Tech & Society
Amputees can control a robotic hand with their thoughts — plus machine learning. University of Michigan researchers developed a system that uses signals from an amputee’s nervous system to control a prosthetic hand.
Machine Learning Research
AI is good at tracking objects in two dimensions. A new model processes video from a camera with a depth sensor to predict how objects move through space.
Tech & Society
Faster than a speeding skateboard! Able to dodge tall trees while chasing a dirt bike! It’s … an upgrade in the making from an innovative drone maker.
Business
Robots are moving into a job that traditionally required the human touch.What’s new: A commercial warehouse that ships electrical supplies deployed AI-driven robotic arms from Covariant, a high-profile Silicon Valley robotics firm.
Interviews & Essays
Many people in the AI community focus on achieving flashy results, like building an agent that can win at Go or Jeopardy. This kind of work is impressive in terms of complexity.
Interviews & Essays
We’ve had great success with supervised deep learning on labeled data. Now it’s time to explore other ways to learn: training on unlabeled data, lifelong learning, and especially letting models explore a simulated environment before transferring what they learn to the real world.
Tech & Society
A year-long Twitter feud breathed fresh life into a decades-old argument over AI’s direction. Gary Marcus, a standard bearer of logic-based AI, waged a tireless Twitter campaign to knock deep learning off its pedestal and promote other AI approaches.
Tech & Society
The future of machine learning may depend less on amassing ground-truth data than simulating the environment in which a model will operate. Deep learning works like magic with enough high-quality data. When examples are scarce, though, researchers are using simulation to fill the gap.
Machine Learning Research
Reinforcement learning trains models by trial and error. In batch reinforcement learning (BRL), models learn by observing many demonstrations by a variety of actors. But what if one doctor is handier with a scalpel while another excels at suturing?
Business
Sony, the consumer-electronics powerhouse behind the PlayStation and other hit gadgets, is launching three research-and-design centers to focus on AI. Staffing up means competing with — and likely poaching talent from — frontrunners like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Business
Knightscope’s security robots look cute. But these cone-headed automatons, which serve U.S. police departments and businesses, are serious surveillance machines.
Machine Learning Research
Robots designed to assist people with disabilities have become more capable, but they’ve also become harder to control. New research offers a way to operate such complex mechanical systems more intuitively.