The Prediction & Behavior ML team is responsible for developing machine-learned models that understand the full scene around our vehicle and forecast the behavior for other agents, our own vehicle’s actions, and for offline applications. To solve these problems we develop deep learning algorithms that can learn behaviors from data and apply them on-vehicle to influence our vehicle’s driving behavior and offline to provide learned models to autonomy simulation and validation. Given the tight integration of behavior forecasting and motion planning, our team necessarily works very closely with the Planner team in the advancement of our overall vehicle behavior. The Prediction & Behavior ML team also works closely with our Perception, Simulation, and Systems Engineering teams on many cross-team initiatives.

As a systems engineer for perception safety, your primary responsibility will be to define and ensure the safety performance of the perception system. You will be working in close collaboration with perception algorithm and sensor hardware development teams.

Excited to see you at CVPR! We’ll be at booth 1404. Come see us to talk more about roles.

Our team consists of people with diverse software and academic experiences. We work together towards one common goal: integrating the software, you'll help us build into hundreds of millions of vehicles.

As a Research Engineer, you will work collaboratively to improve our models and iterate on novel research directions, sometimes in just days. We're looking for talented engineers who would enjoy applying their skills to deeply complex and novel AI problems. Specifically, you will:

• Apply and extend the Helm proprietary algorithmic toolkit for unsupervised learning and perception problems at scale
• Carefully execute the development and maintenance of tools used for deep learning experiments designed to provide new functionality for customers or address relevant corner cases in the system as a whole
• Work closely with software and autonomous vehicle engineers to deploy algorithms on internal and customer vehicle platforms

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Do you want to shape the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Do you have a passion for solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technologies? Do you enjoy working in a diverse and collaborative team?

The Microsoft Research AI Frontiers group is looking for a Principal Research Software Engineer with demonstrated machine learning experience to advance the state-of-the-art in foundational model-based technologies. Areas of focus on our team include, but are not limited to:

Human-AI interaction, collaboration, and experiences Applications of foundation models and model-based technologies Multi-agent systems and agent platform technologies Model, agent, and AI systems evaluation As a Principal Research Software Engineer on our team, you will need:

A drive for real world impact, demonstrated by a passion to build and deploy applications, prototypes, or open-source technologies. Demonstrated experience working with large foundation models and state-of-the-art ML frameworks and toolkits. A team player mindset, characterized by effective communication, collaboration, and feedback skills. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities Leverage full-stack software engineering skills to build, test, and deploy robust and intuitive AI based technologies. Work closely with researchers and engineers to rapidly develop and test research ideas and drive a high-impact agenda. Collaborate with product partners to integrate and test new ideas within existing frameworks and toolchains. Embody our culture and values.

Natick, MA, United States

The Company Cognex is a global leader in the exciting and growing field of machine vision.

The Team: Vision Algorithms, Advanced Vision Technology This position is in the Vision Algorithms Team of Advanced Vision Technology group, which is responsible for designing and developing the most sophisticated machine vision tools in the world. We combine custom hardware, specialized lighting, optics, and world-class vision algorithms to create software systems that are used to analyze imagery (intensity, color, density, Z-data, ID barcodes, etc.), to detect, identify and localize objects, to make measurements, to inspect for defects, and to read encoded data. Technology development is critical to the overall business to expand areas of application, improve performance, discover new algorithms, and to make use of new hardware and processing power. Engineers in this group typically have experience with image analysis, machine vision, or signal processing.

Job Summary: The Vision Algorithms team is looking for well-rounded, intelligent, creative, and motivated summer or fall intern with a passion for results! You will work with our senior engineers and technical leads on projects that advance our software development infrastructure and enhance our key technologies and customer experience. You will get mentorship on tackling technical challenges and opportunities to build a solid foundation for your career in Software Engineering, or Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence.

Essential Functions: - Prototype and develop Vision (2D and ID) applications on top of Cognex products and technology. - Build internal tools or automated tests that can be used in software development or testing. - Understand our products and contribute to creating optimal solutions for customer applications in the automation industry. - High energy and motivated learner. Creative, motivated, and looking to work hard for a fast-moving company. - Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. - Strong programming skills in both C/C++ and Python are required. - Solid understanding of machine learning (ML) fundamentals and experience with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch required. - Demonstrated projects or internships in AI/ML domain during academic or professional tenure is highly desirable. - Experience with embedded systems, Linux systems, vision/image-processing and optics all valued. - Background in 2D vision, 3D camera calibration & multi camera systems are preferred.

Minimum education and work experience required: Pursuing a MS, or Ph.D. from a top engineering school in EE, CS, or equivalent.

If you would like to meet the hiring manager at CVPR to discuss this opportunity, please email ahmed.elbarkouky@cognex.com

Seattle, US

Our Company Changing the world through digital experiences is what Adobe’s all about. We give everyone—from emerging artists to global brands—everything they need to design and deliver exceptional digital experiences. We’re passionate about empowering people to craft beautiful and powerful images, videos, and apps, and transform how companies interact with customers across every screen.

We’re on a mission to hire the very best and are committed to building exceptional employee experiences where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. We realize that new ideas can come from everywhere in the organization, and we know the next big idea could be yours!

The Opportunity Photoshop ART is seeking a Research Scientist to join our inpainting R&D team focused on making significant progress in image generation/restoration, low level vision, image editing with an eventual posture toward productization. Individuals in this role are expected to be expert in identified research areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and image processing. The ideal candidate will have a keen interest in producing new science to advance Adobe products.

What you'll Do Work towards long-term results-oriented research goals, while identifying intermediate achievements. Contribute to research that can be applied to Adobe product development. Help integrating novel research work into Adobe’s product. Lead and collaborate on research projects across different Adobe divisions. What you need to succeed Ph.D. and solid publications in machine learning, AI, computer science, statistics, or scene semantic understanding. Experience communicating research for public audiences of peers. Experience working in teams. Knowledge in a programming language. Preferred Qualification 2 years of professional full-time experience preferred, but not required 2+ year(s) of internship with primary emphasis on AI research in image generation, low level vision, image restoration, and segmentation Experience in collaboration with a team with varied strengths. 4+ First-author publications at peer-reviewed AI conferences (e.g. NIPS, CVPR, ECCV, ICML, ICLR, ICCV, and ACL). Experience in developing and debugging in Python. At Adobe, you will be immersed in an exceptional work environment that is recognized throughout the world on Best Companies lists. You will also be surrounded by colleagues who are committed to helping each other grow through our unique Check-In approach where ongoing feedback flows freely.

If you’re looking to make an impact, Adobe's the place for you. Discover what our employees are saying about their career experiences on the Adobe Life blog and explore the meaningful benefits we offer.

Adobe is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome and encourage diversity in the workplace regardless of gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or veteran status.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several  U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets. The U.S. pay range for this position is $129,400 -- $242,200 annually. Pay within this range varies by work location and may also depend on job-relate

Location New York, NY Seattle, WA Boston, MA

Description Climate Pledge Friendly helps customers discover and shop for products that are more sustainable. We partner with trusted sustainability certifications to highlight products that meet strict standards and help preserve the natural world. By shifting customer demand towards more sustainable products, we incentivize selling partners to build better selection, creating a virtuous cycle that yields significant environmental benefit at scale.

We are seeking a Senior Applied Scientist who is not just adept in the theoretical aspects of Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Large Language Models (LLMs) but also possesses a pragmatic, hands-on approach to navigating the complexities of innovation. You will take the lead in conceptualizing, building, and launching models that significantly improve our shopping experience. A successful applicant will display a comprehensive skill set across machine learning model development, implementation, and optimization. This includes a strong foundation in data management, software engineering best practices, and a keen awareness of the latest developments in distributed systems technology.

You will work with business leaders, scientists, and engineers to translate business and functional requirements into concrete deliverables, including the design, development, testing, and deployment of highly scalable distributed ML models and services. The types of initiatives you can expect to work on include a) personalized recommendations that help our customers find the right sustainable products on each shopping journey, b) automated solutions that combine ML/LLM and data mining to identify products that align with our sustainability goals and resonate with our customers' values, and c) models to measure the environmental and econometric impacts of sustainable shopping.

Mountain View

Who we are Our team is the first in the world to use autonomous vehicles on public roads using end-to-end deep learning. With our multi-national world-class technical team, we’re building things differently.

We don’t think it’s scalable to tell an algorithm how to drive through hand-coded rules and expensive HD maps. Instead, we believe that using experience and data will allow our algorithms to be more intelligent: capable of easily adapting to new environments. Our aim is to be the future of self-driving cars: the first to deploy in 100 cities across the world bringing autonomy to everyone, everywhere.

Where you will have an impact: Science is the team that is advancing our end-to-end autonomous driving research. The team’s mission is to accelerate our journey to AV2.0 and ensure the future success of Wayve by incubating and investing in new ideas that have the potential to become game-changing technological advances for the company.

As the first Research Manager in our Mountain View office, you will be responsible for managing & scaling a strong Science team which is building our Wayve Foundational Model in collaboration with other Wayve science teams in London and Vancouver. You will provide coaching and guidance to each of the researchers and engineers within your team and work with leaders across the company to ensure sustainable career growth for your team during a period of growth in the company. You will participate in our project-based operating model where your focus will be unlocking the potential of your team and its technical leaders to drive industry-leading impact. As part of your work, you will help identify the right projects to invest in, ensure the right allocation of resources to those projects, keep the team in good health, provide technical feedback to your team, share progress to build momentum, and build alignment and strong collaboration across the wider Science organisation. We are actively hiring and aim to substantially grow our research team over the next two years and you will be at the heart of this.

What you’ll bring to Wayve Essential: Prior experience as a manager of research teams (10-15+ people) with a clear career interest towards management Passionate about fostering personal and professional growth in individual team members Experience with roadmap planning, stakeholder management, requirements gathering and alignment with peers towards milestones and deliverables Strong knowledge of Machine Learning and related areas, such as Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, etc. Industry experience with machine learning technology development which has had real-world product impact Experience driving a team and technical project through the full lifecycle, ideally within the language, vision or multimodal space Passionate about bringing research concepts through to product Research and engineering fundamentals MS or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or similar experience

Desirable: Experience managing the execution of a technical product Good experience working in a project-based (“matrix”) operating environment Proven track record of successfully delivering research projects and publications Experience working with robotics, self-driving, AR/VR, or LLMs Our offer Competitive compensation, on-site chef and bar, lots of fun socials, workplace nursery scheme, comprehensive private health insurance and more! Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs. A position to shape the future of autonomous driving, and thus bring about a real world deployment of a breakthrough technology. Help relocating/travelling to London, with visa sponsorship. Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team.

Inria (Grenoble), France

human-robot interaction, machine learning, computer vision, representation learning

We are looking for highly motivated students joining our team at INRIA. This project will take place in close collaboration between Inria team THOTH and the multidisciplinary institute in artificial intelligence (MIAI) in Grenoble

Topic: Human-robot systems are challenging because the actions of one agent can significantly influence the actions of others. Therefore, anticipating the partner's actions is crucial. By inferring beliefs, intentions, and desires, we can develop cooperative robots that learn to assist humans or other robots effectively. In this project we are in particular interested in estimating human intentions to enable collaborative tasks between humans and robots such as human-to-robot and robot-to-human handovers.

Contact pia.bideau@inria.fr The thesis will be jointly supervised by Pia Bideau (THOTH), Karteek Alahari (THOTH) and Xavier Alameda Pineda (RobotLearn).

Location San Diego

Description

Artificial Intelligence is changing the world for the benefit of human beings and societies. QUALCOMM, as the world's leading mobile computing platform provider, is committed to enable the wide deployment of intelligent solutions on all possible devices – like smart phones, autonomous vehicles, robotics and IOT devices. Qualcomm is creating building blocks for the intelligent edge.

We are part of Qualcomm AI Research, and we focus on advancing Edge AI machine learning technology – including model fine tuning, hardware acceleration, model quantization, model compression, network architecture search (NAS), edge inference and related fields. Come join us on this exciting journey. In this particular role, you will work in a dynamic research environment, be part of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and software engineers who work with cutting edge AI frameworks and tools. You will architect, design, develop, test, and deploy on- and off-device benchmarking workflows for model zoos.

Minimum Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience. OR Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience. OR PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.The successful applicant should have a strong theoretical background and proven hands-on experience with AI as modern software-, web-, and cloud-engineering.

Must have experience and skills: Strong theoretical background in AI and general ML techniques Proven hands-on experience with model training, inference, and evaluation. Proven hands-on experience with PyTorch, ONNX, TensorFlow, CUDA, and others. Experience developing data pipelines for ML/AI training and inferencing in the cloud. Prior experience in deploying containerized (web-) applications to IAAS environments such as AWS (preferred), Azure or GCP, backed by Dev-Ops and CI/CD technologies. Strong Linux command line skills. Strong experience with Docker and Git. Strong general analytical and debugging skills. Prior experience working in agile environments. Prior experience in collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams across time zones. Strong team player, communicator, presenter, mentor, and teacher. Preferred extra experience and skills: Prior experience with model quantization, profiling and running models on edge devices. Prior experience in developing full stack web applications using frameworks such as Ruby-on-Rails (preferred), Django, Phoenix/Elixir, Spring, Node.js or others. Knowledge of relational database design and optimization, hands on experience with running Postgres (preferred), MySQL or other relational databases in production Preferred qualifications: Bachelor's, Master's and/or PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 2-5 years of work experience in Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Hardware Engineering or related.

Location Palo Alto, CA

Description Amazon is looking for talented Postdoctoral Scientists to join our Stores Foundational AI team for a one-year, full-time research position.

The Stores Foundational AI team builds foundation models for multiple Amazon entities, such as ASIN, customer, seller and brand. These foundation models are used in downstream applications by various partner teams in Stores. Our team also invest in building foundation model for image generation, optimized for product image generation. We leverage the latest development to create our solutions and innovate to push state of the art.

The Postdoc is expected to conduct research and build state-of-the-art algorithms in video understanding and representation learning in the era of LLMs. Specifically, Designing efficient algorithms to learn accurate representations for videos. Building extensive video understanding capabilities including various content classification tasks. Designing algorithms that can generate high-quality videos from set of product images. Improve the quality of our foundation models along the following dimensions: robustness, interpretability, fairness, sustainability, and privacy.

Vancouver

Who we are Established in 2017, Wayve is a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, driven by breakthroughs in Embodied AI. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic technologies empower vehicles to navigate complex environments effortlessly.

Supported by prominent investors, Wayve is advancing the transition from assisted to fully automated driving, making transportation safer, more efficient, and universally accessible. Join our world-class, multinational team of engineers and researchers as we push the boundaries of frontier AI and autonomous driving, creating impactful technologies and products on a global scale

Where you will have an impact We are seeking an experienced researcher to be a founding member of our Vancouver team! We are prioritising someone with experience actively participating in AI projects applied to autonomous driving or similar robotics or decision-making domains, inclusive, but not limited to the following specific areas:

Foundation models for robotics or embodied AI Model-free and model-based reinforcement learning Offline reinforcement learning Large language models Planning with learned models, model predictive control and tree search Imitation learning, inverse reinforcement learning and causal inference Learned agent models: behavioural and physical models of cars, people, and other dynamic agents Challenges you will own You'll be working on some of the world's hardest problems, and able to attack them in new ways. You'll be a key member of our diverse, cross-disciplinary team, helping teach our robots how to drive safely and comfortably in complex real-world environments. This encompasses many aspects of research across perception, prediction, planning, and control, including:

How to leverage our large, rich, and diverse sources of real-world driving data How to architect our models to best employ the latest advances in foundation models, transformers, world models, etc, evaluating and incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into our workflows. Which learning algorithms to use (e.g. reinforcement learning, behavioural cloning) How to leverage simulation for controlled experimental insight, training data augmentation, and re-simulation How to scale models efficiently across data, model size, and compute, while maintaining efficient deployment on the car Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate research findings into scalable, production-level solutions. You also have the potential to contribute to academic publications for top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, CVPR, ICRA, ICLR, CoRL etc. working in a world-class team, contributing to the scientific community and establishing Wayve as a leader in the field.

What you will bring to Wayve Proven track record of research in one or more of the topics above demonstrated through deployed applications or publications. Strong programming skills in Python, with experience in deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, numpy, pandas, etc. Experience bringing a machine learning research concept through the full ML development cycle Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently as well as in a team environment. Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced, innovative, interdisciplinary team environment. Desirable: Experience bringing an ML research concept through to production and at scale PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field

What we offer you The chance to be part of a truly mission driven organisation and an opportunity to shape the future of autonomous driving. Unlike our competitors, Wayve is still relatively small and nimble, giving you the chance to make a huge impact Competitive compensation and benefits A dynamic and fast-paced work environment in which you will grow every day - learning on the job, from the brightest minds in our space, and with support for more formal learning opportunities too

Overview We are seeking an exceptionally talented Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join our interdisciplinary team at the forefront of machine learning, computer vision, medical image analysis, neuroimaging, and neuroscience. This position is hosted by the Stanford Translational AI (STAI) in Medicine and Mental Health Lab (PI: Dr. Ehsan Adeli, https://stanford.edu/~eadeli), as part of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. The postdoc will have the opportunity to directly collaborate with researchers and PIs within the Computational Neuroscience Lab (CNS Lab) in the School of Medicine and the Stanford Vision and Learning (SVL) lab in the Computer Science Department. These dynamic research groups are renowned for groundbreaking contributions to artificial intelligence and medical sciences.

Project Description The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects aimed at building large-scale models for neuroimaging and neuroscience through innovative AI technologies and self-supervised learning methods. The postdoc will contribute to building a large-scale foundation model from brain MRIs and other modalities of data (e.g., genetics, videos, text). The intended downstream applications include understanding the brain development process during the early ages of life, decoding brain aging mechanisms, and identifying the pathology of different neurodegenerative or neuropsychiatric disorders. We use several public and private datasets including but not limited to the Human Connectome Project, UK Biobank, Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), Parkinson’s Progression Marker Initiative (PPMI), Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (OASIS), Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA), Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), and OpenNeuro.

Key Responsibilities Conduct research in machine learning, computer vision, and medical image analysis, with applications in neuroimaging and neuroscience. Develop and implement advanced algorithms for analyzing medical images and other modalities of medical data. Develop novel generative models. Develop large-scale foundation models. Collaborate with a team of researchers and clinicians to design and execute studies that advance our understanding of neurological disorders. Mentor graduate students (Ph.D. and MSc). Publish findings in top-tier journals and conferences. Contribute to grant writing and proposal development for securing research funding.

Qualifications PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Neuroscience, or a related field. Proven track record of publications in high-impact journals and conferences including ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, MICCAI, Nature, and JAMA. Strong background in machine learning, computer vision, medical image analysis, neuroimaging, and neuroscience. Excellent programming skills in Python, C++, or similar languages and experience with ML frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch. Ability to work independently and collaboratively in an interdisciplinary team. Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.

Benefits Competitive salary and benefits package. Access to state-of-the-art facilities and computational resources. Opportunities for professional development and collaboration with leading experts in the field. Participation in international conferences and workshops. Working at Stanford University offers access to world-class research facilities and a vibrant intellectual community. The university provides numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, professional development, and cutting-edge innovation. Additionally, being part of Stanford opens doors to a global network of leading experts and industry partners, enhancing both career growth and research impact.

Apply For full consideration, send a complete application via this form: https://forms.gle/KPQHPGGeXJcEsD6V6

Location Seattle, WA New York, NY

Description We are looking for an Applied Scientist to join our Seattle team. As an Applied Scientist, you are able to use a range of science methodologies to solve challenging business problems when the solution is unclear. Our team solves a broad range of problems ranging from natural knowledge understanding of third-party shoppable content, product and content recommendation to social media influencers and their audiences, determining optimal compensation for creators, and mitigating fraud. We generate deep semantic understanding of the photos, and videos in shoppable content created by our creators for efficient processing and appropriate placements for the best customer experience. For example, you may lead the development of reinforcement learning models such as MAB to rank content/product to be shown to influencers. To achieve this, a deep understanding of the quality and relevance of content must be established through ML models that provide those contexts for ranking.

In order to be successful in our team, you need a combination of business acumen, broad knowledge of statistics, deep understanding of ML algorithms, and an analytical mindset. You thrive in a collaborative environment, and are passionate about learning. Our team utilizes a variety of AWS tools such as SageMaker, S3, and EC2 with a variety of skillset in shallow and deep learning ML models, particularly in NLP and CV. You will bring knowledge in many of these domains along with your own specialties.

Tokyo, Tokyo-to, Japan

Overview As one of the world's leading industrial research laboratories, Microsoft Research (MSR) has more than 1,000 researchers and engineers working across the globe. In the past 30 years, Microsoft scientists have not only carried out world-class computer science research, but also transferred the advanced technologies into our products and services that have changed millions of people’s lives and ensured that Microsoft is at the forefront of digital transformation.

Part of Microsoft Research, Microsoft Research Asia (MSR Asia), established in 1998, is a leading research lab with major sites in Beijing, Shanghai and Vancouver. Over the years, technologies developed by MSR Asia have made a significant impact within Microsoft and also around the world, and new, innovative technologies are constantly being born from the lab. As one of the world-class research labs, MSRA offers an exhilarating, supportive, open and inclusive environment for top talents to create the future through their disruptive and cutting-edge research. (More information about Microsoft Research Lab - Asia - Microsoft Research).

Along with business growth, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) is increasing its presence in Japan, and looking for a Principal Research Manager who specializes in AI with an emphasis on Embodied AI and Robotics, AI Model innovations (NLP, vision, multi-modality), Societal AI, Wireless sensing, and Wellbeing. This is a unique opportunity to lead an ambitious research agenda and work with various teams to explore new applications of those research areas.

Responsibilities •As a leading and accomplished expert in a broad research area (e.g., Embodied AI and Robotics, AI Model, Multimedia and Vision), has a comprehensive understanding of the relevant literature, research methods, and business and academic context. •Defines and articulates a clear long-term research vision that is in line with MSRA strategic focus and drive research agenda landing with planned schedule •As a local representative, fosters cooperative relationships with local governments, academic communities, industry partners and business groups within Microsoft to establish MSRA presence locally and support future growth •Creates synergy among MSRA research groups in multiple locations to enable collaboration and creativity • As a people manager, hires and retains top talents. Deliveries success through empowerment and accountability