Lots of news this week on privacy in the world of AI. China is drafting up a bill to regulate the collection of biometric data, while in the U.S. citizens of Oakland and Brooklyn are fighting the use of facial recognition technology. The precedent set by these ongoing legal matters will have a big impact on how other cities/countries approach privacy regulations going forward. More weekly news can be found below.
Thanks to Uber’s S-1 filing we have new insight on their investment activities surrounding autonomous vehicles. Last year they spent over $450mm on autonomous vehicles, and ~$1bn in total over the past three years. Quite a big bet they’re making and it will be interesting to see how they stack up against Lyft in the future. Other weekly news can be found below.
This week the autonomous trucking world added another Unicorn. TuSimple raised a $95mm Series D round to expand its autonomous truck fleet to over 50 vehicles by June. Definitely a player to look out for in this area. Other weekly news can be found below. Company developments: Waymo’s autonomous vehicles leave Apple in the dust… Read More »
Lots of great healthcare developments stemming from AI this week. Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) published data on a novel machine-learning framework they developed that distinguishes between low- and high-risk prostate cancer with more precision than ever before.
On the fundraising side, KenSci raised $22mm to progress their AI-driven prediction platform that helps practitioners cut costs intelligently by identifying contributing clinical and financial factors and by analyzing data across various sources like electronic medical records, public records, demographics, claims data, and devices.
It’s pretty clear autonomous vehicles are one of the most important areas within AI. This week we saw yet another Apple employee get in trouble with the FBI for stealing company secrets on its autonomous vehicle program. Bold move given someone has already been caught before, in addition to the publicity surrounding Anthony Levandowski’s exit from Waymo.
Other weekly news can be found below.
The AI research capabilities of Microsoft continue to expand. This week they opened two separate AI labs in China.
The first will be located in Nanchang city and will focus on VR in addition to AI applications in established manufacturing companies. The second will be located in Shanghai and will focus on IoT in addition to AI. It’s clear Microsoft has gained favor with the Chinese government as these are two major developments with regards to their China strategy.
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.
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 in the new year.