A hybrid of deep learning and symbolic AI took the prize at a major puzzle competition. A system called Dr. Fill outscored nearly 1,300 human contestants at April’s annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

When every email, text, or call a company receives could mean a sale, reps need to figure out who to reply to first. Machine learning can help, but using it at scale requires a highly automated operation.

Many medical drugs work by modulating the body’s production of specific proteins. Recent research aimed to predict this activity, enabling researchers to identify drugs that might counteract the effects of Covid-19.

AI may help revolutionize the human diet – or dessert, at least. Google applied AI engineer Dale Markowitz and developer advocate Sara Robinson trained a model to predict whether a recipe is...

A neural network learned to read the genes of viruses as though they were text. That could enable researchers to page ahead for potentially dangerous mutations. Researchers at MIT trained a language model to predict mutations that would enable infectious viruses to become even more virulent.

An algorithm is helping cities locate pipes that could release highly toxic lead into drinking water. BlueConduit, a startup that focuses on water safety, is working with dozens of North American municipal governments to locate lead water lines so they can be replaced.

A new study used AI to track the explosive growth of AI innovation. Researchers from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office deployed natural language processing to track AI’s increasing presence in four decades of patent data.

Major polling organizations took a drubbing in the press after they failed to predict the outcome in last week’s U.S. elections. At least one AI-powered model fared much better.

Who needs cows when you can make milk from scratch? NotMilk, a dairy-free milk substitute that was designed with help from a deep learning model, made its debut in American grocery stores.

The U.S. military enlisted natural language processing to combat disinformation. Primer, a San Francisco startup, is developing a system for the Department of Defense that sifts through news, social media, research, and reports to spot propaganda campaigns.

Machine learning is helping to design energy cells that charge faster and last longer. Battery developers are using ML algorithms to devise new chemicals, components, and charging techniques faster than traditional techniques allow.

Two European capitals launched public logs of AI systems used by the government. Amsterdam and Helsinki provide online registries that describe the algorithms that govern municipal activities, such as automated parking control and a public health chatbot.

An ambitious company is using deep learning to extract and find associations from all the information on the internet — and it isn’t Google. Diffbot built a system that reads web code, parses text, classifies images, and assembles them into what it says is the world’s largest knowledge graph.

A neural network is helping credit card users continue to shop even when the lender’s credit-approval network goes down. Visa developed a deep learning system that analyzes individual cardholders’ behavior in real time to predict whether credit card transactions should be approved or denied.

The UK government abandoned a plan to use machine learning to assess students for higher education. The UK Department of Education discarded grades generated by an algorithm designed to predict performance on the annual Advanced Level qualifications, which had been canceled due to the pandemic.