Google Google kills Chrome’s Data Saver extensionVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersData Saver, a Chrome browser feature that automatically improves page loading times using “built-in optimizations” and dedicated servers, is no more — at least in name. Google this afternoon announced
OpenAI OpenAI’s Sparse Transformers can predict what comes next in lengthy text, image, and audio sequencesVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersSome months back, OpenAI debuted an AI natural language model capable of generating coherent, original passages from millions of Wikipedia and Amazon product reviews, and more recently, it demonstrated
Aviation Wing gains FAA approval to launch commercial drone delivery service in VirginiaVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersWing’s drone delivery service is one step closer to becoming a reality stateside, thanks to approval from federal regulators. The Alphabet X lab graduate announced this morning that it has been certified
Waymo Waymo will build its driverless cars in DetroitVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersMonths after Waymo announced that it would select a factory in southeast Michigan to dedicate to the production of level 4 autonomous cars — that is, cars capable of driving without human supervision most
Health Care India’s Mfine raises $17.2 million to expand telemedical doctor networkVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersMfine, an AI health care startup headquartered in Bangalore, today announced that it has raised $17.2 million in a series B funding round led by Japan-based venture group SBI Investment, with participation
Softbank Blueshift raises $15 million from Softbank for its AI customer engagement toolsVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersFour-year-old Blueshift, which describes itself as an AI-driven “customer data activation” company, has attracted backing from Japanese conglomerate Softbank. It today announced that it’s raised $15 million
Microsoft Microsoft: AI’s next frontier is experts teaching machinesVentureBeat - Khari JohnsonMicrosoft executives say the next frontier in artificial intelligence will involve using human professionals’ expertise to train machine learning models. “Machine teaching” is essentially an interface
Salesforce Salesforce debuts AI enhancements to Sales Cloud, updates Quip with live file embeddingVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersBelieve it or not, sales reps spend less than 36% of their time selling. That’s according to a recent study published by ClickFunnels, which found that administrative tasks take up close to 15% of the
Yahoo Intellimize raises $8 million to optimize websites with AIVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersWhat if ecommerce and retail websites could be dynamically, autonomously personalized for every visitor? That’s the idea behind Intellimize, a San Mateo, California-based startup that today announced raised
Rembrandt Brightback raises $11 million for automated subscription retention serviceVentureBeat - Khari JohnsonSubscription retention and churn management software company Brightback today announced the close of an $11 million funding round. The startup will use this money to hire engineers and marketing and sales
DevOps Harness raises $60 million to automate continuous app delivery with machine learningVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersHarness, a San Francisco startup developing a continuous app delivery and release platform for engineering and DevOps teams, today announced that it’s raised $60 million in an oversubscribed series B co-led
Tesla Tesla plans to launch driverless taxi service in 2020VentureBeat - Kyle WiggersTesla says that next year, it’ll leverage a fraction of the millions of Tesla cars on the road to launch an autonomous taxi service powered by its Autopilot software — one that might compete with Waymo’s
Google AI Google’s SpecAugment achieves state-of-the-art speech recognition without a language modelVentureBeat - Khari JohnsonGoogle AI researchers are applying computer vision to sound wave visuals to achieve state-of-the-art speech recognition system performance without the use of a language model. Researchers call the method
Tesla Tesla claims its latest self-driving chip is 7 times more powerful than its rivals’VentureBeat - Kyle WiggersAs predicted, Tesla discussed its car lineup’s forthcoming self-driving features during an “Autonomy Day” keynote ahead of its Q1 2019 earnings call later this week. Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer (previously
Chatbots makes customer data collection easier with chatbotsVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersChatbot usage is on the rise worldwide, and not without good reason — according to Juniper Research, conversational assistants will drive cost savings of over $8 billion annually by 2022 (up from $20 in
Alexa Amazon’s AI system could cut Alexa speech recognition errors by 15%VentureBeat - Kyle WiggersA few months back, Amazon detailed some of the underlying systems that prevent Alexa from responding when someone says the wake word “Alexa” on TV, in an internet ad, or on the radio. But how does Amazon’s
OpenAI OpenAI’s Dota 2 bot defeated 99.4% of players in public matchesVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersOpenAI Five — the AI-imbued bot designed by San Francisco, California-based research organization OpenAI that defeated a professional esports team at Valve’s Dota 2 earlier this month — became publicly
Hyundai Audioburst raises $10 million to parse podcasts and audio content with AIVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersAudioburst, a four-year-old startup developing AI that parses, labels, and segments live and recorded audio clips, today announced two new strategic and investment partnerships totaling over $10 million
Zillow Zillow launches AI-powered 3D home tours in the U.S. and CanadaVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersFor prospective home buyers, touring a house traditionally entails commuting to top prospects and painstakingly documenting each room with photos, but Zillow wants to drag the process into the 21st century.
Alexa Google Assistant and Alexa can now answer questions about U.K. passports, bank holidays, and moreVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersWondering how to apply for a new passport, which organizations offer free childcare, or when the next bank holiday might be? If you’re based in the U.K. and you’ve got a speaker, smartphone, or smart powered
Technology GM’s Cruise is preparing for a self-driving future in the cloudVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersAccording to marketing firm ABI, as many as 8 million driverless cars will be added to the road in 2025. Meanwhile, Research and Markets is predicting that in the U.S. alone, there will be some 20 million
Play buttonDji DJI R&D head dreams of drones fighting fires by the thousands in ‘aerial aqueduct’VentureBeat - Khari JohnsonWhile the world watched in shock as part of Notre Dame cathedral burned, few realized the surprising roles machines played in the incident. Sadly, a possible computer glitch may have been responsible the
Play buttonTechnology tests robo-taxi program on its employees, promises self-driving trucks nextVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersGuangzhou, China-based self-driving startup Pony.ai is joining an exclusive club of companies that have launched autonomous ride-hailing programs. At this year’s Shanghai Auto Show, it took the wraps of
Kelly VentureBeat is looking for an edge reporterVentureBeat - Seth ColanerVentureBeat is looking for a skilled technology writer who can cover the emerging, red-hot area of the “edge.” With AI bringing vast compute power to devices — whether those are phones, sensors, or robotic
Tencent Qualcomm joins Tencent and Vivo on new AI initiative for mobile gamingVentureBeat - Giancarlo ValdesAs smartphones become more powerful, they’ll be able to offer better artificial intelligence performance for gaming and other applications. Qualcomm wants to make sure that it stays at the bleeding edge
Robotics AI helps four-legged robots find their footingVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersThere’s quite a few quadrupedal robots out there, the most impressive of which might be Boston Dynamics’ Spot. But they have a problem in common: figuring out where to step so that they don’t become stuck
Robotics AI Weekly: Boston Dynamics robots are terrifying by designVentureBeat - Khari JohnsonThere’s no beating the Terminator. It’s the undisputed heavyweight champion of AI held up as proof of machines hell-bent on the destruction of humanity. In my experience seeing Atlas do parkour and backflips,
Uber Toyota, Denso, and Softbank invest $1 billion in Uber’s self-driving divisionVentureBeat - Reuters(Reuters) — Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit has raised $1 billion from a consortium of investors including SoftBank, giving the company a much-needed funding boost for its pricey self-driving ambitions
Microsoft Microsoft’s confusing facial recognition policy, from China to CaliforniaVentureBeat - Khari JohnsonOn Tuesday, news broke that Microsoft refused to sell its facial recognition software to law enforcement in California and an unnamed country. The move led to some praise for the company for being consistent
