AI Now Comes in a USB Stick

Think only a large enterprise has the resources to deploy artificial intelligence technology? Intel aims to make AI more affordable and accessible, especially to smaller companies and entrepreneurs. Last month, the company introduced the Movidius Neural Compute Stick, which it billed as "the world's first USB-based deep learning inference kit and self-contained" AI accelerator. The $79 USB stick delivers "dedicated deep neural network processing capabilities to a wide range of host devices at the edge," Intel says. With the USB stick, Intel suggests that product developers, researchers and makers will be able to add AI capabilities to their devices and develop, tune and deploy AI-based applications far more easily.