Microsoft Co-Founder Announces $500 Million Artificial Intelligence Research Project

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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announces that he will invest $500 million to fund two teams of researchers pursuing breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Allen, who is 62 and has an estimated worth of $17 billion, has developed a plan and a research team to systematically attack gaps in artificial intelligence know-how. “We are starting with biology” he explains, “But first you have to figure out how you represent that knowledge in a software database. I wish I could say our understanding of the brain could inform that, but we’re probably a decade away from that. Our understanding of the brain is so elemental at this point that we don’t know how language works in the brain.”

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Intelligent Machines: AI had IQ of four-year-old child

Young children looking at tablets
Image captionCurrently AI systems are at a very early, childlike stage of learning

An artificial intelligence system (AI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken an IQ test designed for a young child.

The results, written up by MIT Review, revealed that its IQ was equivalent to that of a four-year-old.

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Computer Scientists Wield Artificial Intelligence to Battle Tax Evasion

When federal authorities want to ferret out abusive tax shelters, they send an army of forensic accountants, auditors and lawyers to burrow into suspicious tax returns.

Analyzing mountains of filings and tracing money flows through far-flung subsidiaries is notoriously difficult; even if the Internal Revenue Servicemanages to unravel a major scheme, it typically does so only years after its emergence, by which point a fresh dodge has often already replaced it.

But what if that needle-in-a-haystack quest could be done routinely, and quickly, by a computer? Could the federal tax laws — 74,608 pages of legal gray areas and welters of credits, deductions and exemptions — be accurately rendered in an algorithm?

New academic research seeks to use artificial intelligence to combat tax evasion by corporate entities, from publicly traded multinationals to private partnerships. The goal is to give the I.R.S. a better way to investigate sophisticated tax shelters that strip tens of billions of dollars from federal coffers each year.

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A Researcher Built an Artificial Intelligence Machine That Learned the Game of Chess and Mastered It in Just Three Days

Machine Masters Chess

A machine named Giraffe taught itself to play chess and reached a level of skill on par with master chess players in just three days, according to The Independent. Matthew Lai, the Cornell University researcher who built the machine, implemented a “neural network” into it to allow it to utilize information and situations from real games of chess and simulate human thought-processes, although it was never explicitly told the rules.

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Audi CEO Stadler meets G7 ministers: “Artificial intelligence can save lives”

A crucial breakthrough has been achieved at the International Motor Show (IAA) in establishing the legal framework of piloted driving and parking. Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt presented his national strategy for this key technology on Wednesday in Frankfurt. He also welcomed EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc and the transport ministers of the other G7 nations. Using the new Audi A4 and the concept car “Jack,” he presented the current state of driver assist systems to the visitors. The Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG, Prof. Rupert Stadler, advocated “seizing this unique chance to save 900,000 lives per year, since more than 90% of all traffic accidents are caused by human error.”

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Experts Call for Ban on Sex Robots with Artificial Intelligence in Fear of Intensifying Objectification

Experts Call for Ban on Sex Robots with Artificial Intelligence in Fear of Intensifying Objectification

 

As advancements in robot technology and artificial intelligence achieve a milestone every day, sex toy industry is not spared from the trend. Recently a New Jersey-based company True Companion announced that it will soon launch the world’s first sex robot called Roxxxy, which has artificial intelligence.

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Facebook CEO Talks ‘Dislike’ Button, Artificial Intelligence, And Virtual Realty

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Photo : Reuters )

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a Q&A session from the company’s California headquarters on September 15, Tuesday. He announced that the social network is testing a “dislike” button that will build on its iconic Like feature. He also revealed his optimism about artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR), alluding to content filters, the Oculus VR Rift headset, and a new VR mobile app.

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Not even computer scientists’ jobs are safe from the rise of artificial intelligence

Step aside “Terminator” — moviemakers looking to make accurate dystopian movies should instead take cues from “The Grapes of Wrath.”

That’s because robots won’t take our lives — they’re more likely to take our livelihoods.

And it’s looking more and more likely that these artificially intelligent programs will even take over the job of making themselves — some researchers think it’s likely that software engineers will one day be supplanted by intelligent software that can copy, write, and improve programs itself.

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How artificial intelligence is transforming the financial industry

New York Stock Exchange
 

Your next stockbroker might just be a computer.

More and more, financial firms are turning to machines to do the job humans have done for decades.

Last spring, wealth management firm Charles Schwab launched a new service called Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. The service is unique in that it’s not a person who decides where to invest your money, it’s an algorithm – lines of code programmed into a computer.

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Eric Schmidt says artificial intelligence is ‘starting to see real progress’

Eric Schmidt is all in on artificial intelligence. In an op-ed for the BBC, the highly opinionated Google — and soon to be Alphabet — chairman wrote that we’re closer than ever before to true artificial intelligence, and that continued research into its development will have positive side effects that will benefit the public.

In his piece, Schmidt notes that AI-related research hit an inflection point a few years ago, after a team led by Geoff Hinton, a leader in artificial neural networks, was able to dramatically improve on speech recognition, and helped improve Google’s efforts by 25 percent, a jump that would’ve taken years of research.
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