3D point clouds are essential for perceiving outdoor scenes, especially within the realm of autonomous driving. Recent advances in 3D LiDAR Object Detection focus primarily on the spatial positioning and distribution of points to ensure accurate detection. However, despite their robust performance in variable conditions, these methods are hindered by their sole reliance on coordinates and point intensity, resulting in inadequate isometric invariance and suboptimal detection outcomes. To tackle this challenge, our work introduces Transformation-Invariant Local (TraIL) features and the associated TraIL-Det architecture. Our TraIL features exhibit rigid transformation invariance and effectively adapt to variations in point density, with a design focus on capturing the localized geometry of neighboring structures. They utilize the inherent isotropic radiation of LiDAR to enhance local representation, improve computational efficiency, and boost detection performance. To effectively process the geometric relations among points within each proposal, we propose a Multi-head self-Attention Encoder (MAE) with asymmetric geometric features to encode high-dimensional TraIL features into manageable representations. Our method outperforms contemporary self-supervised 3D object detection approaches in terms of mAP on KITTI (67.8, 20% label, moderate) and Waymo (68.9, 20% label, moderate) datasets under various label ratios (20%, 50%, and 100%).

Combining satellite technology with machine learning may allow scientists to better track and prepare for climate-induced natural hazards, according to research presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Over the last few decades, rising global temperatures have caused many natural phenomena like hurricanes, snowstorms, floods and wildfires to grow in intensity and frequency. While humans can't prevent these disasters from occurring, the rapidly increasing number of satellites that orbit the Earth from space offers a greater opportunity to monitor their evolution, said C.K Shum, co-author of the study and a professor at the Byrd Polar Research Center and in earth sciences at The Ohio State University. He said that potentially allowing people in the area to make informed decisions could improve the effectiveness of local disaster response and management. "Predicting the future is a pretty difficult task, but by using remote sensing and machine learning, our research aims to help create a system that will be able to monitor these climate-induced hazards in a manner that enables a timely and informed disaster response," said Shum.

Over the last several years, Ideas Labs has been building a suite of advanced markerless AI to analyze various aspects of human motion, from biomechanics to event tracking to a bird's eye view of an entire rink with player identification. While our technology is more sport-agonstic, we've been focusing on golf and baseball -- two stick-based sports with discrete arc of motions (sorry, Gumby). More recently, we've begun looking at martial arts with a specific relevance of our motion-based analytics of play (in this specific case of boxing, defense, stepping and attack, and threading). As in other sports, there is a broad base of literature around applying various sensor-based and motion capture-based analytics in boxing. One paper, by Khasanshin (2021), leveraged sensors applied on the wrist to analyze the speed of punches of boxes while shadow boxing in specific types of punches (jab, cross, hook, and uppercut) and type of activity (shadow boxing, single punch, or multiple punches).

Microsoft is shedding its empathetic chatbot Xiaoice into an independent entity, the U.S. software behemoth said (in Chinese) Monday, confirming an earlier report by the Chinese news site Chuhaipost in June. The announcement came several months after Microsoft announced late last year it would close down its voice assistant app Cortana in China among other countries. Xiaoice has over the years enlisted some of the best minds in artificial intelligence and ventured beyond China into countries like Japan and Indonesia. Microsoft said it called the shots to accelerate Xiaoice's "localized innovation" and buildout of the chatbot's "commercial ecosystem." The spin-off will see the new entity license technologies from Microsoft for subsequent research and development in Xiaoice and continue to use the Xiaoice brand (and Rinna in Japanese), while Microsoft will retain its stakes in the new company.

The father of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Alan Turing had developed the perfect test to determine when a machine can be considered "intelligent": When the person interacting with it (written form of communication back then), cannot be certain whether he is interacting with another human or in fact a machine. The last Microsoft publication, from Brand Smith and Harry Shum, titled The Future Computed, is dealing with the present and the future of Artificial Intelligence but not in a transcendental way as the usual publications. What that means is that it doesn't delve into impressive future projections but rather examines the steps we are taking right now, the way the framework for the following steps should be shaped and what changes it will bring. That's because, for the AI systems to develop, it is necessary to safeguard the principles, the policies and the laws for their responsible use. In this publication the writers support the claim that these systems should be fair, trustworthy, transparent and controllable.

Microsoft Executive Vice President Harry Shum (Shen Xiangyang), the head of Microsoft AI and Research, will leave the tech giant in early 2020. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the departure of the 23-year Microsoft veteran, who will continue advising CEO Satya Nadella and company co-founder Bill Gates. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott assumes Shum's position as head of Microsoft AI and Research effective immediately. Microsoft established its AI and Research Group in 2016 and chose Shum to lead it. At that time, the 5,000 person group comprised Cortana, Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics engineering teams mixed with parts of Microsoft Research.

The father of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Alan Turing had developed the perfect test to determine when a machine can be considered "intelligent": When the person interacting with it (written form of communication back then), cannot be certain whether he is interacting with another human or in fact a machine. The last Microsoft publication, from Brand Smith and Harry Shum, titled The Future Computed, is dealing with the present and the future of Artificial Intelligence but not in a transcendental way as the usual publications. What that means is that it doesn't delve into impressive future projections but rather examines the steps we are taking right now, the way the framework for the following steps should be shaped and what changes it will bring. That's because, for the AI systems to develop, it is necessary to safeguard the principles, the policies and the laws for their responsible use. In this publication the writers support the claim that these systems should be fair, trustworthy, transparent and controllable.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that Harry Shum, the executive vice president in charge of its artificial intelligence and research group, is leaving the company in early 2020. Kevin Scott, the company's chief technology officer and formerly a LinkedIn executive, is taking on Shum's responsibilities in addition to his own. It's not clear what Shum will do next. Shum has been a figurehead in the more integrated approach to research that has taken hold at Microsoft during the tenure of CEO Satya Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in 2014. His group has been one of the most prominent technology research institutions outside academia, alongside the likes of Google parent-company Alphabet and Facebook.

Microsoft AI chief Harry Shum is leaving after 23 years at the Redmond, Wash. Shum, the executive vice president in charge of Microsoft's AI and Research Group, will depart in Feb. 1, 2020, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed Wednesday. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott will take over Shum's responsibilities while maintaining his previous work. The change is effective immediately. Shum, who also led Microsoft Research, will continue advising Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates, but it's unclear what else is on the horizon for Shum.

Microsoft is losing a key executive who helped the Redmond-based company turn artificial intelligence research into products just as its AI business is getting off the ground. Harry Shum, who runs Microsoft's AI and Research group, is leaving in February after 23 years at Microsoft. He has already shifted his group and responsibilities to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott, which include overseeing the company's AI strategy, research and development on infrastructure, services, and apps, and AI-focused product groups including Bing. The news was first reported by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, and confirmed by Microsoft to Business Insider. Shum's departure comes at a time when Microsoft is making big investments in AI.