Machine learning & AI news

Machine learning & AI

AI agents can build consensus on a scale humans can't

Everyone is familiar with the situation: A larger group of people plans to visit a restaurant together, but it can take time and sometimes a great deal of patience to agree on a time and place to meet. The better the participants ...

Robotics

AI-powered terrain recognition helps cyborg cockroaches navigate faster

Cyborg insects combine the mobility of living organisms with miniature electronic devices, offering potential applications in search-and-rescue operations, infrastructure inspection and exploration of environments that are ...

Robotics

Robots learn new skills from a single video—in just 29 seconds

To operate reliably in dynamic real-world settings, robots should be able to acquire new skills quickly without undergoing extensive additional training. Most existing robotic systems, however, primarily perform well on the ...

Automotive

Attention-grabbing virtual agents could help improve safety of self-driving cars

Animated "virtual agents" could help keep the roads of the future safer by alerting people behind the wheel of semiautonomous cars to oncoming hazards, new research suggests.

Machine learning & AI

AI helps turn citizen photos into water-level data

For the past 15 years, Christopher Lowry, Ph.D., has led CrowdHydrology, a University at Buffalo citizen-science project that relies on thousands of volunteers to collect water-level observations from streams and other waterways ...

Machine learning & AI

Q&A: Promise and perils of agentic AI

Chatbots and large language models can execute a seemingly countless number of tasks, from writing emails and reports to generating code and analyzing data. However, they still primarily act only in response to user prompts ...

Security

How attackers persuade AI agents to break the rules

Today, most of us interact with AI assistants—reactive bots that wait for human instructions. Yet AI assistants are rapidly being replaced by agentic AI agents that can interact with external tools, browse the web, generate ...

Machine learning & AI

OpenAI says ads are coming to ChatGPT in Europe next week

European users of ChatGPT's free and low-cost artificial intelligence agents will start seeing ads Aug. 24 as its creator, OpenAI, expands its plan to extract more revenue from its models.

Machine learning & AI

China goes rural with data centers in quest to power AI

In China's hilly Guizhou province, a cluster of European-style buildings complete with a clock tower and a multi-arched bridge emits a low, permanent hum—a clue to its unexpected identity as tech giant Huawei's largest data ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Pocket-size AI: Powerful phones star at China show

Tech firms are racing to roll out advanced smartphones that use artificial intelligence to do everything from ordering food to composing messages with a simple voice command.

Machine learning & AI

China's Kimi K3 rattles US AI industry

Kimi K3, a new artificial intelligence program from a Chinese startup called Moonshot AI, stunned the U.S. tech industry on Friday, setting off fresh discussion over the China–U.S. rivalry to dominate AI.

Machine learning & AI

Startups bet on AI—and a leaner future

When Eric Lauer needs to hire at Giftory, the online gift-giving platform he runs, he's no longer looking for eager young coders fresh out of college.

Machine learning & AI

China's Xi says AI should not be dominated by one country

Artificial intelligence should not be dominated by a single country, China's President Xi Jinping said Friday at a major technology conference in Shanghai, urging international cooperation on its development.

Machine learning & AI

OpenAI fails to trademark name in EU

OpenAI, the owner of the ChatGPT chatbot, lost its appeal Wednesday against the EU's refusal to register its name as a trademark.

Automotive

AI analysis links pavement conditions to crash risk

A University of Houston professor of civil and environmental engineering is using artificial intelligence to make roads safer by connecting information that is usually analyzed separately. Lu Gao used AI to analyze large-scale ...

Machine learning & AI

Q&A: Neural transparency and the future of AI design

Millions of people are now designing their own personalized artificial intelligence companions, yet most have little idea how those creations will actually behave. In a new paper, MIT Media Lab Assistant Professor Pat Pataranutaporn ...

Software

Daydreaming algorithm helps AI remember what matters

During the day, our brain acquires new memories; at night, during sleep, it consolidates the important ones and eliminates the useless ones. A similar principle has been applied to Hopfield networks, one of the classic models ...