An open source library could spawn trillion-parameter neural networks and help small-time developers build big-league models. Microsoft upgraded DeepSpeed, a library that accelerates the PyTorch deep learning framework.

Two years after it pointed a new direction for language models, Bert still hovers near the top of several natural language processing leaderboards. A new study considers whether Bert simply excels at tracking word order or or learns something closer to common sense.

Three of the biggest AI vendors pledged to stop providing face recognition services to police — but other companies continue to serve the law-enforcement market.

Baidu backed out of a U.S.-led effort to promote ethics in AI, leaving the project without a Chinese presence. The Beijing-based search giant withdrew from the Partnership on AI, a consortium that promotes cooperation on issues like digital privacy and algorithmic bias.

Natural language processing lately has come to resemble an arms race, as the big AI companies build models that encompass ever larger numbers of parameters. Microsoft recently held the record — but not for long.

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.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are developing machine learning tools for the fossil fuel industry even as they pledge to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The for-profit research organization OpenAI has a new supercomputer to help achieve its dream of building the world’s most sophisticated AI. Microsoft engineered the new hardware network to train immense models on thousands of images, texts, and videos simultaneously.

A new algorithm can triage programming bugs, highlighting dangerous flaws. Microsoft researchers developed a machine learning model that reads the titles of bug reports and recognizes those describing flaws that compromise security.

Wait a minute — we added training data, and our model’s performance got worse?! New research offers a way to avoid so-called double descent.

As working from home becomes the new normal, AI may protect you from the sound of coworkers munching while they chat. No more smacking lips and rustling chip bags! Microsoft’s online collaboration platform Teams announced a feature that removes extraneous sounds from videoconferences.

No more sloppy workouts: AI can correct your form. A home exercise system uses neural nets to analyze your motions and tell you when you perform a move properly, reports The Verge.

An icon of idealism in AI stands accused of letting its ambition eclipse its principles. Founded in 2015 to develop artificial general intelligence for the good of humankind, OpenAI swapped its ideals for cash.

AI’s ability to transfer a person’s face from a source photo onto someone in a target photo doesn’t work so well when the target face is partially obscured by, say, eyeglasses, a veil, or a hand. A new technique handles such occlusions.

A new system marks a step forward in converting text to speech: It’s fast at inference, reduces word errors, and provides some control over the speed and inflection of generated speech.What’s new: Yi Ren, Yangjun Ruan, and their co-authors at Zhejiang