificial intelligence