Artificial Intelligence

03/25/2020 - The promise of artificial intelligence to solve problems in drug design, discover how babies learn language, and make progress in many other areas has been stymied by the inability of humans to understand what's going on inside AI systems. Researchers at six universities, including The University of Texas at Austin, are launching a partnership aimed at turning these AI "black boxes" into human-interpretable computer code, allowing them to solve hitherto unsolvable problems.

01/23/2020 - The race to build the best autonomous cargo vehicle is heating up, indicating big developments for the $700 billion U.S. trucking market. With the rise of e-commerce comes the accompanying need for more efficiently delivered goods, a demand that the transportation industry is not currently equipped to cope with. Self-driving trucks could solve this problem by simultaneously decreasing the cost and increasing the safety of freight transport.

11/22/2019 - In a sign of the highly competitive environment for top talent in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the Sony Corporation this week tapped Peter Stone, a faculty member in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, to lead the newly established Sony AI in the United States.

10/28/2019 - People turn to many different sources for clothing style advice, from magazines to best friends to Instagram. Soon, though, you may be able to ask your smartphone. A University of Texas at Austin computer science team, in partnership with researchers from Cornell Tech, Georgia Tech and Facebook AI Research, has developed an artificial intelligence system that can look at a photo of an outfit and suggest helpful tips to make it more fashionable. Suggestions may include tweaks such as selecting a sleeveless top or a longer jacket.

05/16/2019 - Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions.

04/19/2019 - Water, sunlight, nutrients—these ingredients are essential for plant growth. However, these basic ingredients don’t always yield the ideal plant. In fact, optimizing these variables is complicated, causing some plants to fall flat on flavor. Machine learning can help.

11/01/2018 - The internet is a vast network of knowledge, containing the sum of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, algorithms, and stories. However, accessing this information usually requires the critical eye of a human user. Greg Durrett, a Texas Computer Science Assistant Professor, is using statistical machine learning to change just that.

07/26/2018 - By Rachel Cooper, The Alcalde For the past month, the world has been watching national soccer teams from across the globe compete in a surprising and nail-biting World Cup. Although the U.S. didn’t make the cut for the 2018 version of the quadrennial tournament, there’s an unorthodox soccer team close to home that did pretty well on the international stage—a group of Longhorns and their goal-scoring robots.

07/18/2018 - Robots are everywhere, from the Roomba cleaning your floor to the first self-driving cars traveling the roads. As robots advance and help with more and more tedious or dangerous tasks, they need an easy and efficient way to learn and adapt to their surroundings.

06/25/2018 - UT Austin Villa continues its winning streak in the 3D Simulation League by defeating magmaOffenburg 2-0 in the championship at last week’s RoboCup 2018 competition.