Each week we will share the latest artificial intelligence news and insights, curated for professionals, board members, and entrepreneurs, as we learn to navigate together the opportunities and threats arising from the evolution of AI and technology.
This week in AI
In AI news this week we cover the challenges in defining AI and a roundup of the latest AI funding deals.
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Challenges in defining AI
We return to an important topic, how to define Artificial Intelligence ? Seasoned practitioners and researchers often assert that AI is, in many respects, meaningless and too abstract to adequately define the mathematics, technologies and use cases grouped under this umbrella term.
So how should we think about AI and better understand the fundamental features of this generational change ?
To help, here is a way to think about this technology from Stanford University’s Human Centered Artificial Intelligence department (HAI for short),
“Artificial Intelligence (AI), a term coined by emeritus Stanford Professor John McCarthy in 1955, was defined by him as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines”. Much research has humans program machines to behave in a clever way, like playing chess, but, today, we emphasize machines that can learn, at least somewhat like human beings do.”
The software that has dominated our technology up until recently has been written by human beings, using a variety of languages and silicon chips. The AI era is replacing sole human authorship with technologies that can learn and perform these tasks instead.
Using techniques such as Supervised and Unsupervised Learning and new mathematical libraries on silicon chips, machines can search vast amounts of Learning Data to find patterns and offer more powerful insights.
As the cost of deploying AI on the Cloud has fallen, more humans are empowered by powerful technologies that do not need detailed procedures to operate. Instead, multiple rounds of learning, and continuous learning, are performed under human supervision, increasingly with low code and no code interfaces.
This powerful adaptation is being accelerated by advances in the computation available on the Cloud and mobile devices, to expand what is possible, even from a couple of years ago.
So, when thinking about AI, think of it as an accelerator, a way for humans to solve more problems than was previously economically viable when using legacy human manual programming.
AI Funding News
This week’s financings have defied global macroeconomic headwinds with some impressive financings and valuations.
Astera Labs, based in Santa Clara, California, USA is a semiconductor company that provides connectivity solutions for intelligent systems. The company raised one hundred and fifty million US Dollars in Series D valuing the company over three billion US Dollars. From their press release,
Weka is a global data management provider that delivers a cloud-native, software-based data platform. Based in Campbell, California, USA, the firm doubled its valuation with its Series D round over-subscribed, raising one hundred and thirty five million US Dollars. From their Press Release,
“AI and machine learning applications fuel sustainable advancements like autonomous cars and intelligent manufacturing. However, these workloads demand massive volumes of data and computing power. Today, much of that power is wasted, sitting idle due to bottlenecks in the data pipeline,” said Dave Easton, a Growth Equity Partner at Generation Investment Management.”
ISEE is an autonomous transportation company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.The firm raised $40M in Series B as the first company that has claimed to achieve fully self-driving operations with autonomous trucks. The funds will be used to scale operations and attracted finance from some big names including the Founders Fund, Maersk Growth and Eniac Ventures.
Metagenomi is an Emeryville, California, USA company developing genome editing systems using machine learning. The firm raised eighty million US dollars in a corporate round from Ionis Pharmaceuticals, a Nasdaq listed RNA drugs research company. The round followed a successful Series B raise of one hundred and seventy five million US dollars at the start of 2022.
Anumana is an AI-driven company developing ECG algorithms, aimed at early disease diagnosis and intervention. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, the firm was spun off from Mayo Clinic in 2021. The firm raised thirty two million US dollars in a private venture round, after joining the MedTech Innovator Accelerator program in the middle of 2022.
That’s all for this week. If you want to publish your news and Press Releases, email our news desk by Close of Business Thursday each week on newsdesk@ai-forum.com and to stay informed, visit our website ai-forum.com and click to subscribe.
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