Glia raises $78M for its integrated, hands-on, AI-based customer service platform

The ongoing push for social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 has meant that more people than ever are using internet-based services to get things done. And that is having a direct impact on digital customer service, which is seeing unprecedented traffic and demands when things are not runn

OpenAI’s DALL-E creates plausible images of literally anything you ask it to

OpenAI’s latest strange yet fascinating creation is DALL-E, which by way of hasty summary might be called “GPT-3 for images.” It creates illustrations, photos, renders or whatever method you prefer, of anything you can intelligibly describe, from “a cat wearing a bow tieR

Deep Science: Using machine learning to study anatomy, weather and earthquakes

Research papers come out far too rapidly for anyone to read them all, especially in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in but n

How artificial intelligence will be used in 2021

"speakable-summary" dir="ltr">Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang doesn’t need a crystal ball to see where artificial intelligence will be used in the future. He just looks at his customer list. The four-year-old startup, which recently hit a valuation of more than $3.5 billion, got its start supplying

2020 will change the way we look at robotics

Earlier this month, Hyundai acquired a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics that valued the company at $1.1 billion. What's most interesting about the news isn't the acquisition itself (it does, after all, find Boston Dynamics switching hands for the third time in seven years), but rather w

China’s adaptive robot maker Flexiv raises over $100 million

As businesses around the world look to automate production lines and supply chains, companies making the robots are attracting great investor interest. The latest to get funded is Flexiv, which closed a Series B round north of $100 million from investors including China’s on-demand services g

National Grid sees machine learning as the brains behind the utility business of the future

If the portfolio of a corporate venture capital firm can be taken as a signal for the strategic priorities of their parent companies, then National Grid has high hopes for automation as the future of the utility industry. The heavy emphasis on automation and machine learning from one of the nation&

No rules, no problem: DeepMind’s MuZero masters games while learning how to play them

DeepMind has made it a mission to show that not only can an AI truly become proficient at a game, it can do so without even being told the rules. Its newest AI agent, called MuZero, accomplishes this not just with visually simple games with complex strategies, like Go, Chess and Shogi, but with vis

Chinese autonomous driving startup WeRide bags $200M in funding

WeRide, one of China's most-funded startups developing autonomous driving capabilities, said on Wednesday that it has raised a $200 million strategic round from Chinese bus maker Yutong. Mega investments aren't uncommon at companies like WeRide developing the next-generation level 4 drivin

VergeSense raises $12M Series B for its workplace analytics service

VergeSense, a startup that uses machine vision to help businesses better understand how their office spaces are being utilized, today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series B funding round led by Tola Capital. Including the company’s $9 million Series A round, which it raised earli

Orbital refueling and manufacturing go from theory to reality in 2021

The idea of satellites and other spacecraft being able to refuel, repair or even add new capabilities while in orbit has generally seemed like a “nice in theory” one, but as leaders from Maxar, Astroscale and Orbit Fab explained at TC Sessions: Space, 2021 will be the year that theory b

Tips for applying an intersectional framework to AI development

By now, most of us in tech know that the inherent bias we possess as humans creates an inherent bias in AI applications — applications that have become so sophisticated they're able to shape the nature of our everyday lives and even influence our decision-making. The more prevalent and powerf

Alibaba ‘dismayed’ by its cloud unit’s ethnicity detection algorithm

Chinese tech giants have drawn international criticism after research showed they have technologies that enable the authorities to profile Muslim Uyghurs. The cloud computing unit of Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud, developed a facial recognition algorithm that can identify a person’s ethnicity or whe

Googling for ‘Baby Yoda’ will bring him into your living room via augmented reality

Google has been all about the fun little augmented reality Easter Eggs lately, with a bevy of search terms triggering Halloween-themed AR experiences back in October. Ghosts! Jack-o-lanterns! Dancing skeletons! Now they’ve got another one. Rolled out just in time for tomorrow’s Season 2