Chinese Tech Titan Alibaba has introduced a new feature to help sellers write compelling and useful copy for adverts with a few clicks of the neural network. Producing millions of suggestions each day, the "AI Copywriter" aims to reduce the "repetitive, low-value work" activities associated with creating multiple formats of an advert for different media.…

Self driving cars always seem to be "tomorrow's promise". One major reason is the way that machine learning struggles with "generalising" from more specific data. A child doesn't need to be shown every possible type of chair to learn what a chair is – but throw a few pixels out and your CNN is likely…

This discussion about automation in the luxury goods market (https://www.ft.com/content/dfb9088a-7079-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92914) reminded me of the chapters in The Man In the High Castle (https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/0241246105) where it's suggested that some hand crafted items are so beautiful that they possess a factor, wu, that makes them desirable, and one of the character's acquaintances wishes to clone them as…

As AI becomes closer than ever to creating digital artifacts which are indistinguishable from those generated in real life, I'm left wondering how we manage the risks to our understanding of law and justice – think perhaps of a generated "CCTV recording" of a political opponent committing a crime being submitted as evidence in court,…

We make a lot of use of our Alexa at home, and i'm interested to see how it can help in hotels. Being able to order important but not time-critical services ("alexa, have someone pick up my laundry"), or get information ("alexa, what floor is the gym on") come to mind. But is it going…

I've long found the sustainability Oracle's business model questionable – and their latest move to hide (lack of?) cloud revenue growth in their financials further reinforces my view that they are a company on the way down. https://www.ft.com/content/a4fc61c6-740f-11e8-aa31-31da4279a601 Shares slide as analyst worries it may be ‘obfuscating weakness’

Humans are good at tasks which require dexterity and manipulation of flexible materials (like thin tubes or fabric), but often these detailed tasks are associated with big, heavy "chunks" of other things (such as wiring up a heavy car dashboard before dropping it in to place). Typically, people and industrial robots are kept separate to…

The move to a cashless society is making steady progress across most of the world. In the UK, for example, more than 50% of transactions were completed cashlessly last year (https://www.ft.com/content/18e3eb92-7201-11e8-aa31-31da4279a601), while in China, UnionPay's rapid push in to new markets (as diverse as Malaysia, DRC, and Kazakhstan https://www.ft.com/content/a67350fa-1f6f-11e7-a454-ab04428977f9) demonstrates the sheer scale of the…

Recognising AI as a "general-purpose machine", rather than a distinct and immediately implementable tool or technique, can help explain why the anticipated gains are not yet being seen. With the introduction of other general-purpose machines, like the electric motor, the computer, the steam engine, it took decades for companies and industries to identify how they…

Novel new approaches to the use of AI – highlighting its use as an augmentation to human judgement, not a substitute – are welcome, but still fall far short of addressing the elephant in the room – most machine learning or AI today is still pure statistical inference, often without even implicit acknowledgement of the…