Building open-domain chatbots is a challenging area for machine learning research. While prior work has shown that scaling neural models in the number of parameters and the size of the data they are trained on gives improved results, we show that other ingredients are important for a high-performing chatbot. Good conversation requires a number of skills that an expert conversationalist blends in a seamless way: providing engaging talking points and listening to their partners, and displaying knowledge, empathy and personality appropriately, while maintaining a consistent persona. We show that large scale models can learn these skills when given appropriate training data and choice of generation strategy. We build variants of these recipes with 90M, 2.7B and 9.4B parameter models, and make our models and code publicly available. Human evaluations show our best models are superior to existing approaches in multi-turn dialogue in terms of engagingness and humanness measurements. We then discuss the limitations of this work by analyzing failure cases of our models.

Artificial intelligence is getting down in the weeds. An AI-powered robot that can distinguish weeds from crops and remove them could eventually be used as an alternative to chemical insecticides. Kevin Patel and Nihar Chaniyara at tech start-up AutoRoboCulture in Gandhinagar, India, have created a prototype of the device, called Nindamani, specifically for cauliflower crops. The robot is powered by a pre-existing image-recognition algorithm.

Meanwhile, in early April Softbank-backed Nuro became the second company in California to receive a permit to operate a driverless vehicle on public roads. Co-founder Dave Ferguson said Nuro was putting its latest R2 vehicles to work delivering medical supplies to a temporary COVID-19 hospital in Sacramento and a temporary medical facility in San Mateo County.

Machine-learning and quantum computing are two technologies that have incredible potential in their own right. Now researchers are bringing them together. The main goal is to achieve a so-called quantum advantage, where complex algorithms can be calculated significantly faster than with the best classical computer. This would be a game-changer in the field of AI. Such a breakthrough could lead to new drug discoveries, advances in chemistry, as well as better data science, weather predictions and natural-language processing.

Beena Ammanath is the Founder and CEO of Humans For AI, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing diversity in tech leveraging AI. She is a recognized lead and industry expert who has driven pioneering technology changes in the use of AI, Data and Analytics for several market-leading companies. She has worked as a mentor to help women and minorities enter the new economy. She started Humans for AI in 2017 to help make AI understandable to the non-tech community. Beena is also an Industrial Board Member of Cal Poly University, where she brings the industry perspective to influence curriculum engineers.

An artificial intelligence system has been refused the right to two patents in the US, after a ruling only "natural persons" could be inventors. The US Patent and Trademark Office rejected two patents where the AI system Dabus was listed as the inventor, in a ruling on Monday. US patent law had previously only specified eligible inventors had to be "individuals". It follows a similar ruling from the UK Intellectual Property Office. And its creator, physicist and AI researcher Stephen Thaler, had argued that because he had not helped it with the inventions, it would be inaccurate to list himself as the inventor.

AI software provider C3.ai is collaborating with Microsoft (NasdaqGS:MSFT) to enhance its "global customer experience and elevate sales performance using intelligent cloud technology." To achieve this, C3.ai is adopting and deploying Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Sales and Teams, so as to "better prioritize workloads, enhance sales experiences with mixed reality, and manage customer needs with conversation intelligence and sentiment analysis." "We're looking forward to working with C3.ai to further its business goals with our intelligent cloud services. With Dynamics 365 at the center of its business transformation, the C3.ai team can streamline customer engagement across sales and customer service to bring a unique, tailored experience to its employees and customers." NVIDIA Corporation (NasdaqGS:NVDA) has completed the acquisition of computer networking firm Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. for $7 billion.

Ford said Tuesday it will delay until 2022 plans to launch an autonomous vehicle service, as the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the company to rethink its go-to-market strategy. The news was shared as part of Ford's quarterly earnings, which was released after the market closed Tuesday. Ford reported a $2 billion loss in the first quarter compared to a profit of $1.1 billion in the same period last year. The company warned that losses during the second quarter will widen as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt its business. Ford is a bit different from other companies that have launched autonomous vehicle pilots in the United States.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has ruled that artificial intelligence systems cannot be credited as an inventor in a patent, the agency announced earlier this week. The decision came in response to two patents -- one for a food container and the other for a flashing light -- that were created by an AI system called DABUS. Among the USPTO's arguments is the fact that US patent law repeatedly refers to inventors using humanlike terms such as "whoever" and pronouns like "himself" and "herself." The group behind the applications had argued that the law's references to an inventor as an "individual" could be applied to a machine, but the USPTO said this interpretation was too broad. "Under current law, only natural persons may be named as an inventor in a patent application," the agency concluded. The patents were submitted last year by the Artificial Inventor Project.

As more physicians are taking their practices online, software companies have also had to adjust their services. One example: Saykara, a startup developing an AI voice assistant to automatically fill health records, had to shift its platform to Zoom. In early March, Saykara celebrated a milestone when its AI voice assistant was able to operate autonomously, meaning for some specialties, it could automatically update patient records and notes without any clicks or voice commands. But a few weeks later, the Seattle-based startup had to quickly adjust to a new world where most appointments are being conducted online. "Things were growing every day until we had the hiccup of Covid thrown in there," said Dr. Graham Hughes, president and COO of Saykara.