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Talking Schmidt: Google advisor/ former CEO says Elon Musk ‘exactly wrong’ on AI, doesn’t understand benefits

We haven’t done a Talking Schmidt in a while, not because the former Google CEO and current Alphabet Board member Dr. Eric Schmidt has been quiet with his sometimes outlandish commentary, but because of his reduced role at Google and its now parent company Alphabet. In February Schmidt stepped down as Chairman, taking an innovation role at MIT and was replaced by John Hennessy.

But back to the matter at hand…


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Google says its AI-powered speech synthesis system almost indistinguishable from human speech

Google claims that the latest version of its AI-powered speech synthesis system, Tacotron 2, is almost indistinguishable from human speech – and has put some comparative examples online to demonstrate.

Tacotron 2 works directly from written text, and Google says it can use context to correctly pronounce identically-spelled words like ‘read’ (to read) and ‘read’ (has read), responds to punctuation and can learn to stress words …


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Google Deep Learning system diagnoses cancer better than a pathologist with unlimited time

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It’s hard to think of a job more important that determining whether or not a patient has cancer. Yet the magnitude of the task facing pathologists is so vast that agreement between different clinicians studying the same slides can be as low as 48%.

There can be many slides per patient, each of which is 10+ gigapixels when digitized at 40X magnification. Imagine having to go through a thousand 10 megapixel (MP) photos, and having to be responsible for every pixel. Needless to say, this is a lot of data to cover, and often time is limited.

Which is why Google is working on automating the task with a Deep Learning AI project – with incredibly exciting results …


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Samsung says competition between ‘Bixby’ and Google Assistant will push AI forward

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Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is just weeks from going official, and we already know quite a bit about the device. Several leaks and rumors have pinpointed that the “Bixby” virtual assistant will debut on the S8, presumably as a rival to Google Assistant. Obviously, Google might not be thrilled about that development, but Samsung says that the competition could take AI “to the next level.”


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DeepMind expands to US with ‘Applied’ team focusing on improving Google products

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After making huge strides with AlphaGo and beginning work on replicating similar victories in StarCraft, Google DeepMind is setting up a new US division (via Bloomberg). Specifically, the first team outside of London will work on more consumer-facing products and on solving “real-world problems at Google-scale.”


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Google explains the power of machine learning in the countless fields it now uses it in [Video]

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If it wasn’t clear enough, AI, and more specifically the machine learning sub-branch, is a big deal — and not just for Google. It’s not much of a “next big thing” aimed at supplanting everything that has come before it from above, but rather a more silent revolution branching out from underneath.

And it’s being used everywhere…


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Google hires up more AI talent to lead a machine learning-focused team in Canada

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Google‘s commitment to staying ahead of the game in the field of artificial intelligence is clear, and with the rise of machine learning in particular (whose usefulness has been proven time and time again in a number of applications) the race for talent-hiring is fierce. And today, the company has scored another significant point.

Following the important catch of ex-Snapchat head of research Jia Li last week, the search giant has today secured another spot in the ever-increasing AI-centered competition between tech companies. This time it comes from Twitter


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Google’s AI can translate languages it’s never learned, lip-read better than people

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A couple of Google announcements today highlight the astonishing progress being made in artificial intelligence. A Google Research blog post explains how the company’s switch to neural learning for Google Translate means that the machine can translate between language pairs it has never explicitly learned, while a DeepMind project showed that AI can lip-read better than people.

The company said that Google Translate no longer has individual systems for each language pair, but instead uses a single system with tokens indicating input and output languages. The AI learns from millions of examples, and it was this that made the team wonder whether it could translate between two languages without specifically being taught how to do so …


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Google shows the power of machine learning by enhancing blurry, low-res pictures

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We don’t need to further emphasize just how important AI and machine learning are for Google. Whether it be in its cloud services or inside of its Assistant-powered devices, like the Pixel phones and Home, we know that there is substantial room for improvement through technology, and the Mountain View firm is all for it.

Now, it seems, it’s low-res and blurry pictures’ turn


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Google grasps Snapchat’s head of research amid strong pushes in machine learning and AI for cloud services

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The more Google reveals its cards for the future, the more it seems clear that cloud services and AI are going to be two of its absolute cornerstones in the years to come, so much so that the company is looking to unify its disparate teams under a new, singular division, not too dissimilarly from Osterloh’s hardware group put together earlier this year.

Google Cloud‘s chief Diane Greene announced as much today, providing further information on the firm’s roadmap regarding their advancements in cloud services and how AI integrates into that. In particular, it was stressed how machine learning techniques will allow them to provide smarter services over time — like translation, computer vision, and even hiring — to enterprise customers.


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Google DeepMind sets sights on beating StarCraft II, making AI-playable version of game

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After conquering the challenging game of Go earlier this year, Google’s DeepMind division is setting its sights on beating StarCraft II. DeepMind is partnering with developer Blizzard to release an open research environment that better allows AIs and machine learning systems to interact with the game.


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Google’s Deepmind division and the UK’s NHS are teaming up to fight blindness with machine learning

Deepmind LogoWe’ve seen artificial intelligence playing a growing role in tech as of late, in a wide variety of events, projects and ideas. Just in the past few months, Google‘s DeepMind division took its AI-driven computer to an historic victory against Lee Sedol, the world champion of Chinese board game of Go.

A new Guardian report shows where AI is headed next, in a joint venture between DeepMind and the British National Health Service…


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Google’s vision of machine-learning: all software engineering to use it, will change humanity

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Google’s machine-learning head, Jeff Dean

A long-form Backchannel post by Steven Levy gives a fascinating insight into Google’s vision of the future of machine-learning. While it’s currently a specialist field, Google believes that one day it will be used by all software engineers no matter what the field, and that it will ‘change humanity.’

Google is starting small. It invites just 18 software engineers a year to join its Machine Learning Ninja Program, where they work alongside expert mentors for six months before going back to apply the approach to their own work. But Google’s machine-learning leader Jeff Dean estimates that around 10% of its 25,000 developers are proficient in the field, and he’d like that number to be 100%.

What’s notable is that all involved, from those in the Ninja program to the company’s key experts in the field, see machine-learning as something transformative …


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