-
NASA’s asteroid-harvesting mission solicits proposals for its robotic spacecraft
Asteroid mining is coming soon to a planet near you: this planet, and in 2021, to be specific. But NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission has lots of work to do before that point. Today the space-faring organization issued an official “request for proposals” from four partners on how they would go about creating the robotic spacecraft that would perform the actual asteroid… Read More
-
DeepMind wants its healthcare AI to charge by results — but first it needs your data
Mark your Google calendars because from today ‘Don’t be evil’ rides again, via the DeepMind AI division of the Alphabet ad giant, as a hippocratic assurance to ‘Do no harm’… Read More
-
Microsoft wants to crack the cancer code using artificial intelligence
Cancer is like a computer virus and can be ‘solved’ by cracking the code, according to Microsoft. The computer software company says its researchers are using artificial intelligence in a new healthcare initiative to target cancerous cells and eliminate the disease. One of the projects within this new healthcare enterprise involves utilizing machine learning and natural… Read More
-
IBM and MIT partner up to create AI that understands sight and sound the way we do
When you see or hear something happen, you can instantly describe it: “a girl in a blue shirt caught a ball thrown by a baseball player,” or “a dog runs along the beach.” It’s a simple task for us, but an immensely hard one for computers — fortunately, IBM and MIT are partnering up to see what they can do about making it a little easier. Read More
-
Google acquires API.AI, a company helping developers build bots that aren’t awful to talk to
Google has just disclosed that it has snatched up the team behind API.AI. API.AI provides tools to developers to help them build conversational, Siri-esque bots. As humans, we’re pretty good at communication. If someone says “the girl saw a man with the binoculars,” we can generally use contextual clues to figure out if they meant that the girl saw the man by using binoculars… Read More
-
Etsy buys Blackbird Technologies to bring AI to its search
It’s not just gigantic search engines that are looking to acquire tech and talent around emerging areas like speech recognition. Even design and craft marketplaces can use a little machine learning and artificial intelligence to make their wheels turn a little better. Today, the popular handmade-goods site Etsy announced it has acquired a startup called Blackbird Technologies… Read More
-
Voice is chat’s next battleground
Chatbots were meh. Sure, they’ll get better. But the upcoming innovation in chat is about being more human, not less. With the proliferation of adequate speech recognition, AI assistants and wireless headphones, the tech is ready to unlock the potential of our most basic form of communication. Soon, we’ll talk and listen to our messaging apps when it’s more convenient than… Read More
-
The vivacious, acrobatic Minitaur robot will definitely improve your day
Mondays, as we all know, are the worst. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for heart-warming videos like puppies sliding on hardwood floors, otters holding hands, or energetic robots doing flips and climbing fences. It helps if, as in this case, the background music is a jam. Read More
-
Salesforce Einstein delivers artificial intelligence across the Salesforce platform
Say what you will about Salesforce, the company is always looking ahead. This afternoon, it announced Salesforce Einstein, its artificial intelligence (AI) initiative. The timing, which comes just ahead of rival Oracle’s Open World keynote address, is probably not a coincidence. Regardless, the larger AI theme is something Salesforce has been working on across various pieces of its… Read More
Latest Crunch Report
-
Crunch Network
Robots pave the way for our sci-fi future now
As robotics begins to leave controlled environments and navigate the real world alongside humans, the question remains: How will this affect the way we interact, work and talk to not only robots, but one another? Read More
-
Crunch Network
Hard questions about bot ethics
Bots are becoming a part of our life. I wake up in the morning and tell Alexa to play my Brazilian samba, I let Amy set my meetings and I check stats and reports in Slack. Bot builders and users alike are starting to understand that bots are an integral part of our life. But what are the rules that govern these new tech friends? Read More
-
For your videos, Valossa knows if you’re happy or sad
Video analytics platform Valossa just launched Val.ai, a platform to help video creators, advertisers and other video boffins figure out what’s going on in video. In addition to computer-vision tricks, the platform can do sentiment analyses (person is happy / person is sad) and even heart rate analysis based on a high-definition video stream alone. Read More
-
Nvidia’s tiny new self-driving AI computer sips power
Nvidia revealed a new configuration of its DRIVE PX 2 in-car autonomous driving computing platform today, which vastly improves power efficiency and drops physical size compared to the original unveiled at CES earlier this year. The new single-core configuration will be used by Baidu in its own self-driving cars, as part of the previously announced partnership between the two companies to create… Read More
-
Chatbot Sensay wants to connect the world by sharing knowledge
Sensay, one contestant at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Battlefield, is aiming to be the first breakout cross-platform chatbot — but, unlike most that provide services and information at a convenience chat, its currency is people. Read More
-
Affectiva and Uber want to brighten your day with machine learning and emotional intelligence
Your phone doesn’t know how you’re feeling — but you may want it to if that capability came with a few fringe benefits. Affectiva makes emotion-detection software, and CEO Rana el Kaliouby was full of ideas today at Disrupt SF as to how it could be deployed, from gifs to Ubers. Read More
-
Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year
At TechCrunch Disrupt SF this year, famed iPhone and PlayStation hacker George Hotz unveiled the first official product of his automotive AI startup, Comma.ai. The Comma One is a $999 add-on shipping before the end of the year, with a $24 monthly subscription for its software, which Hotz says will be able to drive your car from Mountain View to San Francisco without requiring a driver to touch… Read More
-
Reuters is the latest large news agency to embrace content automation
Reuters is the latest major news agency to embrace content automation. Reuters isn’t replacing human reporters and editors with software and self-flying cameras quite yet. But the news organization has struck partnerships with Graphiq Inc. and Wibbitz Ltd., to automate the creation of simple graphics and video clips, respectively, to run alongside relevant, human-reported Reuters… Read More
-
Affectiva partners with Giphy and opens its emotion-sensing API to small businesses
Affectiva CEO Rana el Kaliouby made a pair of announcements at TechCrunch Disrupt today that should bring the company’s emotion-detecting systems to quite a few new people. First, the Affdex SDK and APIs are now free to any company that learns less than a million dollars a year. Read More
-
Fetch Robotics CEO Melonee Wise welcomes our new robot overlords
Melonee Wise of Fetch Robotics gave her insights on robotics and how robots are going to enhance our future. Fetch Robotics specialized in warehouse robots so that humans don’t have to walk around all day long. But even before Fetch Robotics, Wise has been active in the open-source community when it comes to building the software for our robots. TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey asked… Read More
-
Udacity plans to build its own open-source self-driving car
Sebastian Thrun’s online education startup Udacity recently created a self-driving car engineering nanodegree, and on stage at Disrupt today Thrun revealed that the company intends to build its own self-driving car as part of the program, and that it also intends to open source the technology that results, so that “anyone” can try to build their own self-driving vehicle… Read More
Message Us