A mechanical lab assistant could accelerate chemistry research.What’s new: Researchers at the University of Liverpool trained a mobile robot arm to navigate a lab, operate equipment, handle samples, and obtain results far faster than a human scientist.

Companies in Africa and the Middle East are building AI capacity in very different ways, a new study found. AI is growing fast in both regions despite shortages of talent and data.

Computer vision has been learning how to spot manufacturing flaws. The pandemic is accelerating that education. Companies like Instrumental and Elementary are making AI-powered cameras that automate the spotting of damaged or badly assembled products on factory assembly lines.

Which headline was written by a computer? A: FIFA to Decide on 2022 World Cup in March B: Decision in March on 48-team 2022 World Cup, Says Infantino

Machines took another step toward doing the work of journalists. Microsoft laid off dozens of human editors who select articles for the MSN news service and app. Going forward, AI will do the job.

A pioneer in dishwashing robots is reaching into commercial kitchens. Dishcraft Robotics uses machines equipped with computer vision to scrub dirties for corporate food services and, soon, restaurants.

Will reading soon become obsolete? A new system converts text articles into videos. VidPress, a prototype project from Chinese tech giant Baidu, currently generates more than 1,000 narrated video summaries of news stories daily.

Progress in language models is spawning a new breed of chatbots and, unlike their narrow-domain forebears, they have the gift of gab. Recent research tests the limits of conversational AI.

Like nurses who can’t decipher a doctor’s handwriting, machine learning models can’t decipher medical scans — without labels. Conveniently, natural language models can read medical records to extract labels for X-ray images.

Asian companies lead the world in AI deployment, new research argues. Market research by MIT Technology Review Insights found that companies in the Asia-Pacific region are using machine learning faster and with better results than any other part of the world.

Doctors are overwhelmed by clerical work. Healthcare-savvy voice assistants are picking up the slack.

Businesses around the world outsource their customer service work to the Philippines. Now the Philippines is preparing its workers to outsource some tasks to AI.

AI may not steal your job, but it can tell the boss when you’re slacking. Drishti, a startup based in Palo Alto and Bengaluru, tracks the productivity of industrial workers by recognizing their actions on the assembly line.

A top meat packer is counting its chickens with AI. Tyson Foods is using computer vision to track drumsticks, breasts, and thighs as they move through its processing plants, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The business world continues to shape deep learning’s future. Commerce is pushing AI toward more efficient consumption of data, energy, and labor, according to a report on trends in machine learning from market analyst CB Insights.