A new AI revolution is underway, turning people who know little about coding into developers. Called “no code,” startups are emerging to productize this new category, which essentially lets people use familiar, clickable web interfaces and even natural language to automate tasks or create simple applications, while machine learning takes over the rest. Proponents predict it will be a game-changer, powering a brigade of “citizen developers” to leverage artificial intelligence without knowing how to write code. Startups entering the space include Juji, which makes creating AI chatbots as easy as programming PowerPoint. Continue reading No-Code AI and Prediction Tools Bring Coding to the People

Wearing a blue sweater and yellow Apple Watch in solidarity with Ukraine, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the budget 5G iPhone SE during a “Peek Performance” virtual event streamed live Tuesday morning. In addition, Apple revealed an M1-powered iPad Air, the sizzling Mac Studio for professionals and a 27-inch studio monitor to go with it. The event concluded with a teaser for the new Mac Pro. Cook also announced “Friday Night Baseball” is coming to Apple TV+ (“a weekly doubleheader with live pre- and post-game shows”) and said the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro will come in green and alpine green, respectively. The new gear hits the market March 18. Continue reading Apple Rolls Out 5G iPhone SE, iPad Air, Mac Studio Desktop

A new technique for machine learning that allows computers to use algorithms that turn 2D images into 3D is stirring a lot of excitement in the worlds of games, computer graphics and AI. The approach relies on “neural rendering,” which uses a neural network to generate 3D imagery from multiple 2D snapshots. A merger of concepts from the worlds of computer graphics and artificial intelligence, neural rendering gained steam in 2020 when researchers at Google and UC Berkeley demonstrated how a neural network could photorealistically capture a scene in 3D after ingesting several 2D snapshots. Continue reading Algorithms Use NeRFs to Instantly Convert 2D Images to 3D

The immersive experiences Meta Platforms has planned for the metaverse will require processing power beyond what’s possible today, tipping into the quintillions of operations-per-second. But the company has a fix for that. Meta announced Monday that it has been working on a new artificial intelligence supercomputer called the AI Research SuperCluster, that will be the fastest in the world when fully built this summer. Drawing on resources from partners like Nvidia, Penguin Computing and Pure Storage, the effort took two years and involved several hundred people who collaborated remotely through the COVID-19 pandemic for much of the project. Continue reading Meta AI Research Supercomputer Aims to Be World’s Fastest

Game giant Unity is using its game engine technology to help businesses make “digital twins” of real-world objects, environments and even people. These virtual entities take the brunt of testing products, machines and environments. Currently there are dozens of companies reportedly using Unity’s game engine to model digital doubles that can sub-in for robots, manufacturing lines and buildings, among other things, virtually operating and monitoring them even as they are optimized and trained. These twins rust when exposed to water and respond to things like temperature. They learn to avoid a ditch or call attention to a broken part. Continue reading Unity Game Engine Makes ‘Digital Twins’ for Industrial Tests

To understand speech visually, by reading lips, in addition to aurally, is an advantage for which AI has been waiting, according to researchers at Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). The company says it has developed a framework that learns by watching — Audio-Visual Hidden Unit BERT (AV-HuBERT) — and that it is 75 percent more accurate than competing automated speech recognition systems on several metrics. Meta claims that AV-HuBERT outperforms the former best audiovisual speech recognition system with only one-tenth the inuput, which makes it potentially useful with languages with little or no audio data. Continue reading Companies Turn to AI for New Approaches to Audio Solutions

Intel laid claim to the ‘world’s best mobile gaming platform’ with its 12th generation Alder Lake H-series GPUs at CES 2022, then shifted to overdrive to focus on autonomous driving, introducing its Mobileye EyeQ Ultra, AV-on-chip supercomputer offered as a full-stack AV driving solution. Intel in December announced plans to spin off Mobileye in an IPO sometime this year and used its CES press conference stage to demonstrate it is prepared to deliver, announcing a partnership with Zeekr to create all-electric AVs for the Chinese market, due to roll off the assembly line in 2024. Continue reading CES: Intel on AV Overdrive, Touts Fastest Mobile Game Chip

LG Display is rolling out its next generation in OLED technology, OLED.EX, which the company says will “enhance brightness up to 30 percent compared to conventional OLED displays.” The name is an acronym of “Evolution” and “eXperience,” and LG is tapping both to improve what is considered OLED’s weak link: lack of brightness compared to more expensive Mini LED displays. Since OLED displays “are self-emissive by nature” — without a separate backlight source — they achieve deep blacks and rich color expression. LG Display is tackling the brightness issue with a “deuterium and personalized algorithm-approach” to distinguish OLED.EX. Continue reading CES: LG Display Touts Next-Gen OLED and Curved Screens

The metaverse is in its early days, but many are already concerned as they anticipate the content moderation problems that have bedeviled traditional social media increasing exponentially in virtual worlds. The confluence of realistic immersive environments, the anonymity of avatars and potential for deepfakes is enough to give anyone pause. Throw in machine learning that will make today’s ad targeting seem primitive and it’s an even more volatile mix. Experts agree, the very qualities that make the metaverse appealing — false facades and hyperreality — make it potentially more dangerous than the digital platforms of today. Continue reading Policing the Metaverse Looms as a Challenge for Tech Firms

Intel has raised a red flag regarding the metaverse, warning that more processing power is needed to support the vision. “Immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time” will require a 1,000x increase in computational capability from today’s state of the art, says Intel senior vice president Raja Koduri, general manager of the company’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group. Intel remains enthusiastic about the metaverse, however, conceding in the company’s first official statement on the matter it “may be the next major platform in computing after the world wide web and mobile.” Continue reading Intel Says the Metaverse Needs 1,000x More Compute Power

Meta Platforms is restructuring its internal research department, drawing on employees from individual divisions like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram to staff a centralized unit that will provide services to the entire company. The research will span everything from societal topics of politics, equity, health and climate to credibility topics like misinformation and account safety. The new division will be managed by Meta head of research Pratiti Raychoudhury. Additionally, Meta is deploying the new Few-Shot Learner artificial intelligence system to help moderate content, identify trends, monitor data and implement rules. Continue reading Meta Reorganizes Research Team and Deploys ‘Few-Shot’ AI

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are technologies with lots of heat behind them, and some controversy. Organizations (including the Entertainment Technology Center at USC) are working to better understand the ramifications of AI and how to hold its users accountable. Among the criticisms is that AI disproportionately exhibits bias against minority groups — the so-called “discrimination feedback loop.” In November, the New York City Council became the first in the nation to pass a law requiring that the hiring and promotion algorithms of employers be subject to audit. Continue reading Guidelines, Accountability Considered as AI Becomes Priority

Last month, Meta Platforms announced it would delay until 2023 the introduction of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default on Messenger and Instagram. Now the company is shedding light on its decision, which walks the line between issues of privacy and public safety. Child advocates said the change would help abusers avoid detection. Since the purpose of encryption is to shield sensitive information for things like financial and health information, it wouldn’t do to have human monitors poking around there. Meta is using artificial intelligence in an attempt to prevent bad behavior before it happens. Continue reading Meta Says User Safety Prompts Delay for Default Encryption

The 10th Amazon Web Services re:Invent cloud computing conference showcased faster chips, better developer tools, smarter AI and two new automotive initiatives. AWS CEO Adam Selipsky’s keynote led with the company’s next-generation processor, the Arm-based Graviton3, and culminated with a peek under the hood at AWS Automotive and AWS IoT FleetWise. Collecting data and spotting trends are enterprise priorities, and AWS is doing its part to advance artificial intelligence and machine learning across that matrix in the cloud. “We know your data is on a journey — and all the stops on this journey matter,” Selipsky said. Continue reading AWS re:Invent Showcases Sizzling Chips, New Tools for Cars

Google Cloud recently unveiled a new AI-powered service product named Bot-in-a-Box. The feature, available via Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Business Messages, will help enterprises easily manage conversations with their customers. Bot-in-a-Box creates chatbots that can naturally respond to customers’ questions by using Google’s Dialogflow software. The conversational bot does not require any additional coding but will learn directly from businesses’ customer service data. The new product is expected to cut the customer service budget for businesses and improve the service level of chat function on GCP Business Messages. Continue reading Google’s Bot-in-a-Box Brings Conversational AI to Enterprises