Big news this week for Apple, who poached one of Google’s top AI minds. Dr. Ian Goodfellow decided to leave his role as “Senior Staff Research Scientist” with Google to join Apple as a “Director of Machine Learning” in the company’s Special Projects Group. Dr. Goodfellow is best known as being the “father” of GANs. Given Apple’s AR focus this hire makes a lot of sense.
As for Google, in addition to losing Dr. Goodfellow, they decided to shut down their AI ethics committee after only a week. That was quick… Other weekly news can be found below.
Company developments:
iCarbonX could be the latest Chinese company forced to sell stake in US firm over national security concerns – Apr. 6, 2019 (South China Morning Post)
- Shenzhen-based iCarbonX, which aims to use artificial intelligence and biotech to improve health, in 2017 bought a majority stake in US health tech start-up PatientsLikeMe, a platform that helps over 600,000 users find other patients who have similar conditions
- The health and personal information collected on PatientsLikeMe could potentially be cause for concern as the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) has notified the platform that it must find a new buyer, according to a report by CNBC that cited unnamed sources
Apple Hires Another Machine Learning Heavyweight from Google to Build World-Class AI Team – Apr. 5, 2019 (iDropNews)
- Apple has poached another top engineer from Google as it continues to grow its artificial intelligence and machine learning divisions, with Google’s Dr. Ian Goodfellow having left his role as a “Senior Staff Research Scientist” with Google to join Apple as a “Director of Machine Learning” in the company’s Special Projects Group, according to CNBC
- Dr. Goodfellow is a rising star in the machine learning industry, having authored and co-authored over 100 research papers, he is also considered the father of the generative adversarial network (GAN) — technology that has been used to generate “deepfake” fake media content and other unusual and creative AI-generated audio and video results
Facebook’s ad-serving algorithm discriminates by gender and race – Apr. 5, 2019 (MIT)
- Just last week, the tech giant was sued by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development over the way it let advertisers purposely target their ads by race, gender, and religion—all protected classes under US law. The company announced that it would stop allowing this
- But new evidence shows that Facebook’s algorithm, which automatically decides who is shown an ad, carries out the same discrimination anyway, serving up ads to over two billion users on the basis of their demographic information
Google expands its Duplex AI technology to more devices – Apr. 3, 2019 (ZD Net)
- Google is expanding the availability Duplex, the voice assistant that helps you book restaurant reservations over the phone. According to the Duplex support page, as 9to5Google noted earlier, customers can now use the feature on any Android device running version 5.0 or newer as well as iPhones with Google Assistant installed
- Duplex was first introduced about a year ago at the Google I/O conference. Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave an impressive demo, showing how a human-sounding Duplex voice can naturally interact with a real person on the other end of the line. Duplex faced some immediate scrutiny over disclosure and ethics issues, and Google responded by enabling the feature to disclose that it’s a Google Assistant
VW Joins BMW in Testing Self-Driving Cars on German City Streets – Apr. 3, 2019 (Transport Topics)
- The vehicles, equipped with safety drivers as well as lasers, radars and scanners, will navigate a 3-kilometer area in the northern German city, which is also building a new testing ground complete with intelligent traffic lights
- “To make driving even safer and more comfortable in future, vehicles not only have to become autonomous and more intelligent — cities must also provide a digital ecosystem that enables vehicles,” Axel Heinrich, VW’s head of research, said April 3 in a statement
Search giant Baidu has driven the most autonomous miles in Beijing – Apr. 2, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- In China’s capital city Beijing, eight firms drove a total of 153,600 kilometers (95,442.6 miles) through their autonomous fleets in 2018, and Baidu, the country’s largest search engine service seen as a local answer to Google, has built a big lead
- That’s according to new data released by Beijing’s transportation regulators in their first report on the city’s licensed self-driving cars. While the authority did not specify conditions of the road tests — say, the number of instances when a human driver had to intervene to prevent an accident, namely the level of “disengagement” that California’s counterpart report asked for — Beijing’s data offers the public an early glimpse into a fledgling field
Google’s AI Ethics Council Is Collapsing After a Week – Apr. 1, 2019 (ExtremeTech)
- Last week, Google announced the formation of an Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC). The purpose of ATEAC was to consider the complex challenges that might arise while developing AI technology and to provide diverse perspectives on these issues
- Google isn’t the first company to take these sorts of steps, as Microsoft has its own AI advisory board as well. But all isn’t well with Google’s AI advisory. Less than a week after the announcement, it’s falling apart.
Fundraising / investment:
Department of Energy Announces $20 Million to Develop Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Tools – Apr. 5, 2019 (Energy.Gov)
- The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced up to $20 million in funding to accelerate the incorporation of machine learning and artificial intelligence into energy technology and product design processes
- The Design Intelligence for Formidable Energy Reduction Engendering Numerous Totally Impactful Advanced Technology Enhancements (DIFFERENTIATE) program seeks to enhance energy innovation by incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning into energy technology development
Oxford, Orkney and West Sussex win £102m smart energy funding boost – Apr. 5, 2019 (Business Green)
- Plans for a new era of smart, local and low-carbon energy systems took a leap forward this week with the release of £51.4m in government funding for schemes trialling a range of green energy technologies
- From hybrid batteries to heat networks and EV charging stations, four schemes across the country have won funding under the government’s ‘Prospering from the Energy Revolution Challenge’, which is part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund
Pagaya raises $25 million to manage asset-backed securities with AI – Apr. 3, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Pagaya Investments, an AI-driven institutional asset manager that focuses on fixed income and consumer credit markets, today announced that it has raised $25 million in series C funding led by Oak HC/FT
- The round — which saw Viola Ventures, Clal Insurance, GF Investments, Siam Commercial Bank’s Digital Ventures, and former chairman and CEO of American Express and Pagaya board member Harvey Golub participate — brings the New York and Tel Aviv startup’s total raised to $119.3, according to Crunchbase, following an earlier $20 million venture capital round and $75 million in debt financing
Salesforce backs a start-up that uses selfies and A.I. to verify your identity online – Apr. 3, 2019 (CNBC)
- Onfido’s latest round of funding was led by Salesforce’s venture capital arm and Japanese financial group SBI. The start-up will use the money to invest in its technology and strengthen its presence in the U.S. Former Salesforce Vice Chairman Frank van Veenendaal will join the start-up’s board following the deal
- The firm’s software validates a person’s identity by taking their selfie and applying a mix of machine learning and human fraud experts to match their face with a government-issued ID
Run.AI raises $13M for its distributed machine learning platform – Apr. 3, 2019 (TechCrunch)
- Tel Aviv’s Run.AI, a startup that is building a new virtualization and acceleration platform for deep learning, is coming out of stealth today. As a part of this announcement, the company also announced that it has now raised a total of $13 million. This includes a $3 million seed round from TLV Partners and a $10 million Series A round led by Haim Sadger’s S Capital and TLV Partners
Chip startup Untether AI raises $13 million led by Intel Capital – Apr. 2, 2019 (Betakit)
- Toronto-based Untether AI, recently announced a $13 million USD Series A funding round led by Intel Capital, to help develop an AI computer chip
- The startup is developing a new AI chip made specifically for neural net interface. Untether AI claims it is creating chips that will power future devices that will be able to sense and make sense of the real world environment around them
Productiv raises $8 million to help companies track SaaS app engagement – Apr. 1, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Productiv’s cloud-based dashboard integrates with single sign-on tools to track login activity and extract purchase and license data from contracts, finance, and expense reporting systems, offering an organization-wide view of agreements and expired software
- The endgame is to empower companies to make profit-boosting rightsizing decisions from app analytics, Shapiro says. Rather than just seeing that a division has, say, 300 Dropbox licenses and that 40 percent of team members uploaded files to Dropbox folders this past fiscal quarter, CIOs can drill down into the productivity impact of those licenses and estimate the potential cost savings of choosing not to renew them
Partnership:
Hyundai Motor, Tencent tie up to develop self-driving cars software: report – Apr. 6, 2019 (KFGO)
- Both companies plan to conduct joint research and development on safety and security systems for self-driving cars, which Hyundai seeks to roll out commercially by 2030, the report, which cited unnamed industry sources, said
- The agreement was signed on the sidelines of a business forum held in Seoul on Thursday by the South Korean government and China’s Guangdong province, it said
Microsoft partners with OpenClassrooms to recruit and train 1,000 AI students – Apr. 3, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- OpenClassrooms is one of a number of massive open online course (MOOC) platforms, offering an unlimited number of people access to courses ranging from programming and project management to product design. The company has raised north of $60 million since its inception in 2007, including a $60 million series B round last May
- Through its latest partnership, OpenClassrooms will construct programs based on Microsoft’s content and project-specific tasks — these are designed to fill the types of AI roles that are in demand. Though it’s reasonable to assume Microsoft is a potential suitor for future graduates, the scope of the program is broader than that — those who complete the master’s-level course will be given access to a range of employers with AI positions to fill
Research / studies:
Chinese colleges to offer AI major in challenge to US – Apr. 2, 2019 (Nikkei Asian Review)
- Artificial intelligence will become an undergraduate major at 35 universities in China, as the country charges ahead with its ambition to rival the U.S. in the field by 2020. The Education Ministry’s approval of the program comes as China grapples with growing domestic demand for AI talent and a heated race with the U.S. to become the future powerhouse of AI-related technologies
- The 35 schools include Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is administered by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as well as prestigious names such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zhejiang University
AI improves sleep apnea classification by generating synthesized data – Apr. 1, 2019 (VentureBeat)
- Rearchers with the Imperial College London, University of Augsburg, and Technical University of Munich sought in a new paper (“Snore-GANs: Improving Automatic Snore Sound Classification with Synthesized Data“) to develop generative adversarial networks (GANs) that create synthesized data to fill in gaps in real data. (For the uninitiated, GANs are two-part neural networks consisting of generators that produce samples and discriminators that attempt to distinguish between the generated samples and real-world samples.) The augmented data set was then used to train an ASSC
Government / policy:
Ford, GM, and Toyota Are Working Together to Set Safety Standards for Self-Driving Cars – Apr. 3, 2019 (The Drive)
- The consortium will work to develop industry-wide safety standards for autonomous cars, according to an SAE International press release. Its first project will be a “roadmap of priorities” that will include testing guidelines, as well as protocols for data sharing and how autonomous vehicles interact with other road users
Self-driving cars are coming. D.C. lawmakers want to regulate them – Apr. 3, 2019 (Curbed DC)
- On Tuesday, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, who chairs the Council’s committee on transportation and the environment, pitched the “Autonomous Vehicles Testing Program Amendment Act of 2019,” along with Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen and Chairman Phil Mendelson
- The bill would set up a permitting process for autonomous vehicle testing within the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), which would have to review and approve such permit applications. Companies that seek to test self-driving cars in the city would have to provide an array of information to officials, including on each vehicle it plans to test, safety operators in the test vehicles, testing locations, insurance, and safety strategies
Chinese high-security jail puts AI monitors in every cell ‘to make prison breaks impossible’ – Apr. 1, 2019 (Telegraph)
- The “smart jail” system inside Yancheng prison integrates surveillance cameras and hidden sensors that collect data points into a central “brain,” an AI-powered computer that will generate a daily report on inmates using facial recognition and movement analysis
- “If an inmate has been spotted pacing up and down in a room for some time, the machine may regard the phenomenon as suspicious and suggest close-up check with a human guard,” project representative Meng Qingbiao told the South China Morning Post newspaper