Autonomous underwater robot hunter will take on the invasive lionfish Twenty-five years ago, lionfish started invading coastal waters in the Americas, and the species is now causing damage to the local ecosystems from Venezuela, through the Caribbean, and up the East Coast of the United States. Since most of these fish are genetically similar, the theory goes that a few private fish collectors dumped their fish in the water, and
With other projects on our plate, we’re reducing our newsletter frequency from biweekly to monthly. Speaking of other projects, if you’re looking for a team to help apply machine learning or data science to a new product or existing workflow, we currently have space to bring on a new client, so drop us a note. There you are, Waldo. If Martin Handford knew that his Where’s Wally? (aka Where’s Waldo?)
Making life a little easier after loss It’s difficult after losing a limb to become accustomed to prosthetics. It’s obviously very different than the limb a person lost, one that naturally and easily responds to what the brain tells it to do. With innovations in prosthetics, however, ease of use is on the rise. By using machine learning, researchers are able to significantly smooth out prosthetic movements and better interpret brain signals.
Gentler on the eye One of the most popular AI/ML news stories in the past two week was Nvidia’s use of deep learning to turn regular videos into slow-motion videos. Slowing down a video that wasn’t initially filmed as a slow-motion video creates a choppy and hard-to-watch sequence. With this new application, though, the system is able to predict what missing frames would look like between two existing frames and then
Your gait is your tell Researchers have developed a new way to identify you: they can tell who you are by the way you walk. The tech evaluates 24 different factors in your gait and is surprisingly accurate—it has a 99 percent accuracy rating. And if you’re trying to fake the way someone else walks, it won’t work. The system can root you out by evaluating the exact force you exert on the mat,
Last week we were impressed with some of the AI announcements and demonstrations at Google’s I/O developer conference, most notably the very lifelike phone calls made by Google’s assistant, placing both a hair appointment and a dinner appointment. It was so lifelike it sparked a stinging rebuttal by several people concerned with ethics. Now, Google says it’ll have the bot identify itself when it places these types of phone calls. If you haven’t already seen
A lot has happened recently in the AI and machine learning realm, most notably a new academic boycott: the highly acclaimed journal Nature, which has one of the highest impact factors for academic journals, is aiming to start a closed-access machine learning journal, and some big names in the space, like Ian Goodfellow, Jeff Dean, and Yoshua Bengio, don’t like it. By signing this petition, they voiced their opinion that academic research in machine
In our last newsletter, we mentioned academics around the world were boycotting South Korea’s KAIST University because researchers there were working on AI-powered weaponry. While the following aren’t weapons, some very interesting surveillance-related applications surfaced this past week that we think are worth the spotlight, considering how much military use of AI has been in the news recently. But I’m behind a wall One of the most fascinating (and potentially scary) developments in the past two weeks
Flying Jellyfish, Somersaulting Spiders, and . . . a Really Cool Workstation Festo, a German company known for its unusual, flashy robots (like co-working ants, airborne jellyfish, and somersaulting spiders), has created the BionicWorkplace, a workstation that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve efficiency. People working at the station can interact with and control the bionic arm using movement, speech, or touch. Watch it at work here: Jaywalker Shaming
Brazilian Forest Warriors Fight Back with ML The Tembé people in Brazil work hard to stop invaders from cutting down their trees. Their 30 forest ranger warriors have been patrolling the border of their land to protect it from abuse, but this approach has met conflict—deforesters sometimes bring armed guards who shoot and kill the Tembé forest rangers. With the help of Topher White from Rainforest Connection, this tribe now uses machine learning to identify
