Big event this week was the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2018 held in Shanghai. We saw numerous announcements from countries, tech firms, and individuals throughout the event. Highlights include a new partnership on AI between Japan and China, and Amazon’s new research center in Shanghai. Company developments: Amazon launches Scout, a machine learning-powered visual shopping… Read More »
This week we saw some interesting M&A activity. Microsoft made yet another acquisition in the field of AI. This time they acquired Lobe, who’s developed an AI drag and drop tool. In addition we saw U.K. based Medopad acquire Sherbit to continue to enhance their AI driven disease detection solutions. KPMG has previously said Medopad… Read More »
Big highlight this week is China Growth Capital’s Wayne Shiong predicting that Chinese AI companies could see their valuations decrease by 30-50%, reflecting signs of a liquidity crunch. My take is it’s too early to tell if the valuation hits will actually happen. You have to look at it on a macro / political perspective… Read More »
This week was relatively light compared to others, but nonetheless, there were some important developments. In particular, Microsoft revealed another failed chatbot. This time it’s so politically correct that it’s cringeworthy. Speaking of failed AI technology, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Sens. Ron Wyden, Chris Coons, Ed Markey and Cory Booker are pushing for an investigation… Read More »
This past week has been quite a busy one. Highlights include Apple’s increased investment in its autonomous vehicle program, Softbank’s push to invest in Sensetime, Microsoft’s AI/cloud partnership with Walmart, Zoox’s $630mm potential investment round, and much more. Company developments: Get down with Google’s new pose-matching machine learning experiment – July 20, 2018 (Android Authority)… Read More »
Another exciting week in AI. In particular, lots of news on the autonomous vehicle front. Pony.ai just raised another massive fundraising round, numerous U.S. states are driving forward autonomous vehicle investment and research, SpotHero is prepping Chi-town for the revolution with customized parking spots designed for autonomous vehicles, a former Apple employee was charged attempting… Read More »
Big week for fundraising and autonomous vehicle related partnerships. Highlights include Kroger’s partnership with Nuro for driverless grocery deliveries, Ford’s partnership with Baidu, Nvidia/Bosch/Volkswagen partnership, and Audi’s partnership with Cognata. It’s becoming obvious that these partnerships are vital to stay competitive in the space. Meanwhile, both Microsoft and IBM have made progress with eliminating bias… Read More »
This week we saw another tech giant face internal push back on partnering with the government on AI initiatives. It was Google over the past few weeks with Project Maven, and now it’s Amazon with the use of its facial recognition software with U.S. police departments. Will be interesting to see if this trend continues.… Read More »