Solar-thermal power plants concentrate the sun’s energy using huge arrays of mirrors. AI is helping those arrays stay in focus.

Image analysis guided by AI revealed a 2,000-year-old picture dug into the Peruvian desert. Researchers analyzing aerial imagery shot over Peru found a pattern that looks like a three-horned humanoid holding a staff.

Sony, the consumer-electronics powerhouse behind the PlayStation and other hit gadgets, is launching three research-and-design centers to focus on AI. Staffing up means competing with — and likely poaching talent from — frontrunners like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Knightscope’s security robots look cute. But these cone-headed automatons, which serve U.S. police departments and businesses, are serious surveillance machines.

In March 2018, one of Uber’s self-driving cars became the first autonomous vehicle reported to have killed a pedestrian. A new report by U.S. authorities suggests that the accident occurred because the car’s software was programmed to ignore jaywalkers.

A deep learning system is helping biologists who survey offshore fish populations to prevent overfishing. The U.S. agency in charge of protecting ocean resources is using an underwater camera and neural network to count fish in real time.

Looking at images, people see outlines before the details within them. A replacement for the traditional convolutional layer decomposes images based on this distinction between coarse and fine features.

Will biases in training data unwittingly turn AI into a tool for persecution? Bias encoded in software used by nominally objective institutions like, say, the justice or education systems will become impossible to root out.

Pilots in drone races fly souped-up quadcopters around an obstacle course at 120 miles per hour. But soon they may be out of a job, as race organizers try to spice things up with drones controlled by AI.

Elon Musk has promised a fleet of autonomous Tesla taxis by 2020. The company reportedly purchased a computer vision startup to help meet that goal. Tesla acquired DeepScale, a Silicon Valley startup that rocesses computer vision on low-power electronics.

Skin conditions are the fourth-largest cause of nonfatal disease worldwide, but access to dermatological care is sparse. A new study shows that a neural network can do front-line diagnostic work.

AI startups are being scooped up at an accelerating pace, many by companies outside the tech sphere. A report by CB Insights shows that, as of August, 2019 was on track to surpass last year’s record number of AI startup acquisitions.

Construction projects require teams of surveyors who continually map blueprints to precise, real-world locations. Drones might do it faster, saving time and money.

Advances in computer vision and robotic dexterity may reach the field just in time to save U.S. agriculture from a looming labor shortage. CNN Business surveyed the latest crop of AI-powered farmbots.

Creating a virtual representation of a scene using traditional polygons and texture maps involves several complex operations, and even neural-network approaches have required manual preprocessing. Researchers propose a new deep-learning pipeline that visualizes scenes with far less fuss.