Women in Tech Excellence Awards will be back in person this month after waiting for two years. And I can’t wait to celebrate once again the wonderful work women are doing across technology.
A very important award for the industry and all of us here Computing.. Celebrating diversity is essential for us to move away from the well-established “tech-bro” culture and into a more welcoming culture.
Christel Grizaut, marketing SVP at Yoobic, finalist at the Women in Tech Awards, said it was important to move away from an exclusive approach to technology. After all, women make up at least half of your intended audience.
Why support computing WomWould you like to participate in the Tech Excellence Campaign?
This has not been translated into the technology industry, despite advances generally made to bridge the gap in achievement and equality between men and women throughout society. Current estimates indicate that females occupy about a quarter (25%) of the available roles, even though they make up almost half of the world’s workforce, which causes great damage to the industry. I am. At a basic level, one of the key issues with this imbalance is that females make up about half of the technology’s target audience in all of the different outputs. Therefore, if the solutions offered appeal to this core audience, they should be represented at all stages of research, product development, and market launch.
Continue reading: https://texasnewstoday.com/interview-with-women-in-tech-finalist-yoobic/538834/

SINGAPORE - Girls must be exposed to science and technology early in their lives in order to make informed choices about their education and careers, said panelists at a dialogue session on Tuesday (Nov 16).
United States Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who is in Singapore on an official visit and was one of the speakers, cited an example from the US state of Rhode Island, where she had served as governor.
"We brought about the teaching of computer science in every public school in Rhode Island, starting when kids were in kindergarten, (at) five years old. And the result of that early training was astonishing.
"Once girls were exposed to computer science, naturally they took to it, they did incredibly well and more of them started to go into tech fields, simply because they were exposed to it," said Ms Raimondo.
She was speaking at a panel discussion at the National University of Singapore about getting more women into the tech sector. The event, titled Women in Tech - Seizing Opportunities in the Digital Economy, was co-hosted by the US Department of Commerce and Singapore's Ministry of Communications and Information.
Continue reading: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/early-exposure-essential-to-draw-more-girls-into-science-tech-careers-panellists

She Code Africa was founded in 2016 after Ada Nduka Oyom graduated with a degree in microbiology from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As an undergraduate, she steered two campus tech communities. Now, she leads Google’s developer community program for sub-Saharan Africa. 
All of this, she says, is a testament to her passion for building strong, sustainable communities. “It just ties down to me wanting to build a proper community because I know how much of an input communities have played in my growth in tech,” she explains. 
The gender disparity issue is global but the problem is particularly pronounced in Africa. According to Project Syndicate, in sub-Saharan Africa the overall female labor-force participation rate has reached 61%, yet women constitute only 30% of professionals in the tech industry. 
She Code Africa started by showcasing and celebrating women in African tech and then moved to training those starting out. Oyom explains that this pivot was necessitated by the requests they kept getting.
Continue reading: https://african.business/2021/11/technology-information/women-challenge-male-domination-in-african-tech/

Since it burst onto the scene with Bitcoin, blockchain has been linked with other cryptocurrencies, digital artwork and extraordinary energy consumption.
The heart of blockchain, though, is a distributed ledger with important applications for the space sector. Space companies, academic researchers and government agencies are exploring how distributed ledgers can make supply chains more efficient, enhance cybersecurity and simplify venture finance.
“Is there hype? Yes,” said Karen Jones, senior project leader and technology strategist at the Aerospace Corp. Center for Space Policy. “But underneath that is a structure that allows [distributed ledger technology] to play a role in various business processes that require transparency, accountability and decentralization.”
While many organizations see promise in blockchain, some of the more ambitious space-related applications are likely to evolve over the coming years.
Blockchain could provide tools, for example, to help an individual task a commercial satellite to collect imagery of a remote location, receive the imagery with confidence in the integrity of every pixel and transfer payment securely to the satellite operator.
Continue reading: https://spacenews.com/hype-aside-blockchains-space-applications-shouldnt-be-dismissed/

All companies have competition. It could be for market share, investors, or other key resources, but talent is one of the most significant. Top-tiered talent is a key differentiator that can make or break a business. The best employees will design better products, provide superior service, close more and bigger deals, or develop strategies that can help a company not only survive but thrive in both good times or difficult times.
To retain, attract or motivate key people, many companies offer non-cash incentives like stock options. While these traditional equity incentives are still critical parts of the recruitment and retention process, technology continually introduces change. Now, a small, but growing number of forward-thinking companies have started using cryptocurrency and digital assets as part of their incentive and compensation packages.
For employees of digital assets and blockchain companies, this could see them getting paid in tokens instead of cash. Many tokens have a liquidity advantage over equity awards. As long as there are no restrictions on the property and a marketplace (i.e., an exchange) exists with sufficient trading volume, the tokens can potentially be sold quickly as compared to a potential long-time horizon for private company equity awards.
Continue reading: https://www.benefitspro.com/2021/11/15/why-crypto-might-be-the-next-big-thing-in-compensation/

When Maria-Eugenia Valle needed to show proof of vaccination to attend a folk-pop concert in Bogotá in September, she pulled out her phone and opened her VitalPass app, which uses blockchain technology to generate a QR code that allows a venue to verify a user’s status. The digital passport is more reliable than a paper vaccination card, which could easily be faked, the 22-year-old says. “You can trust it more, because it’s got a thing with blockchain behind it.” 
Blockchain is best known for supporting cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but versions of the technology are fast making their way into many facets of daily life, from vaccine passports to finance, gaming, and cross-border payments. The market for blockchain technology and services is projected to grow to $67.4 billion by 2026, from $4.9 billion this year, according to researcher MarketsandMarkets.
At its simplest, blockchain is a shared database where digital information is recorded and stored in “blocks” that are effectively immutable, making the data on the chain secure and verifiable. Software code called smart contracts allows the blockchain to take on some functionalities of a bank or a game without any human involvement. “The best way to think of blockchain is as a computer, with capabilities we didn’t have before,” says Ali Yahya, a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Once a developer writes a program, “the code will continue to operate and run indefinitely.”
Continue reading: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-16/what-is-blockchain-how-the-technology-transforms-daily-life

As the blockchain continues to lead fresh frontiers in finance, diversity critical. It’s crucial that all demographics are represented as both the leaders of this change and the consumers of it. 
However, the worlds of finance and tech are predominantly white and male—and fintech, the innovative collision of the two, is no different. This includes the blockchain, which is desperately devoid of diversity.
More specifically, the proportion of women in leadership positions at financial firms is just 21.9 percent and, by 2030, is only projected to reach 31 percent if it sustains its pace. Meanwhile, women make up just 28.8 percent of the tech workforce. As for fintech founders, females are few and far between, accounting for just a mere seven percent.
That’s why it comes as no surprise that the blockchain—a decentralized ledger system that records digital assets’ provenance—is painfully homogeneous. According to a global Quartz survey, of 378 venture-backed cryptocurrency startups that were founded between 2012 and 2018, only 8.5 percent had a female founder or co-founder. 
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2021/11/15/we-need-more-diversity-on-the-blockchain/?sh=a9ba65556dc5

Hello everyone! Please I would like to know how to get started or registered for the training particularly for those who have interest.  
Thanks indeed!

Business leaders are still worrying about artificial intelligence (AI), but with Facebook pushing hard into the metaverse, augmented reality (AR) has also proven a massive concern for corporate chieftains.
That’s according to analytics firm GlobalData. The company defines a theme as any issue that keeps chief executives awake at night. In a thematic survey published in October 2021, GlobalData gauged the business community’s current sentiment towards emerging technologies that kept executives stirring into the early hours.
The research found that AI was the technology perceived as most disruptive in Q3 2021, regaining its position from AR, which, as Verdict previously reported, held the top spot in the previous quarter.
66% of professionals from over 30 industries stated in the poll that AI would deliver either slight or significant disruption to their industry. This was a sharp increase from the previous quarter when 49% said AI would disrupt their industry. It returns AI to the position that it held in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021.
Continue reading: https://www.just-auto.com/features/why-is-ai-an-obsession-for-business-insiders/

As the influence of artificial intelligence grows, it is increasingly vital to design processes and systems to harness AI while counterbalancing risk. Our charge is to eliminate bias, codify objectives and represent values. Responsible AI ensures alignment to our standards spanning data, algorithms, operations, technology and Human Computer Interaction.
The focus of this article, impartiality, is one of six foundational elements of a responsible AI model that I recently defined for organizations to use:
1. Accountability
2. Impartiality 
3. Resilience
4. Transparency
5. Security
6. Governance 
I am examining the importance of each of these elements in a series of articles. This second component of responsible AI, impartiality, has deep historical roots and myriad future implications that we’ll explore in more detail. 
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/11/15/how-to-build-responsible-ai-step-2-impartiality/?sh=6cc9c9acee80

The use of adaptive swarm robotics has the potential to provide significant environmental and economic benefits to smart agriculture efforts globally through the implementation of autonomous ground and aerial technologies. 
“Agricultural robots, when used properly, can improve product quantity and quality while lowering the cost,” said Kiju Lee, associate professor and Charlotte & Walter Buchanan Faculty Fellow in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution and the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. 
A project led jointly by Lee, Muthukma Bagavathiannan in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Juan Landivar in the AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi has been recently funded by the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture through the National Robotics Initiative 3.0 program. 
The entire multidisciplinary group — comprised of members from several Texas A&M University System departments, institutions and agencies — is working to establish a configurable, adaptive and scalable swarm (CASS) system consisting of unmanned ground and aerial robots designed to assist in collaborative smart agriculture tasks. 
“We will develop the technical and theoretical groundwork for the deployable, scalable swarm system consisting of a physical robotic swarm, of both ground and aerial robots, a digital twin simulator for low- and high-fidelity simulations, and an easy-to-use user interface for farmers to make this CASS system into use,” Lee said. 
This approach to smart agriculture, enabled by the CASS technology, could result in long-term benefits thanks to reduced waste through better logistics, optimal use of water and fertilizer, and an overall reduction in the use of pesticides. 
The research team believes that by utilizing smaller machines to reduce soil compaction and working to avoid herbicide-resistant weeds through nonchemical methods of control, significant ecological and environmental benefits can be achieved. 
Recent trends in smart agriculture focused on the usage of large machinery have had the objective of maximizing product quantity and minimizing costs — an approach that has resulted in some economic and environmental concerns. Lee said issues including soil compaction, a limited ability to address small-scale field variability and reduced crop productivity are some of the long-term issues that have emerged from this approach. 
By leveraging the flexibility of swarm robotics, the CASS system is intended to become a platform technology that can be configured to meet application-specific needs. 
“Current trends in precision agriculture and smart farming mostly focus on larger machinery or a single or a small number of robots equipped and programmed to perform highly specialized tasks,” Lee said. “This project will serve as a critical pathway toward our long-term goal of establishing a deployable easy-to-use swarm robotic system that can serve as a universal platform for broad agriculture applications.”
Although other systems employing swarm robotics exist, they are typically designed to perform just one specific task rather than being adaptable to a variety of situations. 
Moving forward, the team will have the opportunity to address several challenges related to the complex and varying scale of agriculture applications through the design and implementation process of their system. 
Continue reading: https://today.tamu.edu/2021/11/15/adaptive-swarm-robotics-could-revolutionize-smart-agriculture/

Early October 2021, DragonFlyPads, Unifly and partners carried out a series of unprecedented tests for parcel delivery by drone at Rungis International Market, the biggest food market in France, located in a busy urban environment only 15 km from Paris, France and 3 km from Orly international airport. DragonFlyPads installed a vertiport (drone reception station) capable of accommodating surveillance and cargo drones of any brand, while Unifly provided Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) technology to ensure situational awareness and ability to manage the drone traffic. Over the course of two weeks, about more than 30 surveillance flights and over 50 transport flights took place day and night within the Rungis Market, with the participation of several wholesalers. Rungis International Market employs over 12 000 wholesalers, it is the size of Monaco, and every day more than 20 000 transportation trucks enter the market where goods are exchanged and dispatched mainly between 2 – 6 am every morning.   Various fragile products were successfully transported, ranging from exotic fruits and spare parts to defibrillators and even champagne. What are vertipads? Why do we need them?
Drones need safe places to land and take off. This hybrid infrastructure, between a service station and mini airport, enables drones to operate in complete safety, sheltered from the elements, offering secure storage for both drones and cargo, repair facilities, and an efficient charging solution.  The vertipads, developed and deployed for the first time in France by Dragonflypads, are recycled maritime containers, ecological, mobile, and equipped with a seamless software that manages air to ground connections for the drones as well as the grid of vertipads. How does the UTM system come into play?
Drones cannot fly in isolation; flights need to be planned and authorized, unexpected changes can occur at any time and need to be dealt with immediately. The UTM system ensures total situational awareness and real-time communication between all stakeholders to ensure the safe and efficient use of the airspace. The flyby of cargo over a commercial, complex and urban area such as the Rungis Market is a first in France.  Authorization was granted by Civil Aviation (DAGC) after a very rigorous process who continue to support DragonFlyPads in the development of new vertipads in other complex areas outside of Paris. 
Continue reading: https://www.suasnews.com/2021/11/unifly-and-dragonflypads-join-forces-to-enable-drone-use-for-last-mile-delivery/

Intermountain Healthcare and several other healthcare providers are using drones to deliver prescriptions, medical supplies, and telemedicine platforms.
Intermountain Healthcare will be using drones to deliver prescriptions and other medical supplies to homes in and around Salt Lake City.
The multi-state health system, based in Salt Lake City, has announced a partnership with Zipline, a San Francisco-based medical product delivery company. The deal will enable Intermountain to used drones to ship specialty pharmaceuticals and homecare products to homes within 50 miles of the health system’s distribution center.
“Making access to healthcare faster and more convenient will lead to better health outcomes for our patients,” Intermountain President and CEO Marc Harrison said in a press release.
“Patients can connect with providers from the home, and then receive the medications and supplies they need in a matter of minutes, directly to their doorsteps,” said Keller Rinaudo, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, which has facilitated more than 200,000 drone deliveries and is currently involved in programs in Ghana and Rwanda. “For example, a cancer patient could receive her medication without ever leaving her home. Or a single parent could get his child’s antibiotics without a trip to the pharmacy. Instant access to care is not just about convenience. It comes down to making healthcare more equitable, efficient, and reliable for people, regardless of where they live or their circumstances.”
Health systems have been experimenting with drones over the past few years to deliver medical supplies to remote locations and facilitate the transfer of time-sensitive lab tests and specimens from one healthcare site to another, particularly in congested areas such as Los Angeles or regions with rough terrain such as the Rockies or Appalachians.
Continue reading: https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/drone-deliveries-taking-healthcare

World ATM Congress 2021, recently held in Madrid, presented an opportunity for companies and industry partners to come together in-person and discuss exactly what it will take to thrive in the post-COVID world.
From new and innovative ways to bolster sustainability, to management of new entrants into the airspace, to the future of space tourism, World ATM Congress 2021 demonstrated that the future is in the clouds and take off isn’t far away.
For our readers that were not able to attend, Connected Aviation Today captured some of the biggest moments and highlights from the event:
Inmarsat and the EU Team Up for a Greener Airspace
In an increasingly eco-conscious world, air passengers are looking for ways to travel in a more sustainable manner. While many in the industry are working on new eco-friendly fuels or more streamlined aircraft, Inmarsat and the European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP) agreed to bring a space satellite Air Traffic Management (ATM) system to Europe by 2023. The agreement outlined a system that will use satellites to guide flights across the continent and find more efficient and less carbon-intense flight plans, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of air travel.
Inmarsat added further information on the announcement, sharing that the two entities are working on the final testing, certification, and integration phase of its Iris air traffic modernization program. With commercial rollout expected in the coming two years, the new program provides an example for other national airspaces looking to further meet their sustainability goals.
Continue reading: https://connectedaviationtoday.com/world-atm-congress-2021-drones-data-decreased-carbon-future-airspace/#.YZO-EGDMI2w

Cardinal Health Inc. plans to test the use of drones to speed delivery of pills, inhalers and other items to U.S. pharmacies, a move the healthcare-supplies distributor said could also cut transport costs for time-critical shipments.
The pilot program with drone operator Zipline International Inc. would start next year outside Charlotte, N.C., pending approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration, the companies said Tuesday. Aerial drones with 11-foot wingspans would carry loads of up to four pounds about 10 miles from a Zipline distribution center in Kannapolis, N.C., to local pharmacies in 15 to 30 minutes. Cardinal declined to name the pharmacy company participating in the program.
The program is Cardinal Health’s first foray into drone deliveries, which the Dublin, Ohio-based distributor sees as a way around delays in restocking inventory and volatile last-minute shipping prices. It follows other efforts by companies including United Parcel Service Inc., Merck & Co. and Walmart Inc. testing the use of drones for the domestic shipment of medical products and supplies.
Josh Dolan, Cardinal Health’s senior vice president of pharmaceutical operations, said drone delivery would allow the company to bypass road obstacles such as natural disasters and help replenish high-turnover items. Eventually, he said, it will be useful for emergency situations in remote areas or when time is crucial, such as delivering antivenom for snake bites.
While speed and reliability are the main reasons Cardinal Health is pursuing drone delivery, the flights would also allow the company to avoid fluctuations in prices for last-minute courier or helicopter deliveries, Mr. Dolan said. The company eventually aims to expand the program to more products and regions, which would also depend on FAA approvals, a spokesman said.
Zipline, which is based in South San Francisco, Calif., has used aerial drones to deliver medical supplies to remote parts of Africa, flying blood and vaccines to outposts in Rwanda and Ghana and more recently delivering the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE in the latter country.
Continue reading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cardinal-health-to-test-drone-delivery-to-pharmacies-11637060401

As customer expectations regarding shipping and delivery times get higher, the performance of manned couriers starts to bottleneck. Instant gratification has become a universal trend, and ecommerce industries that can use drones to ship and deliver their goods fast have a lot to gain.
It’s no wonder then that many large companies, like Amazon, have started experimenting with drone deliveries for quite a few years.
It seems like old news by now or something like a failed school science project, but the use of drones in the logistics sector is expected to increase the revenue in e-commerce by up to 25% in the next 10 years and save retailers more than $10 million in shipping costs.
And that’s just the beginning.
WHY HAVEN’T DRONES BEEN IMPLEMENTED IN ECOMMERCE SO FAR?
One of the main reasons drone delivery has been stagnating is current legislation and safety concerns. While Amazon and a few other companies like Alphabet (Google) have received permission from the FAA to test their drone projects with actual delivery packages, there is one caveat to take into account.
Currently, the FAA rules mention that even for commercial drone use, the drone has to stay in line of sight of the operator, so until special exceptions are made for these companies, drones won’t be able to be automatically flown by preprogrammed software.
Another issue is that of privacy and safety, considering these drones will swarm over people’s houses and that adds yet another layer of complexity to the legislation problem.
And as logistical issues go, drones struggle to find more challenging addresses as easily as humans, and dropping a package at your home might end up with broken deliveries and damaged drones.
Solutions to solve these problems would be things like:

• Special drop-off points. These drop off secure points would be placed around the neighborhood, close enough so most people can easily walk to them, but would solve the issue of package security and finding addresses.

• Using hexacopters for motor redundancy. A drone with more than 4 motors means that even if one is to fail, it would still be able to stay in the air and would considerably increase safety.

• AI and obstacle avoidance sensors. By making the routes adapt to aviation emergencies and automatic avoidance of obstacles, we might reach a point where the regulation would change as drone flying safety reaches its peak.

But if these hurdles will be overcome, how exactly are drones going to catch up and change the logistics sector of e-commerce?
Continue reading: https://thewisemarketer.com/customer-experience/top-5-ecommerce-industries-that-will-be-completely-transformed-by-drone-technology/

In 2018, when Google employees found out about their company’s involvement in Project Maven, a controversial US military effort to develop AI to analyze surveillance video, they weren’t happy. Thousands protested. “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” they wrote in a letter to the company’s leadership. Around a dozen employees resigned. Google did not renew the contract in 2019.
Project Maven still exists, and other tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have since taken Google’s place. Yet the US Department of Defense knows it has a trust problem. That’s something it must tackle to maintain access to the latest technology, especially AI—which will require partnering with Big Tech and other nonmilitary organizations.
A new survey shows the controversial systems are poised to play an even bigger role in federal business.
In a bid to promote transparency, the Defense Innovation Unit, which awards DoD contracts to companies, has released what it calls “responsible artificial intelligence” guidelines that it will require third-party developers to use when building AI for the military, whether that AI is for an HR system or target recognition.
The guidelines provide a step-by-step process for companies to follow during planning, development, and deployment. They include procedures for identifying who might use the technology, who might be harmed by it, what those harms might be, and how they might be avoided—both before the system is built and once it is up and running.
“There are no other guidelines that exist, either within the DoD or, frankly, the United States government, that go into this level of detail,” says Bryce Goodman at the Defense Innovation Unit, who coauthored the guidelines.
The work could change how AI is developed by the US government, if the DoD’s guidelines are adopted or adapted by other departments. Goodman says he and his colleagues have given them to NOAA and the Department of Transportation and are talking to ethics groups within the Department of Justice, the General Services Administration, and the IRS.
Continue reading: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/16/1040190/department-of-defense-government-ai-ethics-military-project-maven

Artificial intelligence, along with machine learning and other deep analytics strategies, is seeing a resurgence among enterprise technology practitioners. Companies are using AI to do everything from improving customer experience to optimizing supply chains, but one of the most widespread use cases for AI is improving an organization's cybersecurity stance. That said, CIOs and other enterprise technology practitioners need to clearly understand where AI and ML can and can't assist cybersecurity initiatives. To clarify this, it makes sense to look at a range of use cases or scenarios in which AI and ML can be good fits. For a full list of potential cybersecurity scenarios, CIOs should have their teams assess against a standard framework; one of the best is the Mitre ATT&CK framework. A good way to get started assessing cybersecurity vulnerabilities is to use the Mitre ATT&CK framework to provide guidance around the types of attacks to which an enterprise may be vulnerable.

Cybersecurity's AI use cases
There are some scenarios where AI and ML stand out as highly effective cybersecurity techniques: Log analysis. AI is ideal for problems that require automated correlation and assessment of large volumes of data. The challenge for cybersecurity professionals is often to translate information (the output of device, network and system logs) into knowledge (security alerts). Human security analysts don't have the mental or physical bandwidth to process these high-volume data streams and determine which combinations of data points equate to security alerts or events.
AI tools can find commonalities across disparate data feeds and convert data points into actionable events for analysts, thereby reducing the time required to uncover and respond to attacks. Log analysis tools that rely on AI and ML include products from Splunk, SolarWinds and LogRhythm.
Continue reading: https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/feature/Is-AI-a-boon-or-bane-for-cybersecurity

Nvidia’s (NVDA) stock price has skyrocketed over the year-to-date, jumping 132% as of Thursday. But CEO Jensen Huang isn’t concerned about share prices overheating. Rather, he sees it as a response to people being excited about the work the chip giant is doing in artificial intelligence.
“Artificial intelligence is unquestionably the most powerful technology force the world has ever known,” Huang told Yahoo Finance Live. “We’re always seeking to improve our performance, improve our efficiency, and improve our growth opportunities. And artificial intelligence is understandably the best way for that going forward. And I think people are excited about that.”
Earlier in the week, Huang kicked off Nvidia’s GTC 2021 conference with a virtual keynote that featured discussions about the company’s efforts in AI, the metaverse, robotics, and self-driving cars.
The most valuable chipmaker in the world with a market cap of $749 billion, Nvidia has gone from functioning solely as a maker of graphics cards for gamers to an AI powerhouse thanks to the processing power of its chips.
Its gaming arm still brings in the majority of its revenue, about 47% to its data center business’s 36%, but that gap is shrinking more and more each quarter. And while the company is dead set on continuing to be the top card maker in the world, investors recognize Nvidia’s AI and data center businesses as an important and growing piece of the company’s overall strategy.
Part of Nvidia’s secret sauce is the fact that while it builds everything from chips to supercomputers, it also produces the software that its customers use to develop their own artificial intelligence capabilities. In other words, the company is a one-stop shop for its clients’ AI needs.
Continue reading: https://news.yahoo.com/nvidia-ceo-ai-is-most-powerful-technology-force-the-world-has-known-161048127.html

There is a lot more than the usual amount of handwringing over AI these days. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put out a new book last week warning of AI’s dangers. Fresh AI warnings have also been issued by professors Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley) and Youval Harari (University of Jerusalem). Op-eds from the editorial board at the Guardian and Maureen Dowd at the New York Times have amplified these concerns. Facebook — now rebranded as Meta — has come under growing pressure for its algorithms creating social toxicity, but it is hardly alone. The White House has called for an AI bill of rights, and the Financial Times argues this should extend globally. Worries over AI are flying faster than a gale force wind.
The concerns point to shortcomings in existing AI implementations and the inherent dangers posed by its use in relation to employment, housing, credit, commerce, criminal sentencing, and healthcare. And yet, there are a multitude of significant advances brought about by AI that would otherwise not be possible — from revolutionizing our understanding of biology to saving energy in data centers, to becoming a new trusted source of career advice, developing computer code, identifying cancers in patients, and even opening up the possibility of communicating with other species.  In these areas and more, AI is increasingly adding value to our experience and becoming interwoven into the fabric of daily life.
AI is a classic double-edged sword in much the same way as other major technologies have been since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Burning carbon drives the industrial world but leads to global warming. Nuclear fission provides cheap and abundant electricity though could be used to destroy us. The Internet boosts commerce and provides ready access to nearly infinite amounts of useful information, yet also offers an easy path for misinformation that undermines trust and threatens democracy. AI finds patterns in enormous and complex datasets to solve problems that people cannot, though it often reinforces inherent biases and is being used to build weapons where life and death decisions could be automated. The danger associated with this dichotomy is best described by sociobiologist E.O. Wilson at a Harvard debate, where he said “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and God-like technology.”
Continue Reading: https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/13/with-the-metaverse-on-the-way-an-ai-bill-of-rights-is-urgent/

Though the EEOC has stated that AI, as well as algorithmic decision-making tools, have the potential to be useful in making employment decisions. Despite this, the federal agency has made clear that it believes they also have the potential to create and mask discrimination. This could perhaps even create new discriminatory barriers to employment and potentially perpetuate existing biases and mask them under the veil of neutral machine decision-making.
In order to determine whether the current applications of AI are being used in a fair and non-discriminatory manner, the EEOC will be investigating how the technology is being used in making employment decisions. It also intends to provide guidance for the technology’s makers, employers, and employees alike to ensure that the technology is only used in adherence to the applicable equal opportunity (EEO) regulations. To accomplish this, the initiative will:

• Create an internal working group to ensure coordination between all parts of the agency working on the initiative.
• Acquire available information on how the technology is being integrated as well as their design and the impact they are having on employment decisions.
• Schedule listening sessions with all of the key stakeholders for the issue to hear how the technology is affecting employment.
• Identify potentially positive practices and provide guidance and technical assistance to assist in the fair use of AI in an employment context.

According to the EEOC, the investigation and enforcement of potential bias in the use of AI and algorithms in employment is something that solidly falls within their authority. The agency’s leader, in fact, stated that the agency will address all employment bias regardless of what form it may take.
Continue reading: https://www.pre-employ.com/newsblog/eeoc-beginning-a-new-initiative-on-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-employment/

In a wide-ranging talk at the recent COSM 2021 conference (November 10–12), Peter Thiel (a PayPal and Facebook founder) expressed concern that people worry a great deal about artificial intelligence that thinks like people (AGI) but the real push now is for massive “dumb” surveillance AI peering into every detail of our lives, for the benefit of either government or the corporate world.
He went on to say that he doubts that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — “superhuman software that can do everything that we can do” — would, in any event, be “friendly.” That is, that it “won’t kill us.”
If it is intelligent enough to be independent, why should we assume so? “Friendly” is a human value, hard to quantify, and thus hard to program:

If it’s a really a superior mind, it might surprise us … maybe it it’ll just want to turn people into dinosaurs instead of curing cancer.

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Thinking of the question as a search problem, he notes that — assuming that there could be a large variety of minds, of which human minds are a tiny subset — we might be looking at a very large search space where it’s hardly clear that a friendly AGI would emerge from our programming efforts. And it might be too advanced for us to understand.
Some, he said, argue that the universe is so fine-tuned that we will get to friendly AGI safely. The trouble is there is a difference between fine-tuning arguments with respect to the origin of the universe and fine-tuning arguments with respect to its future:

It’s much crazier by the way, than the fine tuning argument in cosmology, because… either God fine tuned things, or we’re in a multi-verse where everything possible happened. But fine tuning is at least, in cosmology, a problem in the past. And the fact that we’re here, you know, there was some Great Filter, but we survived. With friendly AGI, the fine tuning is in the future.

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If so, he thinks “the odds are massively against us. Maybe somewhere in the multiverse, there’ll be a friendly AGI, but the prospects don’t look terribly good.” Even the people promoting the the Singularity (we merge with supercomputers by 2045) are less buoyant. As a Valley maven, Thiel has spent twenty years talking to people about these things:

I was talking to these people and it’s like, wow, they don’t actually want any of this stuff to happen anymore. And they wanted to just slow down and they’re all talking about existential risks. They don’t want anything to happen.

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That may explain the popularity of the Great Filter Hypothesis: We don’t see extraterrestrials because civilizations disappear somewhere between where we are now and the advanced state needed for intergalactic travel — possibly destroyed by their own AI.
Continue reading: https://mindmatters.ai/2021/11/silicon-valley-insider-why-friendly-super-ai-wont-happen/

Data used well via artificial intelligence and transparent algorithms offers health care a glimpse into democratization and equitable, efficient and efficacious care, according to an expert speaking at The Liver Meeting Digital Experience.
“Over the next six quarters, ... we are going to see technology advancements, we are going to see policy and regulatory change and cultural expectations that will ask us to deliver cures in novel settings using novel methods and processes that will require us as providers to rethink how health care works in this country and internationally,” John D. Halamka, MD, MS, president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, said during his President’s Choice Lecture.
Prerequisites to streamlined care
Halamka challenged meeting attendees to adjust their views of what a platform is and what it offers to both physicians and patients.
“Whether you’re a provider or just a care navigator for a family ... in 2020 and 2021, care is often challenging to coordinate. It’s not clear where you go next, what disease state you have, ... bringing the right patient to the right facility ... to get the right care ... is guesswork,” he said. “We want something different. By 2030, we want continuous care that’s easy to access and navigate based on evidence and [we want to] make this care equitable and highly available to all. And if we are going to achieve that, there are several prerequisites.”
Halamka said that initiatives such as the Mayo Clinic Platform need to build on four main areas: gathering novel sources of data, discovering what the data means, validating the function of the data and subsequent algorithms, and then delivering them into the workflow.
Continue reading: https://www.healio.com/news/hepatology/20211113/artificial-intelligence-algorithms-lead-the-way-for-health-cares-bold-new-future

The most intelligent AI Scientists in the world are becoming increasingly worried about Artificial Intelligence programs becoming more unpredictable and incomprehensible as they become more powerful. AI is also overtaking powerful positions in the government, healthcare and defense which could prove dangerous as an Artificial Super Intelligence is coming very close as the Singularity approaches in the future of 2045. People like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil have long warned us about AI beating Humans in anything we can imagine. Nvidia and Meta are also working on specially made hardware and software in the form of pytorch and 2022 GPU's. Artificial General Intelligence is a real dangers and here are some solutions to it.
Continue reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZNDVjC1kaI

The management of a data centre’s hardware is complex as it requires continuous monitoring and management by information technology (IT) staff, which raises operating expenditure. Any upgrades and new business requirements demand further investments and sometimes huge manual intervention.
Listed below are the key technology trends in hardware impacting the data centre theme, as identified by GlobalData.
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As)
Technological change in the semiconductor sector will drive similar transformation in the data centre industry, with the impetus coming from several acquisitions. The largest in the industry is the $40bn acquisition of Arm by Nvidia, which is subject to regulatory approval that may take until 2022. Arm chips are increasingly used in data centres, where their low power draw can be an advantage.
Another key deal is Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) $35bn purchase of Xilinx, which would expand AMD’s rapidly growing data centre business. Another significant deal was announced in January 2021, with Qualcomm buying custom processing start-up Nuvia for $1.4bn. Qualcomm could use Nuvia’s specialism in server processors to advance into communications infrastructure and data centre applications in the future.
RISC-V
A new global chip standard, RISC-V, has begun to produce breakthroughs in chip design. One RISC-V microprocessor design has a clock speed of 5 gigahertz (GHz), considerably above an Intel Xeon server chip, E7, running at 3.2GHz. The RISC-V chip also burns just a single watt of power at 1.1 volts, a fraction of that used by the Intel Xeon. RISC-V is also enhanced by new instruction sets designed to boost its 3D graphics and artificial intelligence (AI) performance.
The RISC-V prototype is gaining interest because it eliminates a bottleneck that can exist with fast memory and slower chips. At the heart of the breakthrough is that the RISC-V architecture is open, unlike CISC, the instruction-set architecture of Intel’s chips. That facilitates new chip design choices to resolve the bottlenecks that are not possible if a chip’s instructions are locked down. The RISC-V instruction set is also much simpler and has fewer than a hundred instructions, which ultimately makes the chip production process simpler and cheaper.
Edge computing
The rise of edge computing will reshape the data centre landscape. Today’s IP networks cannot handle the high-speed data transmissions that tomorrow’s connected devices will require. Data often travels hundreds of miles over a network between end-users or devices and cloud resources in a traditional IP architecture, which results in latency.
Continue reading: https://www.verdict.co.uk/data-centres-technology-trends-hardware/