Meena, the Chatbot

With the first month of the new year flying by, it has been a time choc-a-bloc with analyses, predictions and broad insights for AI in 2020 and beyond. There’s lots happening in inter-governmental partnerships on AI, major advances in conversational AI and could there be facial recognition at all major Indian railway stations by the end of this year? Here is a round-up of the latest stories in deep tech that are must reads: [Meena, the Chatbot]( [Ashish Sinha]( Jan 31 With the first month of the new year flying by, it has been a time choc-a-bloc with analyses, predictions and broad insights for AI in 2020 and beyond. There’s lots happening in inter-governmental partnerships on AI, major advances in conversational AI and could there be facial recognition at all major Indian railway stations by the end of this year? Here is a round-up of the latest stories in deep tech that are must reads: Google claims its new chatbot Meena is the best in the world; says it is capable of human-like conversation like no other chatbot [Image result for meena chatbot"]( Almost every big tech firm seems hell bent upon building the apex of conversational AI, and Google of course isn’t going to miss out. While not open-source, Google has published findings claiming that their conversational chatbot Meena is the most human like in the world. Google says the chatbot can talk at length on any subject under the sun having been trained with 40 billion words — 341 GB of text data including social media conversations — using the seq2seq model. [Via]( --------------------------------------------------------------- UK launches £4 million innovation challenge fund in India The UK government has launched a £4 million (37 crore) fund in India to push collaborative research into emerging technologies including AI, big data and others. Currently, the initiative is focused on AI/Big Data in Karnataka and future mobility in Maharashtra. The initiative is part of the India-UK Technology Partnership which was established in April 2018. [Via]( [Subscribe now]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Facial recognition could be coming to all major railway stations across India by end of 2020 A senior railway official has told the media that facial recognition to fight crime at railway stations could become commonplace across India by the end of 2020. The system is being currently trialled in Bengaluru, where about half a million faces are scanned every day and is matched against a crime database using AI. Many have expressed concern about breach of privacy whilst others say that the technology is necessary in a country as large as India. [Via]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Can Artificial Intelligence help Hollywood make blockbusters? AI might soon begin playing a role in deciding the fate of whether certain films get made, or in analyzing the kind of marketing a film requires at any point before or after release with major studios partnering with startups specializing in this kind of technology. Warner Bros. recently struck a deal with Cinelytic, a startup that helps predict potential profits on new films. Other startups like Pex are focused on analyzing trailers and social data to determine potential revenue that can be generated. [Via]( --------------------------------------------------------------- - AI to become integral to every business in India by 2025: IDC Latest report says that Artificial Intelligence will become integral to every business in India by 2025 with increased spending on building AI solutions as an ‘outcome as a service’ to drive innovation. The report also states that at least 50 percent of enterprise applications will have embedded AI features by 2023. The Artificial Intelligence start-up ecosystem has grown steadily at a 50 per cent CAGR between 2013-2018 and is receiving a large amount of government stimulus. [Via]( You’re on the free list for [The NextBigWhat Newsletter](. For the full experience, [become a paying subscriber.]( [Subscribe]( © 2020 NextBigWhat Inc [Unsubscribe]( PO Box 720263, San Francisco, CA 94172