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Nexar releases 55K street pics from 80 countries to spur autonomous driving
Nexar has released a dataset that it says is the world’s largest photo set featuring geographically diverse images for automotive tech development, for an open competition. There are 55,000 tagged photos in the set, taking from over 80 countries, in a variety of lighting and weather conditions. Each of the photos is taken from street level, using Nexar’s community-based V2V dashcam… Read More
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Crunch Network
Why the future of deep learning depends on finding good data
In the second part of our “A Mathless Guide to Neural Networks,” we’ll take a look at why high-quality, labeled data is so important, where it comes from, how it’s used and what solutions our eager-to-learn machines can expect in the near-term future. Read More
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Graphcore’s AI chips now backed by Atomico, DeepMind’s Hassabis
Is AI chipmaker Graphcore out to eat Nvidia’s lunch? Co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon laughs at that interview opener — perhaps because he sold his previous company to the chipmaker back in 2011. Read More
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The ORII smart ring lets you control your smartphone using only your voice
ORII is a new smart ring that gives you full hands-free control of your smartphone. The device connects to your phone with Bluetooth and it can be used to provide crystal-clear audio, which makes it an interesting tool for those with sight or hearing issues. Read More
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D-ID’s tech protects your privacy by confounding face recognition algorithms
Unless you literally wear a mask all the time, it is almost impossible to completely avoid cameras and face recognition technology. Not only is this a privacy concern, but it also presents a potential liability for companies that need to protect personal data. D-ID, a startup currently taking part in Y Combinator, wants to solve the problem with tools that process images to make them… Read More
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Movidius launches a $79 deep-learning USB stick
Movidius and Intel have put deep-learning on a stick with a tiny $79 USB device that makes bringing AI to hardware a snap. In April of last year, Movidius showed off the first iteration of this device, which they then called the Fathom Neural Compute Stick. The company wasn’t able to get the product out as quickly as they had hoped because they were a little busy getting acquired by… Read More
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Freshdesk owner Freshworks acquires Joe Hukum as it plans a move into chatbots
After raising $55 million last year to build its business beyond its existing help desk services, today Freshworks (the parent company of Freshdesk) has made an acquisition to help it fill out that strategy. The company has acquired Joe Hukum, a startup out of India that offers a platform for businesses to build their own chatbots. I’ve asked, but the companies are not revealing any terms… Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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MIT is building a system that can identify a recipe using pictures of food
Mastering the ability to distinguish hot dogs from not hot dogs is truly one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Attempting to one-up that sort of masterstroke would surely be flying too close to the sun — but researchers at MIT are trying nonetheless. The team’s pic2recipe system uses neural networks to determine the recipe of a given food, in an attempt to gain… Read More
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Elon Musk clarifies that AI regulation should follow observation and insight
Elon Musk made headlines over the weekend with comments calling for government controls around artificial intelligence, which he has said repeatedly he believes is an existential threat to humanity if left unchecked. Musk was at the International Space Station R&D conference today, and during a fireside chat explained more about his views on the matter in response to an audience member… Read More
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This famous roboticist doesn’t think Elon Musk understands AI
Earlier this week, at the campus of MIT, TechCrunch had the chance to sit down with famed roboticist Rodney Brooks, the founding director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and the cofounder of both iRobot and Rethink Robotics. Brooks had a lot to say about AI, including his overarching concern that many people — including renowned AI alarmist Elon Musk… Read More
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AI data-monopoly risks to be probed by UK parliamentarians
The UK’s upper house of parliament is asking for contributions to an enquiry into the socioeconomic and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence technology. Among the questions the House of Lords committee will consider are how can the data-based monopolies of some large corporations, and the ‘winner-takes-all’ economics associated with them, be addressed? Read More
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Apple launches machine learning research site
Apple just launched a blog focused on machine learning research papers and sharing the company’s findings. The Apple Machine Learning Journal is a bit empty right now as the company only shared one post about turning synthetic images into realistic ones in order to train neural networks. This move is interesting as Apple doesn’t usually talk about their research projects. The… Read More
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Clara Labs nabs $7M Series A as it positions its AI assistant to meet the needs of enterprise teams
Clara Labs is announcing a $7 million Series A led by Basis Set Ventures. Slack Fund also joined in the round, alongside existing investors Sequoia and First Round. The startup will be looking to further differentiate within the crowded field of email-centric personal assistants by building in features and integrations to address the needs of enterprise teams. Read More
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Nauto raises $159M to fuel expansion of its autonomous driving data platform
Nauto, a Palo Alto company focused on retrofitting existing vehicle fleets with networked safety camera-equipped devices, has raised $159 million in a Series B round led by SoftBank. The company’s products focus on gathering data about human drivers and their behavior in order to improve safety practices. Read More
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Self-driving robot AI company Brain Corp raises $114M
A San Diego-based company that believes “tomorrow’s robots will be intelligent autonomous machines that can take care of us,” which will be “as commonplace as computers and mobile phones are today” has raised $114 million in Series C funding led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures. Read More
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Self-driving truck startup Embark raises $15M, partners with Peterbilt
Self-driving trucking startup Embark has raised $15 million in Series A financing, the company announced on Tuesday. Embark first broke cover back in February, when it revealed trucks equipped with its neural net-based deep learning approach to autonomous trucking. The startup’s also revealing a team-up with heavy equipment manufacturer Peterbilt today, which will help it roll out its… Read More
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Yandex open sources CatBoost, a gradient boosting machine learning library
Artificial intelligence is now powering a growing number of computing functions, and today the developer community today is getting another AI boost, courtesy of Yandex. Today, the Russian search giant — which, like its US counterpart Google, has extended into a myriad of other business lines, from mobile to maps and more — announced the launch of CatBoost, an open source… Read More
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Reach Robotics closes $7.5M Series A for its augmented reality bots
After years of research and development, Reach Robotics has closed a $7.5 million Series A, co-led by Korea Investment Partners (KiP) and IGlobe, to bring its augmented reality bots to market in a big way. The Bristol-based startup is looking to expand into the U.S., and the team is exploring opportunities for growth into other European and Asian markets. Read More
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