CuspAI, a UK startup that aims to help engineer sustainable materials, has raised $30 million from venture funds in Europe and the U.S., secured a partnership with Meta’s FAIR unit, and employed the advisory services of AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton in its mission to tackle climate change. “CuspAI leverages cutting-edge generative AI, deep learning, and molecular simulation to streamline the material design process,” the company announced. Its platform “functions like a search engine for materials, allowing users to request specific properties for new materials on demand,” speeding the process of “the discovery of materials with precise functionalities.” Continue reading Green Startup CuspAI Secures $30 Million, Meta Partnership

Mitigating the risk of extinction due to AI must should be as much a global priority as pandemics and nuclear war, according to the non-profit Center for AI Safety, which this week released a warning that artificial intelligence systems may pose an existential threat to humanity. Among the more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers who signed the statement are the CEOs of three leading AI firms: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. The statement comes as rapid advancements in large language models raise fears of societal disruption through job loss and widespread misinformation. Continue reading Industry Leaders Caution That AI Presents ‘Risk of Extinction’

The Biden administration has committed $140 million to create seven new artificial intelligence research hubs, bringing the national total to 25. The announcement coincided with Vice President Kamala Harris’ Thursday meeting with representatives from Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI and new White House guidance on AI development. The developments are part of an effort to curtain security risks associated with AI and ensure that it is implemented responsibly. “The private sector has an ethical, moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products,” Harris said following the meeting, which included a drop-in by President Biden. Continue reading Biden Administration Hosts Tech Elite at White House AI Meet

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating the purchase of hundreds of small startups made by Big Tech companies Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft to determine if they have become too powerful. In 2019, a record-breaking 231 artificial intelligence startups were snapped up, which in many cases ended public availability of their products. According to CB Insights, that number compares to 42 AI startups acquired in 2014. Apple has been the No. 1 buyer of these startups since 2010. Continue reading Big Tech Companies Acquire Significant Number of AI Startups

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) honored three artificial intelligence pioneers with the prestigious Turing Award for their work on neural networks. The Turing Award, often dubbed the Nobel Prize of computing, was launched in 1966 and includes a $1 million prize that the three honorees will share. Doctors Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio helped lay the foundation for the evolution of technologies including facial recognition, digital assistants and self-driving vehicles. Continue reading AI Pioneers Are Honored with the Prestigious Turing Award

In 2012, University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton and two grad students showed off artificial neural networks, a technology that empowered machines to understand images. Google hired Hinton and his grad students six months later; Hinton now splits his time between Google and the university. Although neural networks now underlie speech transcription and many other tasks, Hinton isn’t enthused over the technology he helped launch. Instead, he’s now bullish on an “old” idea that could help reshape artificial intelligence. Continue reading Google’s Geoff Hinton Tests Capsule Networks as AI Solution