A team of AI bots created by OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company co-founded by Elon Musk, have beaten former professional Dota 2 players. It's only been a few months since the bots were losing to amateur players. Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA) where two teams of five players compete to occupy each other's bases. While the human players displayed periods of … [Read more...]
Python tops programming language list
Python has topped the IEEE Spectrum list of top programming languages again this year---extending its lead in the process. The sources used to compiled the list cover contexts that include social chatter, open-source code production, and job postings. Obviously that list of sources isn't an accurate reflection of what developers are doing day-to-day in organisations. Any list of top … [Read more...]
Google reveals performance of its custom AI chips
Google has just release performance data for its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) custom machine learning chips. TPUs are 15-20x faster than GPUs and CPUs when running deep learning applications 30-80x more power efficient (operations per Watt) frugal in terms of lines of code required to control them (their deep learning applications are implemented using 100-1500 lines) Google claim that … [Read more...]
Vote HAL 2030!
Confused by the rapid evolution of politics in the past year? Well, things might get even wilder if robots get to vote in 2030. I'd comment, but, in 2030, when this post is dug out of the archives, I don't want to be pilloried for any anti-machine bigotry. Such views could even be fatal by then. … [Read more...]
Amazon AI
Amazon is the latest company to offer developers access to AI services. There are four available. Amazon Lex---Build conversational interfaces using voice and text, powered by the same deep learning technologies as Alexa Amazon Rekognition---Deep learning-based image recognition Amazon Polly---Turn text into lifelike speech using deep learning Amazon Machine Learning---A scalable machine … [Read more...]