Honda furthers AI tech development in its cars with SoftBank partnership

Artificial intelligence is at the heart of a new partnership between Honda and internet company SoftBank. The idea is that the AI in vehicles will be able to read and react to the emotions of the drivers as intelligently as it can. “"Imagine if robots, with their super intelligence, devoted themselves to humans,” SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son said during an event in Tokyo announcing the partnership. “And imagine that cars themselves became supercomputers or robots one day. Honda will be the first to adopt this technology.” The team suggests that Honda cars might interact with drivers using the technology used in SoftBank’s Pepper robot. And maybe Pepper could even meet Honda’s own Asimo (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) robot.

Honda’s team will be working with SoftBank’s Cocoro SB unit on AI research for cars. This team from SoftBank is currently studying cloud-based AI on their own.  SoftBank recently acquired chipmaker ARM, which is seen as an essential move needed for this partnership to work. Honda previously announced they were establishing a research facility this September dedicated to AI technology.

Source: Reuters | Via: SlashGear

YouTube to livestream match between 'Go' world champion and AlphaGo AI

We've seen artificial intelligence systems take on different champions of various fields. This time, the AlphaGo AI system wants to take on the highest ranked player of the ancient Chinese board game Go to a match. The system will be challenging Lee Sedol for a US$1 million prize. And you'll get to see this play out on a YouTube livestream. The matches will take place on March 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15.

The game has millions of possible combinations for its pieces, which make developing a system to get to play this well particularly challenging. Previous robots built to play Go couldn't leave past the amateur level. AlphaGo has already defeated the European champion Fan Hui five times in a row. This AI has been trained to use 30 million moves off of games played by experts and it has even learned its own moves. 

Source: The Next Web

Microsoft's Cortana assistant screens leak

She's not only inspired by the voluptous AI from Halo, Cortana is Microsoft's take on the personal mobile assistant and their answer to Siri and Google Now. The Verge showed off some screens from the upcoming feature which will be omniscient and tightly integrated to the Windows Phone UX. Cortana is expected to be a learning assistant, it will note user patterns, pull contextual data as well as location-based information. Cortana is expected to be unvelied to developers in the upcoming Microsoft Build conference.

Source: The Verge

IBM's Watson re-imagined as a Cloud service

Watson is a groundbreaking platform and Jeopardy-beating AI that represents a new era of computing based on its ability to interact in natural language, process vast and disparate forms of big data and learn from each interaction.  Watson is an ultimate advisor, in its ability to sift through and understand massive amounts of big data at unprecedented speeds to assist professionals in understanding data quickly and easily, while increasing knowledge and gaining value over time.  Read more about it here.