After a weeklong whirlwind of talks, demonstrations, spotlight sessions, and posters, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) — one of the largest artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning conferences of the year — is coming to a close, and it was a smashing success by any measure. There were an estimated 8,300 registered attendees … [Read more...] about AI Weekly: 8 takeaways from NeurIPS 2018
Press Releases
Alexa now automatically detects and recovers from comprehension errors
Amazon’s Alexa is becoming more responsive, knowledgeable, and contextually aware. In a blog post ahead of an invited talk at the NeurIPS 2018 conference in Montreal, Ruhi Sarikaya, director of applied science at Alexa AI, detailed the progress Amazon’s made in the field of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the course of the year, and a few of … [Read more...] about Alexa now automatically detects and recovers from comprehension errors
Amazon Go cashierless stores are coming to airports
(Reuters) — Amazon.com is looking at bringing its futuristic checkout-free store format to airports in an effort to win business from hungry, time-pressed travelers, according to public records and a person familiar with the strategy. The move underscores how a company that started as an online bookseller is making forays into brick-and-mortar retail to capture a greater … [Read more...] about Amazon Go cashierless stores are coming to airports
OpenAI’s CoinRun tests the adaptability of reinforcement learning agents
Reinforcement learning (RL) — an artificial intelligence (AI) training technique that uses rewards or punishments to drive agents toward goals — has a problem: it doesn’t result in highly generalizable models. Trained agents struggle to transfer their experience to new environments. It’s a well-understood limitation of RL, but one that … [Read more...] about OpenAI’s CoinRun tests the adaptability of reinforcement learning agents
DeepMind’s AlphaZero beats state-of-the-art chess and shogi game engines
Almost a year ago exactly, DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence (AI) division owned by Google parent company Alphabet, made headlines with preprint research (“Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm”) describing a system — AlphaZero — that could teach itself how to master the game of chess, a … [Read more...] about DeepMind’s AlphaZero beats state-of-the-art chess and shogi game engines