While "replacing 300 CPU-only servers on deep learning training" is hardly a benchmark, 15,500 images per second on ResNet-50 is – just a couple of years ago, training throughput would be 1-2 orders of magnitude slower. Also of interest is the approach that Nvidia is taking here – a single compute "node" will be capable…

While not the first to develop a virtual world to provide suitable simulations to accelerate reinforcement learning, this world certainly seems to be one of the most complex. It'll be interesting to see how effective these simulations actually are in the real world; so far though, there are no robots complex enough to actually fully…

The ethical questions raised by Google's (small) contract with the US military to develop AI are difficult and controversial, but they have to be asked, and i'd much rather they're asked in a form open to public debate than behind closed doors. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/30/17408446/google-ai-guidelines-weaponry-military-pentagon-maven-contract Where will Google draw the line on weaponized AI?

In further evidence of the "automation increases jobs" argument, Amazon has recently released footage showing how robots in their warehouses make it quicker and easier for "associates" (=people) to pick and pack your order. This increased productivity means that the warehouses with the most robots are the most profitable, and hence employ the most people.…

In further evidence of the way the reducing cost of technology is saving lives, USGS posted a video showing unmaned drones sent to map and monitor lava flows following the eruption of Kīlauea in Hawaii. Analysis of the drone footage picked up a previously unknown but fast moving flow heading towards an as-yet unevacuated residential…

In his (very, very long) book 'The Rise and Fall of American Growth' (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0691147728), Robert Gordon lays out an argument that not only is growth slower than than people think, but that the growth spurt from 1870 to 1970 was, by all accounts, a one-off, and growth today is reverting back to the long term…

Using technology for good – in this case to reduce the amount of pesticide and the cost of seed-stock (you no longer need to buy the special seed which is only available, at a premium, from the manufacturer of the herbicide or pesticide you plan to use) – is what many of us enter the…

What happens when the network for your IOT or connected devices suddenly announces it's going to make a change which affects millions of devices at your end customers? How do you convince them to upgrade to a product which is essentially the same as the one they currently have without seeming like you're trying to…

Probabilistic models of natural language processing don’t seem that revolutionary – after all, humans implicitly work this way – but building a practical but generic framework has been a challenge for engineers and researchers for years (we only have to look at the Alexa Prize (https://developer.amazon.com/alexaprize) to see how hard this issue is). Gamalon’s new…

Technology can help or hinder. There's a growing evidence base indicating that overprotective parenting is leading to decreased ability for young adults to manage risk or respond to uncertainty in an inherently chaotic and increasingly fast paced world (and as a result, the pushback against protective playgrounds which sanitise  risk is also growing e.g. https://rethinkingchildhood.com/2018/04/19/risk-dangerous-playwork-adventure-conventional-playground/), so…