Author: John Mannes

Primer helps governments and corporations monitor and understand the world’s information When Google was founded in 1998, its goal was to organize the world’s information. And for the most part, mission accomplished — but in 19 years the goal post has moved forward and indexing and usefully presenting information isn’t enough. As machine learning matures, it’s becoming feasible for the first time to actually summarize and contextualize the world’s information. With two and a half years of R&D under its belt, Primer aims to do just that for governments, corporations…

New venture capitalists find strength in numbers The large number of new venture capital funds may hint at broader structural changes in the startup ecosystem, but for the young and eager partners at the helm of many of these funds, all the rush of money means is more competition. Ian Rountree, the twenty something captain at the helm of Cantos Ventures, an SF-based micro-fund, is characteristic of a new breed of venture capitalists in tech — a group of  small funds looking to go toe-to-toe with some of the valley’s…

Google’s AVA dataset raises the bar for identifying human actions in videos Today Google announced a new labeled dataset of human actions taking place in videos. That may sound obscure, but it’s a big deal for anyone working to solve problems in computer vision. If you’ve been following along, you’ve noticed the significant uptick in companies building products and services that act as a second pair of human eyes. Video detectors like Matroid, security systems like Lighthouse and even autonomous cars benefit from an understanding of what’s going on inside…

Apple makes the case that even its most banal features require a proficiency in machine learning Amidst narratives of machine learning complacency, Apple is coming to terms with the fact that not talking about innovation means innovation never happened. A detailed blog posting in the company’s machine learning journal makes public the technical effort that went into its “Hey Siri” feature — a capability so banal that I’d almost believe Apple was trying to make a point with highbrow mockery. Even so, it’s worth taking the opportunity to explore exactly…

Intel to ship new Nervana Neural Network Processor by end of 2017 This morning at the WSJ’s D.Live event, Intel formally unveiled its Nervana Neural Network Processor (NNP) family of chips designed for machine learning use cases. Intel has previously alluded to these chips using the pre-launch name Lake Crest. The technology underlying the chips is heavily tied to Nervana Systems, a deep learning hardware startup Intel purchased last August for $350 million. Intel’s NNP chips nix standard cache hierarchy and use software to manage on-chip memory to achieve faster training times for…

Feedzai closes M Series C to help banks and merchants identify fraud with AI Feedzai is announcing a $50 million Series C this morning led by an unnamed VC with additional capital from Sapphire Ventures. The six year old startup builds machine learning tools to help banks and merchants spot payment fraud. In today’s rapidly maturing world of fintech, Feedzai is trying to thread the needle between turnkey solution and customizable platform. With 60 clients including major financial institutions like Capital One and Citi, Feedzai remains optimistic that allowing savvy…

Terminal makes it easy for companies to open international offices Born out of a frustration with recruiting within the peninsula-trapped City of San Francisco, Terminal is a platform allowing companies to tap into talent abroad. Starting with campuses in Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal and Vancouver, the startup aims to plant physical flags in as many of the world’s global talent centers as possible. Terminal is being run by 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale, Atomic’s Jack Abraham and Dylan Serota, formerly of Eventbrite. The vision is a turnkey solution for international expansion that manages challenges ranging from identifying and recruiting talent…

TensorFlow Lattice ensures your machine learning models follow global trends Google’s TensorFlow team released TensorFlow Lattice today to help developers ensure that their machine learning models adhere to global trends even when training data is noisy. Lattice draws from the concept of lookup tables to simplify the process of defining macro rules to restrict models. A lookup table is a representation of data that includes inputs (keys) and outputs (values). It’s easiest to conceptualize with a single key linking to a single output, but there can be multiple keys in…

Ross Intelligence lands .7M Series A to speed up legal research with AI Armed with an understanding of machine learning, Ross Intelligence is going after LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters for ownership of legal research. The startup, founded in 2015 by Andrew Arruda, Jimoh Ovbiagele and Pargles Dall’Oglio at the University of Toronto, is announcing an $8.7 million Series A today led by iNovia Capital with participation from Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Real Ventures, Dentons’ NextLaw Labs and angels. At its core, Ross is a platform that helps legal teams sort…

Dow Jones said that Google was buying Apple, the algos bought it There you have it. Steve Jobs’ will + Dow Jones + Apple Park = Google’s buying Apple. I think we finally have algorithmic transparency. This morning Dow Jones shot some fake news out over the wires announcing that Google was acquiring Apple for $9 billion. For a brief second, the news sent Apple’s stock up about $2 to $158 per share. To the benefit of everyone’s morning, both stock prices quickly returned to normal. The story went something like…