Synced Global AI Weekly | 2018.8.25—8.31

Europe Welcomes Its First Self Driving Taxi

Yandex Just Launched Europe’s First Autonomous Car Ride Hailing Service

The self-driving car revolution is making waves in Russia. On Tuesday, the country’s largest tech firm Yandex announced Europe’s first autonomous taxi service. The service, which will see two vehicles ferry passengers to fixed destinations for free, is a big step for the technology outside of the confines of Silicon Valley.

(Inverse)

AutoX is using self-driving vehicles to deliver groceries

Autonomous vehicle startup AutoX  has launched a grocery delivery and mobile store pilot in a partnership with GrubMarket.com and local high-end grocery store DeMartini Orchard. The pilot will initially be limited to an area of about 400 homes in north San Jose.

(TechCrunch)

Toyota Investing $500 Million in Uber in Driveless-Car Pact

Toyota Motor Corp. is investing about $500 million in Uber Technologies Inc. as part of an agreement by the companies to work jointly on autonomous vehicles aimed at improving safety and lowering transportation costs.

(WSJ)

Waymo's Big Ambitions Slowed by Tech Trouble

It has said it would launch a driverless robo-taxi service to suburban Phoenix residents this year. Yet its self-driving minivan prototypes have trouble crossing the T-intersection closest to the company’s Phoenix-area headquarters here.

(The Information)

Technology

Semantic Cache for AI-Enabled Image Analysis

"Edge computing, as this is known, not only reduces the strain on bandwidth but also reduceslatency of obtaining intelligence from raw data. However, availability of resources at the edge is limited due to the lack of economies of scale that make cloud infrastructure cost-effective to manage and offer."

(IBM Research)

Observation of topological phenomena in a programmable lattice of 1,800 qubits

"Here we demonstrate a large-scale quantum simulation of this phenomenon in a network of 1,800 in situ programmable superconducting niobium flux qubits whose pairwise couplings are arranged in a fully frustrated square-octagonal lattice. "

(Nature)

Introducing a New Framework for Flexible and Reproducible Reinforcement Learning Research

Today we’re introducing a new Tensorflow-based framework that aims to provide flexibility, stability, and reproducibility for new and experienced RL researchers alike. 

(Google AI)

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Silicon Never Fever: Berkeley AI Gets Down

Electrifying an entire dance club is easy if you have killer moves like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. But for the rest of us, not so much. We may shake our butts and swing our arms, but let’s face it: some people just can’t dance. But now there’s hope, thanks to AI.

(Synced)

Brown University Paper Shows Research Robot Vulnerability

Google Brain Research Scientist Ian Goodfellow has tweeted an alarm about IoT hacking of a particularly nightmarish type, after Brown University security researchers were able to remotely access and control a robot in a university research lab. The research also showed that many robotic labs worldwide may be vulnerable to such a takeover technique.

(Synced)

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