Tel-Aviv-based AI21 Labs launched today Wordtune Spices, a writer-augmentation tool based on generative AI. Selecting from 12 different cues, writers can generate a range of textual options to add to and enhance sentences. Spices can also suggest statistics to strengthen an argument or sharpen a detail. AI21 says Spices is not intended to replace writers but to function as a writing assistant, suggesting additional complete sentences that improve and enhance the text that is being written. It could help refine and enrich the main message of the text, bolster and enrich arguments, and add creative expressions such as a joke or inspirational quote. The Israeli startup claims to have solved one of the major issues with popular applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's ChatGPT which do not give source credit.

AI chatbots are not sentient – they have just got better at tricking humans into thinking they might be, experts at Stanford University conclude. The idea of conscious machines more intelligent than any old software went viral last month, when a now-former engineer at Google, Blake Lemoine, claimed the web giant's LaMDA language model had real thoughts and feelings. Lemoine was suspended and later fired for reportedly violating Google's confidentiality policies. Although most experts were quick to dismiss LaMDA or any other AI chatbot as sentient, Lemoine's views have led some to question whether he might be right – and whether continuing to advance machine learning could be harmful for society. John Etchemendy, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), criticized the initial news of Lamoine's suspension in the Washington Post for being "clickbait".

The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. For the better part of a year, OpenAI's GPT-3 has remained among the largest AI language models ever created, if not the largest of its kind. Via an API, people have used it to automatically write emails and articles, summarize text, compose poetry and recipes, create website layouts, and generate code for deep learning in Python. But an AI lab based in Tel Aviv, Israel -- AI21 Labs -- says it's planning to release a larger model and make it available via a service, with the idea being to challenge OpenAI's dominance in the "natural language processing-as-a-service" field. The startup says that the largest version of its model -- called Jurassic-1 Jumbo -- contains 178 billion parameters, or 3 billion more than GPT-3 (but not more than PanGu-Alpha, HyperCLOVA, or Wu Dao 2.0).

AI21 Labs, a startup formed by veterans from an elite tech unit in the IDF to build AI systems, announced on Thursday it raised $34.5 million in total equity capital to work on its AI-based writing solutions and offerings. The funding includes a seed round of $9.5 million in January 2019 and the latest round of $25 million led by Pitango First, the seed and early-stage fund of Pitango's investment platform. Pitango is Israel's largest venture capital fund and was co-founded by Chemi Peres, the son of former president Shimon Peres. The VC focuses on core technologies like deep tech, AI, and machine learning. Other investors in the latest funding round included TPY Capital, another VC headquartered in Tel Aviv.

Tel-Aviv based start-up Aidoc, a leading provider of Artificial Intelligence solutions for radiologists, received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its AI solution that spots strokes (Large-Vessel Occlusion) in the brain during head CTA scans.An LVO is the blockage of vessels in the brain, and according to Ariella Shoham, Aidoc's vice president of marketing, the AI technology "uses deep learning to automatically look at every head CT before a patient has even left the imaging room. "It investigates the images to see if they show blocked blood vessels in the brain or bleeding (intracranial hemorrhages)," she explained. "If one of these time-critical conditions is found, Aidoc re-prioritizes the worklists of radiologists so that the urgent scan is looked at immediately and the patient can be treated quickly."Shoham said that Aidoc already received FDA clearances to identify and flag pulmonary embolism (blockages in the lungs) and cervical spine fractures (broken neck). "Other Aidoc solutions currently in clinical testing include identifying air in the abdomen," she continued. "Altogether, Aidoc is targeting the most common critical life-threatening conditions that make up 80% of all urgent cases on CT scans.

Leaders in the AI community came together to release the 2019 AI Index report today, an annual attempt to examine the biggest trends shaping the AI industry, breakthrough research, and AI's impact to society. It also examines trends like AI hiring practices, private investment, AI research contributions by nation, researchers leaving academia for industry, and how much AI plays a role in specific industries. The report also notes strides in the reduction of the amount of time it takes to train AI systems and computing costs, two of the biggest hindrances to AI adoption rates. "In a year and a half, the time required to train a large image classification system on cloud infrastructure has fallen from about three hours in October 2017 to about 88 seconds in July, 2019," the report reads. The report is compiled by the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute in collaboration with people from OpenAI.

When it comes to robots, science fiction has conditioned us to think of androids – bipedal machines approximating the human form. But the next generation of robots may be based on very different types of animals: snakes, flies, locusts and even the multi-tentacle octopus. Israeli scientists are hard at work on just such contraptions. Here's a look at seven of the most fascinating designs that can help with everything from exploring our insides to cleaning up the mess we make on the planet. Medrobotics' signature product, the Flex Robotic System, allows physicians to reach deep into the body with minimal risk.

"Today's forecast for San Antonio is..." "The rapper Sisqó was born in Baltimore, Maryland." Sometimes, talking to an artificially intelligent robot is, well, not so intelligent. That's part of a conclusion reached by a team of Stanford University professors who are tracking the technological progress of artificial intelligence. Yohav Shoham is the Stanford computer science professor who conceived of the idea for the index. "AI has made truly amazing strides in the past decade, but computers still can't exhibit the common sense or the general intelligence of even a 5-year-old," said Shoham, who studied at Yale University and in his native Israel at both the Technion Institute and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Since the term "artificial intelligence" (AI) was first used in print in 1956, the one-time science fiction fantasy has progressed to the very real prospect of driverless cars, smartphones that recognize complex spoken commands and computers that see. In an effort to track the progress of this emerging field, a Stanford-led group of leading AI thinkers called the AI100 has launched an index that will provide a comprehensive baseline on the state of artificial intelligence and measure technological progress in the same way the gross domestic product and the S&P 500 index track the U.S. economy and the broader stock market. "The AI100 effort realized that in order to supplement its regular review of AI, a more continuous set of collected metrics would be incredibly useful," said Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and the faculty director of AI100. "We were very happy to seed the AI Index, which will inform the AI100 as we move forward." The AI100 was set in motion three years ago when Eric Horvitz, a Stanford alumnus and former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, worked with his wife, Mary Horvitz, to define and endow the long-term study.

We've all heard or read about how robots are going to take away our jobs. Saudi Arabia even went as far as granting citizenship to "Sophia the robot" back in October (See the video below). With crytocurrency at the top of daily headlines, 2017 may be remembered as the year artificial intelligence (AI, pronounced AYE-EYE) goes mainstream with more organizations adopting AI than ever. Two weeks ago, we wrote about Professor Geoffrey Hinton, known worldwide as the Godfather of AI, and how his research work in the area of Neuro Net was used in speech recognition and Android voice search. Yes, we've made a lot of progress since AI started as an academic discipline in 1956.