Artificial Intelligence
In order to digitally recreate a deceased person based on their "images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages," and other data, Microsoft has been granted a patent for an underlying technology trying to achieve that. In addition to creating a chatbot, it is suggested that 2D or 3D models could potentially be created.
DeepMind has presented an AI application that makes it possible to predict protein structure with high accuracy. According to John Moult, a biologist at the University of Maryland, it is the first application of artificial intelligence "that has solved a serious problem".
Independent scientists said the breakthrough would help researchers tease apart the mechanisms that drive some diseases and pave the way for designer medicines, more nutritious crops, and “green enzymes” that can break down plastic pollution.
Two teams at Google, Area 120 and PAIR, have launched a Pinterest competitor named Keen to the public. Similar to its competitor the website functions as a curation tool for content on the internet. Keen automatically suggests content based on keywords that the user can then filter. In addition, Keen enables the saving of other content from the web and the collaboration with others. According to the co-founder CJ Adams, the underlying machine learning technologies by the People + AI Research (PAIR) team at Google enable Keen to give better recommendations over time as more content is curated by the user.
Microsoft won’t renew the contracts of around 50 contract news producers working at MSN and plans to use artificial intelligence to replace them. On Wednesday the tech giant notified affected employees that their services would no longer be needed beyond June 30.
The company said in a statement: "Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic."
Facebook announced the cancellation of the company's AI Residency Program 2020-2021 on Wednesday. The AI Residency Program is a "one-year research training position designed to give you hands-on experience with artificial intelligence research while working in Facebook AI". Al Jerome Pesenti, Facebook's vice president, stated that the decision was made to "put the health and safety of our community first".
The US Patent and Trademark Office has specified that only "individuals" as in "natural persons" could be inventors and therefore the holder of patents. The agency denied two US patent applications in the name of an AI system called Dabus.