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by Synced 2018-04-01 Number of comments0

AI China

Chinese Video Surveillance Giant Hikvision to Opensource its AI Technology

Hikvision AI Cloud is a distributed structure incorporating cloud computing and edge computing. Launched last year, it can extend an AI algorithm from the cloud centre to an edge network of on-premises video recorders and servers, and further to edge devices, such as security cameras.

by Synced 2018-03-31 Number of comments0

AI

What to Expect About Space Exploration and Machine Learning After Elon Musk’s SpaceX Makes History

The Age of Discovery began in the 15th century, when Europeans built their first oceangoing vessels and set out to explore the world. Whether motivated by political, economic or cultural factors, human exploration has traditionally been driven by technological progress.

by Synced 2018-03-30 Number of comments0

AI United States

NVIDIA CEO Says “FGPA is Not the Right Answer” for Accelerating AI

Chip giant NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang created a bit of a stir at yesterday’s GPU Technology Conference in Santa Clara, USA, when he appeared to dis one of these chips’ appropriateness for autonomous vehicle system development: “FPGA is not the right answer,” he said.

by Synced 2018-03-29 Number of comments0

AI EU & UK Global News

France Pumps €1.5 Billion into AI in Bid to Catch Up

France is pledging €1.5 billion to hasten the development of its fledgling AI ecosystem. French President Emmanuel Macron made the commitment this morning at the Artificial Intelligence Summit held at the College de France Research Center.

by Synced 2018-03-28 1

AI China

Alibaba to Connect 10 Billion Devices in 5 Years

In a world of increasingly connected humans, the new frontier is devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). Alibaba Cloud wants to secure its position in this rapidly growing market by connecting ten billion devices over the next five years.

by Synced 2018-03-27 1

AI United States

NVIDIA Unveils AI Computing Beasts: World’s Largest GPU & Two Petaflop Supercomputer

 At the GPU Technology Conference in Santa Clara, USA today, Huang unveiled the world’s largest GPU — a binary beast packed with 16 Tesla V100 with doubled memory 32 GB.

by Synced 2018-03-27 Number of comments0

AI

The YOLOv3 Object Detection Network Is Fast!

YOLO creators Joseph Redmon and Ali Farhadi from the University of Washington on March 25 released YOLOv3, an upgraded version of their fast object detection network, now available on Github.

by Synced 2018-03-26 1

AI

Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan Launches New Round of AI Programmes in Dubai

Crown Prince and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dubai Future Foundation Sheikh Hamdan officially opened the 4th edition of the Dubai Future Accelerator (DFA) on March 24th at Dubai’s Emirates Towers. The program aims to boost tech development across the United Arab Emirates.

by Synced 2018-03-24 Number of comments0

AI

Tracking the Transforming AI Chip Market

Embedded AI can transform a tabletop speaker into a personal assistant; give a robot brains and dexterity; and turn a smartphone into a smart camera, music player, or game console. Traditional processors, however, lack the computational power to support many of these intelligent features.

by Synced 2018-03-23 Number of comments0

AI United States

Facebook AI Proposes Group Normalization Alternative to Batch Normalization

As Facebook struggles with fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, its research arm today delivered a welcome bit of good news in deep learning. Research Engineer Dr. Yuxin Wu and Research Scientist Dr. Kaiming He proposed a new Group Normalization (GN) technique they say can accelerate deep neural network training with small batch sizes.

by Synced 2018-03-22 Number of comments0

AI Emerging Company

Mapbox Is Mapping the Future

Mapbox, a San Francisco-based digital mapping startup, released its Mapbox AR at the Mobile World Conference 2018 in Barcelona. The AR platform comprises a suite of tools, a low-level AR core kit, and a framework.

by Synced 2018-03-22 1

AI Self Driving

Baidu to Begin Testing Self-Driving Cars on Beijing Roads

It came as somewhat unexpected news when on March 22nd the Beijing Municipal Government gave tech unicorn Baidu the green light to test driverless cars on the city’s public roads.

by Synced 2018-03-21 2

AI

“My Other Lawyer is a Robot” – LawGeex Automates Contract Review

Founded in 2014 by international business lawyer Noory Bechor and machine learning guru Ilan Admon, LawGeex is a Tel Aviv-based legal tech startup focused on contract review. It closed US$7 million in Series A funding last March, principally from Indeed.com owner Recruit Holdings, Lool Ventures, and LionBird.

by Synced 2018-03-21 Number of comments0

AI United States

2017 Turing Award Goes to Computer Chip Pioneers

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today announced John L. Hennessy, former Stanford University President and Chairman of the Board of Alphabet; and David A. Patterson, retired Professor at University of California, Berkeley, as winners of the 2017 Turing Award for their groundbreaking approach to computer architecture design and evaluation.

by Synced 2018-03-20 3

AI China

Huawei Introduces AI Development Board HiKey 970

Chinese tech giant Huawei unveiled its latest development board, HiKey 970, which is dedicated to AI-powered devices and applications.

by Synced 2018-03-19 Number of comments0

AI Self Driving

Where is Autonomous Driving Headed After the Fatal Uber Accident in Arizona?

An Uber self-driving SUV struck and killed a female pedestrian Sunday evening in Tempe, Arizona. The first known autonomous vehicle-related pedestrian death on a public road stunned the AI community and raised public concerns on autonomous driving safety.

by Synced 2018-03-19 Number of comments0

AI United States

Google’s MusicVAE Is a Machine Learning Mozart

Google has announced the release of MusicVAE, a machine learning model that makes composing musical scores as easy as mixing paint on a palette. A breakthrough from Google Brain’s Magenta Project, MusicVAE generates and morphs melodies to output multi-instrumental passages optimized for expression, realism and smoothness which sound convincingly like human-composed music.

by Synced 2018-03-19 Number of comments0

AI AI Bi-Weekly

AI Biweekly: 10 Bits from Mar W 2 – Mar W 3

Google is collaborating with the United States Department of Defense to create an AI system for identifying drone footage. The system will leverage machine learning and computer vision technologies to collect and categorize drone footage more efficiently.

by Synced 2018-03-17 9

AI

African Fintech Startups Are Revolutionizing Banking

By the end of 2017, there were more than 300 fintech startups across the continent. Disrupt Africa’s Finnovating for Africa: Exploring the African Fintech Startup Ecosystem Report 2017 concludes that African fintech startups’ growth since 2015 has been nothing short of tremendous.

by Synced 2018-03-16 2

AI China

Yu Zheng on JD.com’s Smart City Ambitions

Dr. Zheng joined JD Finance last month as Vice President and Chief Data Scientist, Urban Computing Business Unit President, and Urban Computing Lab Director. JD Finance is the fintech arm of JD.com, China’s largest e-commerce platform by revenue.

by Synced 2018-03-15 5

AI Self Driving

Global Survey of Autonomous Vehicle Regulations

Synced surveyed the international regulations, and here are our picks of major regions and countries that are accommodating the testing and deployment of autonomous driving technologies on their public roads.

by Synced 2018-03-14 Number of comments0

AI United States

Microsoft AI Achieves Milestone in Machine Translation

Microsoft researchers in the US and Asia sent a shockwave through the AI community today with their paper Achieving Human Parity on Automatic Chinese to English News Translation, which introduces a neural machine translation system they say equals the performance of human experts in Chinese-to-English translation.

by Synced 2018-03-13 Number of comments0

AI China

Fintech’s New Big Player: JD Finance Adds $2B, Hits $26-30B Valuation

According to a China Securities Journal report, the China International Capital Corporation (CICC) and China’s largest food processor, manufacturer and trader China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation (COFCO) are looking to invest US$2 billion (CNY 13 billion) in JD Finance, the fintech spinoff of online retailer JD.com.

by Synced 2018-03-12 Number of comments0

AI China

Alibaba Discounted its Top Smart Speaker to $15; Sold 1 Million

I purchased a Tmall Genie X1 — Alibaba’s flagship smart speaker — at the discounted price of US$15 during China’s November 11 “Singles Day” shopping festival. I was given order number 560,000-ish, and received the product a month later. The speaker is regularly priced at US$79, about the same as its American counterpart Google Mini.

by Synced 2018-03-10 1

AI China

Baidu Apollo Releases Massive Self-driving Dataset; Teams Up With Berkeley DeepDrive

Apollo Scape was released under Baidu’s autonomous driving platform Apollo, which Baidu hopes will become “the Android of the auto industry.” Apollo gives developers access to a complete set of service solutions and open-source codes and…

by Synced 2018-03-10 2

AI

How AI Can Help The Oil Industry

To apply AI technology to the oil and gas industry, oil companies and startups generally first establish either a research group or a research center for the purpose. AI for oil and gas is a huge potential market, expected to reach US$2.85 billion by 2022.

by Synced 2018-03-09 Number of comments0

AI

Samsung Rides the AI Wave

Compared to other tech giants, Samsung is a relative late-bloomer in AI. But recent moves in acquisitions and R&D signal the company is jumping onto the intelligence wave, and doing so with a strong focus on virtual voice assistants.

by Synced 2018-03-08 1

AI Emerging Company United States

Paige.AI Combats Cancer With AI and Computational Pathology

Paige.AI is a New York-based startup that fights cancer with AI. Launched last month as a spinoff from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) — the largest cancer research institute in the US — Paige.AI has exclusive access to MSK’s IP in the field of computational pathology as well as its dataset of 25 million pathology cancer images (“slides”).

by Synced 2018-03-07 Number of comments0

AI China

Baidu Launches Its Institute of Quantum Computing

Today Baidu announced Institute of Quantum Computing, which will conduct applied research and development on software and information technologies

by Synced 2018-03-07 1

AI Industry

Fintech Surge: S&P Global Acquires Kensho for Record $550 Million; Ant Financial Launches Pre-IPO Funding

S&P Global has signed an agreement to acquire Kensho, a Cambridge, MA-based AI company that uses data analytics and machine learning algorithms to find correlations and arbitrage opportunities in large-scale financial datasets.

by Synced 2018-03-06 Number of comments0

AI China

Strengthening AI R&D Among China’s 2018 Innovation Goals

Chinese Premier Keqiang Li delivered this year’s official government work report, identifying “reinforcing the new generation of artificial intelligence research and development” among the state’s innovation focuses for 2018.

by Synced 2018-03-05 Number of comments0

AI Self Driving

Baidu Drops Lawsuit Against JingChi as the Two Team Up on Self-Driving Tech

Baidu announced today that self-driving startup JingChi has joined its open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo as a cooperative partner. JingChi’s new CEO Tony Han said in a statement, “JingChi is pleased to join Apollo, and is willing to grow fast with Apollo’s help.”

by Synced 2018-03-05 2

AI AI Bi-Weekly

AI Biweekly: 10 Bits from Feb W 4 – Mar W 1

Capillary Technologies is a cloud-based SaaS company serving over 300 large enterprises and 500 small or medium businesses in over 30 countries. It improves retailers’ engagement with customers through analytics.

by Synced 2018-03-04 1

AI

AI in Cyber Threat Detection

Cyber Threats have become a critical issue in today’s world. Worldwide spending on information security climbed to over US$90 billion in 2017, a roughly 15% increase compared to 2016. Research and development of cyber threat detection and response capabilities will continue to grow this year.

by Synced 2018-03-02 Number of comments0

AI China

China to Facilitate AI Unicorns’ Going Public

Chinese media is reporting that several domestic brokers and investment banks were recently informed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) that it will relax regulations on prospectus approval time and profitability minimums for Chinese unicorns in the domains of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, biotech, and high-end manufacturing.

by Synced 2018-03-02 3

AI United States

“Trashbots” Boost Recycling at Pittsburgh Airport

Trashbot uses cameras and sensors to scan discarded items. A machine learning algorithm based on Bayesian classifier sorts the trash for either landfill or recycle. If you dump an unfinished can of Coke, excess liquid will be drained off on a Teflon-coated sheet.

by Synced 2018-03-01 2

AI Emerging Company United States

DataVisor Uses Unsupervised Learning to Combat Online Fraud

DataVisor is a Mountain View, California based anti-fraud startup that uses AI to detect fake accounts, prevent money laundering, and protect financial institutions from credit scams. The company offers clients its DataVisor APIs for real-time data connection, and a specialized UI for direct results.

by Synced 2018-02-28 Number of comments0

AI China United States

MIT and SenseTime Become Allies in AI

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Chinese AI Unicorn SenseTime today announced the MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence, a partnership the duo says “aims to open up new avenues of discovery across MIT in areas such as computer vision, human-intelligence-inspired algorithms, medical imaging, and robotics.”

by Synced 2018-02-27 Number of comments0

AI China

Pandas and AI Lead the Way to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

The Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics’ closing ceremony on Sunday was capped by a spectacular eight-minute presentation from 2022 host Beijing that featured state-of-the-art robotics and AI technology.

by Synced 2018-02-26 Number of comments0

AI China

Chinese Self-Driving Startup CEO Suddenly Steps Down

Jin Wang, CEO of China’s self-driving startup JingChi, has stepped down just 11 months after founding the company.

JingChi said in a statement that “Jin Wang left the company due to family issues. Despite that, the company remains unchanged.”