Technology

Intel wants to bring more artificial intelligence technology into all aspects of its business, and today it is stepping up its game a little in the area with an acquisition. The computer processing giant has acquired Vertex.AI, a startup that had a mission of making it possible to develop &deep learning for every platform&, building a deep learning engine called PlaidML to do this.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but Intel has provided us with the following statement, confirming the deal and that the whole team — including founders Choong Ng, Jeremy Bruestle and Brian Retford — will be joining Intel.

&Intel has acquired Vertex.AI, a Seattle-based startup focused on deep learning compilation tools and associated technology. The seven-person Vertex.AI team joined the Movidius team in IntelArtificial Intelligence Products Group. With this acquisition, Intel gained an experienced team and IP to further enable flexible deep learning at the edge. Additional details and terms are not being disclosed.&

A note on Vertexhome page says the team will become part of IntelMovidius unit, which was formed around a computer vision chipmaking startup of the same name that Intelacquired in 2016.

Vertex says that Intel will continue to develop PlaidML as an open source project (see its Github page here), where it will continue to support a variety of hardware under an Apache 2.0 license with an Intel nGraph backend. &We are excited to advance flexible deep learning for edge computing as part of Intel,& the company said.

Intel, once a pace-setter and leader in the computing industry on the strength of its processors, has lost some momentum amid a new wave of companies building processors for mobile and other next-generation devices.

The company has set its sights on being at the centre of the next wave of computing, and that is the wider context for its focus on R-D and other investments in AI. Vertex is an interesting company in that regard, as its platform is focused on building AI capabilities into a variety of chips, and is focused on helping bridge the gap between having powerful processors and actually using them to build AI into apps.

&Therea large gap between the capabilities neural networks show in research and the practical challenges in actually getting them to run on the platforms where most applications run,& Ng noted in a statement on the companylaunch in 2016. &Making these algorithms work in your app requires fast enough hardware paired with precisely tuned software compatible with your platform and language. Efficient plus compatible plus portable is a huge challenge—we can help.& For Intel, this could mean using VertexIP to help build its own applications, or potentially applications for of its customers.

Itnot clear how much funding Vertex.AI had raised. Investors included Curious Capital, which focused on pre-seed and seed-stage funding for startups in the Pacific Northwest; and the Creative Destruction Lab, an accelerator focused on machine learning startups based in Toronto.

Intel doesn&t break out revenues specifically for its Artificial Intelligence Product Group, a business unit it established in March 2017, but last quarter the company noted that its various data-centric business units, where the AIPG would sit, grew by 26 percent, versus six percent for its legacy client computing business. While itnot growing as fast, IntelPC-centric business still makes more than the data-centric business, $8.8 billion versus $7.2 billion.

Google is introducing an additional format for featured snippets in its search results today. For years, these snippets have appeared at the top of the search results page and featured both images and text that Google thinks are relevant to your query. They are all about Google saving you a click. Today, Google is going beyond this single answer for some queries and introducing a panel that also features relevant subtopics, saving you even more clicks.

Googlecanonical example for a query to trigger this new panel is &Quartz Vs. Granite.& This query brings up the usual snippet, plus subtopics like cost, benefits, weight and durability. Those topics are automatically chosen based on what Googlealgorithms understand about this topic.

You don&t need a [vs.] query to trigger this, though. If you look for something like &emergency funds,& you&ll also see a similar panel.

For now, I was only able to trigger these new panels on mobile, but Google says it is rolling out this feature over the coming days, so it may be a while before you spot one in the wild. I was also unsuccessful in triggering them with any other query I tried, but maybe you are luckier than me.

Google notes that todayannouncement is part of an ongoing effort to provide more comprehensive results to your questions. This February, for example, Google started showing multiple featured snippets when its systems think a query has multiple interpretations.

One gets the distinct impression that nothing is ever permanent with MoviePass — including, of course, MoviePass itself. The troubled film subscription service has been through a number of different rule changes in recent months, as itworked to stem the financial bleeding.

In an email, CEO Mitch Lowe outlined the latest updates to the once-unlimited subscription plan. Most notable among the changes is the limiting of selection to &up to six films to choose from daily, including a selection of major studio first-run films and independent releases.&

On top of that, there may be further limitations on showtime availability for the selected titles, based on &the popularity of those films on the app that particular day.& The company has already begun limiting access to specific films, starting with a barring of major blockbusters and moving toward limiting selection generally.

If nothing else, at this plan spells out something more concrete that whatappeared from the outside to be somewhat arbitrary choice in recent weeks. Now users can go to the &This WeekMovies& page to see whatavailable. Right now, therea semi-consistent, rotating selection. For example, you can get into BlacKkKlansman and The Meg today, but not tomorrow (weekend box office, you know).

Which movies are chosen and when will likely be at least partially dependent on deals struck between MoviePass and studios/distributors. And, of course, &up to six films& leaves the door open for a lot of wiggle room on selection here. It will also likely severely limit the ability to go see films in repertory movie houses, not to mention those in areas outside of big cities, where selection is far more limited.

This latest change comes as the company marks the one-year anniversary of the $9.95 plan that helped get the company into this financial and customer service mess. Based on the current ratio of responses to a tweet celebrating the milestone, it seems safe to say the companygot a lot of work to do if it hopes to win back one-time loyal users.