Bits & Bytes - 3.21.18

Google open sources exoplanet discovery AI. The project came out of a collaboration between Google Brain software engineer Chris Shallue and astrophysicist Andrew Vanderburg. The team was able to discover several new exoplanets and have now open-sourced their project to the public. I got a chance to talk with Chris Shallue about his work not too long ago, check out the show to learn more.
Microsoft matches human performance translating news from Chinese to English. The research incorporated novel methods of training translation models including dual learning, deliberation, joint training and agreement regularization.
Google’s NSynth Super is an AI synth made of Raspberry Pis. The tool comes out of Magenta, Google’s creative AI applications project. The synthesizer uses open source AI software to generate new sounds. I talked with Doug Eck, the Magenta project lead, about his work on generative AI for music a little while back; give it a listen.
Gluon models now deployable to AWS DeepLens. Gluon is an open source deep learning interface developed by AWS and Microsoft. It’s now deployable to AWS DeepLens instances for computer vision applications.
Google open-sources the AI-powered tool for portrait mode on their Pixel devices. The tool uses semantic image segmentation to identify optimal focal areas or areas that need higher or lower exposure.

SambaNova Systems, a start-up building computer processors and software for AI raises $56 million in funding led by Alphabet.
Voci Technologies Incorporated, a provider of enterprise speech-to-text transcription and analytics, raises $8m in Series B funding.
Percipient.ai, a provider of analytics for national security and now corporate security missions, raises $14.7M in Series A funding.
Airspace Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of comprehensive drone defense systems, raised $20m in Series A funding.
TaoData, a Chinese fintech startup, has raised $15.8 million in a series B round.
Fractal Analytics, an AI solutions and analytics company, announced the acquisition of behavioral AI company Final Mile.
L’Oréal announces the acquisition of ModiFace, an augmented reality and AI-powered beauty company.
Avaya Holdings Corp. announced its acquisition of Spoken Communications, a Contact Center as a Service solutions application built on conversational artificial intelligence.