As developers unlock new AI tools, the risk for perpetuating harmful biases becomes increasingly high — especially on the heels of a year like 2020, which reimagined many of our social and cultural norms upon which AI algorithms have long been trained.
A handful of foundational models are emerging that rely upon a magnitude of training data that makes them inherently powerful, but it’s not without risk of harmful biases — and we need to collectively acknowledge that fact.
Recognition in itself is easy. Understanding is much harder, as is mitigation against future risks. Which is to say that we must first take steps to ensure that we understand the roots of these biases in an effort to better understand the risks involved with developing AI models.
The sneaky origins of bias
Today’s AI models are often pre-trained and open source, which allows researchers and companies alike to implement AI quickly and tailor it to their specific needs.
While this approach makes AI more commercially available, there’s a real downside — namely, that a handful of models now underpin the majority of AI applications across industries and continents. These systems are burdened by undetected or unknown biases, meaning developers who adapt them for their applications are working from a fragile foundation.
Continue reading: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/24/ai-tradeoffs-balancing-powerful-models-and-potential-biases/

• AI can be a powerful tool to combat climate change, but its role also as a contributor to emissions cannot be overlooked.
• The first step to make AI greener is to promote the practice of more holistic and multidimensional model evaluation.
• By changing our mindset that bigger is always better and by pursuing AI use cases in the environmental space, AI can be a major asset in the fight against climate change.

With record heat waves globally and extreme flooding impacting Europe and China, now is a pivotal moment to interrogate the interplay of technology and the environment, including the role of artificial intelligence (AI).
What would it take to make AI ‘greener’? On the one hand, we first need to collectively recognize that there are tangible costs to the creation and use of AI systems – and, in fact, they can be quite large. GPT-3, a recent powerful language model by OpenAI, is estimated to have consumed enough energy in training to leave a carbon footprint equivalent to driving a car from Earth to the moon and back.
Continue reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/make-ai-greener-climate-solution-cop26-technology/

AI is certainly the core technology leading the smart digital transformation of our 4Th Industrial Era. Computers with AI are designed for automation activities that include, speech recognition, learning, planning, and problem solving. These technologies can provide for more efficient decision making by prioritizing and acting on data, especially across larger networks with many users and variables. AI is a catalyst for driving fundamental changes in many industries such as customer service, marketing, online banking, healthcare, business accounting, public safety, retail, education, and public transport. 
AI and Cybersecurity
We are at the doorstep of a new era of smart technology and cybersecurity is already a testing ground. The cybersecurity industry is increasingly impacted by the deployment of solutions supported by artificial intelligence. According to research from cybersecurity experts Darktrace, an attempted cyberattack during the Tokyo Olympics was thwarted thanks to the assistance of a cybersecurity artificial intelligence (AI). The firm discovered an attempted attack a week before the games began using artificial intelligence monitoring tools. AI neutralizes IoT attack that threatened to disrupt the Tokyo Olympics | Blog | Darktrace
The core of AI smart capabilities is rooted in its subcomponent of machine learning, ML. AI is largely used to protect networks as well as increase data security and endpoint security according to 850 senior IT executives surveyed in 2019 (Statista 2021). Moreover, the market of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.6% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $46.3 billion by 2027 (Meticulous Research 2020). This predicted growth is likely to increase when considering all the social changes that have been provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic – from a boost to the digital economy to the displacement of millions of workers who now work remotely. Add the exponential increase in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices, the major shortage of skilled cybersecurity workers, and rapidly growing internet attack surface, the need to automate and use AI will become a market driver for years to come.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2021/09/24/three-key-artificial-intelligence-applications-for-cybersecurity/?sh=20fc2d9a7b7e

AI was intended to make the recruiting process more efficient. Instead, it’s keeping millions of job seekers from being considered 
At a time when many companies are in desperate need of workers, millions of applicants aren’t even being considered for jobs.
Why? The automated hiring programs that filter applications rejecting those applicants early in the process based on employment gaps on resumes, or a missing experience. That’s a big problem for employers when there are more than 10 million jobs open in the U.S. 
As AI has been introduced into the recruiting process in recent decades, software has taken over tasks like tracking applicants, scheduling interviews with candidates and handling background checks. Three-quarters of U.S. employers and 99% of Fortune 500 companies use automated hiring software, a recent report from Harvard Business School and Accenture noted.
Although these programs were designed to help, they might be doing more harm than good, especially when workers are in high demand and overlooked job seekers are becoming discouraged. 
Continue reading: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2021/09/ai-hiring-women-employment-gaps.html?page=all

Bandzoogle CEO Stacey Bedford had already perfected the art of running a business remotely when Zoom was still considered a sound effect for a passing car and not the household name for video meetings.
Since 2003, the Canadian tech company has been helping musicians grow their audiences and earn money from their music through its all-in-one website platform. 
You could say Bandzoogle is like The Beatles – ahead of its time. 
For starters, it moved away from the traditional workplace setting. Bedford still remembers the days when interview applicants couldn’t wrap their heads around the work-from-home concept.
“They were, like, ‘I can work from where I am comfortable, and you’re going to pay me every two weeks? Is this a real company?’” she said. “Bandzoogle sounds like it could be a circus, so convincing people that it was a legitimate business was pretty funny as we started to grow.”
Working remotely has not only been a good fit for the mother of three, it’s also removed the kind of barriers that a woman can face in the boardroom, she believes.
Continue reading: https://www.obj.ca/article/technology/working-remote-company-really-levelled-playing-field

Shalini Vadhera and Deeksha Ahuja connected at a networking event. And the duo hit it off immediately. 
“We knew we had to work together. Our thoughts on multiple things aligned, especially the idea to empower more women in India was something we immediately connected on,” says Shalini, Founder, Ready Set Jet, in a conversation with HerStory. 
Deeksha is the co-founder of Encubay Angel Network — a network of angel investors and entrepreneurs — which invested Rs 50 lakh in Ready Set Jet.  
The co-founder of the global lifestyle and beauty brand is an international influencer, a renowned celebrity make-up artist, a best-selling author, and much more. 
The serial entrepreneur uses her platform to empower women globally as she believes beauty transcends all boundaries. 
Continue reading: https://yourstory.com/herstory/2021/09/100-emerging-women-leaders-serial-entrepreneurs-women-leaders-startup/amp

Of the 40% of women graduates in science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM), a mere 14% actually end up pursuing a career in the field. Despite this statistic, India is writing for herself an extensive list of women who have made a notable impact to the industry and the economy.
According to NASSCOM, the Indian workforce has seen a 10% rise in the number of women in technology over the last decade. Overall, women constitute around 35% of the workforce currently. One could say that women STEM professionals in the country are crossing the hurdles and are fighting the good fight. But the more important question is – what is causing a leaky funnel when it comes to women graduates choosing STEM careers. What are the major roadblocks? What steps do we need to take to make the funnel watertight?
Two segments of women are seen to be facing drawbacks in pursuing their dreams. The first segment consists of those who get deprived of primary education which is well known, but quite surprisingly, the other segment consists of the highly qualified women professionals.
Continue reading: http://bwpeople.businessworld.in/article/Addressing-The-Gender-Gap-In-STEM/23-09-2021-405846/

New cybersecurity research from Florida Tech has found that the smartphone companion applications of 16 popular smart home devices contain “critical cryptographic flaws” that could allow attackers to intercept and modify their traffic.
As Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as connected locks, motion sensors, security cameras and smart speakers become increasingly ubiquitous in households across the country, their surging popularity means more people are at risk of cyber intrusions.
“IoT devices offer the promise of security with connected locks, alarms, and security cameras,” computer engineering and sciences assistant professor TJ O’Connor and students Dylan Jessee and Daniel Campos write in their paper, Through the Spyglass: Toward IOT Companion App Man-in-the-Middle Attacks. “However, attackers can leverage the immature but pervasive nature of IoT to spy on and surveil victims.”
Continue reading: https://news.fit.edu/academics-research/apps-for-popular-smart-home-devices-contain-security-flaws-new-research-finds/

Providing computing resources at the edge of the Internet is becoming more important in modern information technology, particularly as high speed wireless data networks proliferate as well as the IoT and other smart connected things proliferate and demand grows for AI applications requiring low latency real time decisions.  Storage and memory as well as computing will play an important role in the growth of edge computing.  Let’s look at a couple of recent offering related to storing and using data at the edge, Zadara zStorage and Cloudian’s Streaming Feature Store.
Zadara announced a partnership with Zenlayer, a edge cloud service provider to provide Zadara’s consumption-based managed zStorage.  zStorage is being made available to Zenlayer North American customers and will soon expand into emerging markets such as India, China, and South America.
According to the companies’, Zadara and Zenlayer now offer managed storage solutions that businesses can deploy from on-premises data centers, private colocation facilities, or the cloud with a cost-effective, 100% OpEx model. The addition of Zadara’s xStorage enables Zenlayer to provide backup and disaster recovery solutions on a global scale – even at the edge, closer to where data is generated and consumed.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2021/09/23/digital-storage-at-the-edge/?sh=4bac345d4439

Cloud technology has long been considered essential to how the modern world works, with even the most skeptical industries increasingly seeing the benefits it provides. As IoT devices become more common in the workplace and at home, edge computing will become more prevalent, which will benefit the public sector in particular.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has a lot of potential in the public sector. Autonomous transportation, traffic and lighting applications, law enforcement, health monitoring devices, and smart bin sensors to make sure trash never overflows are all possibilities.
To optimize functionality, these functions necessitate low latency applications that are processed at the network’s edge. Edge computing seems to have an advantage over cloud or centralized computing as the Internet of Things decentralizes computing infrastructure. In reality, they will have to work together closely.
Continue reading: https://enterprisetalk.com/featured/how-can-edge-computing-help-iot-reach-its-full-potential/

Internet of things (IoT) networks has become a standard part of many organizations’ operations. As these networks grow in size and complexity, managing them becomes increasingly challenging, leading businesses to rely on third-party management solutions. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most popular thanks to features like device shadows.
AWS has been the dominant force in cloud services for years, accounting for roughly a third of the market since at least 2017. Consequently, many companies use AWS to manage their IoT networks, which presents several benefits but also raises some concerns. AWS’s Device Shadow service is perhaps the best example of this duality.
What Are IoT Device Shadows?
The Device Shadow service aims to simplify and improve communication between different IoT devices on a network. It does this by creating “shadows,” which are files on the cloud that work as a stand-in for a given device. These make a device’s state available to apps and services even when not connected to AWS IoT.
Continue reading: 
https://www.securityinfowatch.com/cybersecurity/article/21239604/how-iot-device-shadows-affect-cybersecurity

A flaw in a widely used internet-of-things (IoT) infrastructure code left more than 100 million devices across 10,000 enterprises vulnerable to attacks.
Researchers at Guardara used their technology to find a zero-day vulnerability in NanoMQ, an open-source platform from EMQ that monitors IoT devices in real time, then acts as a “message broker” to deliver alerts that atypical activity has been detected. EMQ’s products are used to monitor the health of patients leaving a hospital, to detect fires, monitor car systems, in smartwatches, in smart-city applications and more.
“Guardara used its technology to detect multiple issues…that caused EMQ’s NanoMQ product to crash during testing,” the company said in a press statement. “The existence of these vulnerabilities means that any NanoMQ reliant system could be brought down completely.”
Continue reading: https://threatpost.com/100m-iot-devices-zero-day-bug/174963/

In a demonstration that IoT devices are getting ever smaller, a Nevada-based vendor has unveiled a combustible gas sensor with a surface area of just 0.9 square inches.
NevadaNano’s MPS Mini has purportedly drawn interest from gas monitoring sensor producers targeting domestic gas leaks and other combustible gas incidents, as well as poisonous forms like carbon monoxide and radon.
The sensor is designed to detect flammable gas, refrigerant leaks, methane leaks and indoor air quality in conjunction with an IoT-enabled distributed gas sensing system.
Continue reading: https://www.iotworldtoday.com/2021/09/23/iot-miniaturization-spawns-thumbnail-scale-combustible-gas-sensors/

Software developers and data professionals go to work. Software application development engineers, programmers, data scientists, systems architects and database sysadmins, plus a whole army of other co-related technical professionals get in the car, bus, metro (delete as applicable) and go to work, often in a Dilbert-style cubicle, but usually quite happily.
But now, as we look towards 2022, things have (obviously) changed and many more of us are now working from home or other remotely connected locations. This means that we will need to think about the digital roadblocks that can delay work for highly dispersed teams.
The risk of dark data
The risk for organizations now looking to create effective work practices in this new era of remote working is dark data i.e. those information silos where a company fails to have full knowledge of any single given piece of data’s contents, location, owner, access history, or whether it contains sensitive information.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2021/09/23/a-prescription-for-less-chaos-in-data-management/?sh=53fe320e6a85

A partnership, which marries Ascent AeroSystems’ coaxial unmanned aerial system technology with Exyn Technologies’ LiDAR-enabled mapping software, is expected to provide a new solution for customers seeking to operate drone systems in confined spaces and in GPS-denied environments.
The partnership, announced in August, will equip Ascent’s Spirit compact, coaxial aerial platform with Exyn’s LiDAR system and autonomous software stack, enabling the capture of 3D mapping data in environments inaccessible to other UAV systems.
The two companies had been working together for about nine months before announcing their agreement, said Paul Fermo, Ascent’s vice president of business development. Exyn’s software technology creates a three-dimensional LiDAR point cloud that allows operators to build a 3D picture in GPS-denied environments, he said.
“It’s a great technology that’s adaptable to our system, so you have all the benefits of the coaxial drone with the autonomous software stack and LiDAR that Exyn provides,” Fermo said.
Continue reading: https://dronelife.com/2021/09/23/ascents-coaxial-drones-now-with-exyns-lidar-enabled-mapping-software/

Your food is in the air! In the not so distant future, this could be Swiggy’s notification to customers. In May, the ministry of civil aviation cleared 20 entities to conduct experimental beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone flights. The online delivery platform is part of a consortium, led by ANRA Technologies, which is among the 20. “We are excited about the potential of drones and look forward to BVLOS trials for food delivery,” said Shilpa Gnaneshwar, principal program manager at Swiggy.
Entire businesses have emerged solely for processing drone footage and turning it into actionable insights. 
Drone Rules 2021 has been welcomed by the industry. There have been relaxations which would speed up the adoption of drones.
Commercial drones, initially perceived as little more than toys, are now being used by businesses in an attempt to increase efficiency and decrease costs. According to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and EY, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) market in India is expected to touch $885.7 million in 2021, with the global market approaching $21.47 billion. A report by PwC India said that the drone segment was expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18 per cent between 2017 and 2023.
However, experts point out that India is at least 10 to 15 years behind the US and China in drone utilization. China is the world leader in drone hardware, while the US has shown the most innovation in creating new applications. According to a report by Statista Research Department, from the 2017 fiscal year to the 2021 fiscal year, the US spent about $17.5 billion on drones. This was the highest expenditure on drones by a country and was followed by China ($4.5 billion) and Russia ($3.9 billion). During the same time period, India is estimated to have spent $2.5 billion on drones.
Continue reading: https://www.theweek.in/theweek/current/2021/09/23/civilian-drones-new-laws-could-drive-rapid-growth-in-domestic-market.html

Drone rules 2021 is being considered a landmark policy that will enable mass adoption of drones across sectors. Drone experts, startups and investors in the space call it progressive and comprehensive. One of the biggest benefits that it offers is the abolition of many approvals, which drastically reduces the time to start any operations.
“As compared to earlier rules, Drone Rules 2021 has greatly simplified the process of ownership and operation of drones. This is reflected by relaxation and removal of a number of clauses,” said Anup Jindal, CEO and JMD, RMSI, a startup that undertakes drone surveys in agritech and sustainability sectors.
Furthermore, the Drone Rules 2021 offers many benefits including covering all types of drone operations such as delivery, removal of any regulatory uncertainty about deliveries, enabling drone corridors for safe carriage of cargo, nominal penalty provisions, liberalizing research and development (R&D) of all types of drones to empower experimentation and innovations, allowing drones up to 500 kgs, safety and security features such as NPNT, among others. 
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/387209

As the 2021 Utah State University Eastern Drone Camps wound down for the summer, parents and teens alike praised the program for making aviation fun and accessible.
“I can’t stop my daughter from talking about drones,” read one parent’s review. “It’s great!”
Organized by the Aggie Drone Academy, the USU Eastern Drone Camps offer 40 grade school students three activity-filled days where they learn about drones and the principles of flight. The program this year was spread across three locations: the Carbon County School District offices, Emery High School and Green River High School.
Campers built gliders, flew fixed-wing drones, piloted drones in a simulator and learned how to use coding to control a quadcopter. At the conclusion of the camp, students piloted drones through an obstacle course and participated in a drone jousting competition.
Shawn “B.W.” Barstow, director of the Aggie Drone Academy and lecturer in aviation technology, is proud of what the students accomplished.
Continue reading: https://etvnews.com/local-youth-take-to-the-skies-with-usu-eastern-drone-camps/

More than 20 years ago, the state of Florida was producing nearly 250 million boxes of oranges a season.
This year, just ahead of the start of another harvest, experts predict only 52 million boxes will be produced.
The industry has suffered a staggering decline due to several problems including citrus greening, damage from hurricanes, and a dwindling demand for orange juice. 
But those who work in the citrus groves aren’t giving up. University of Florida researchers near Immokalee have developed a new technology using drones to help growers save money and be more efficient. 
Continue reading: https://nbc-2.com/news/local/2021/09/23/how-drones-can-help-citrus-growers-in-swfl/

A cryptocurrency firm is aiming to tackle food poverty in Africa with an ambitious mobile voucher system that will give rural farmers better access to finance for growing crops.
KamPay will initially draw funding from a network of lotteries operated on its soon-to-be-launched digital wallet, before expanding into wider pools of decentralized finance, chief executive Chris Cleverly told me in an interview.
“There's always been a culture in southern Africa – certainly in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi – around this voucher system,” he explained. “The government used to give out vouchers to individual farmers. The farmers would then take the voucher down to a store to get a subsidized price on their fertilizer.
“For a while [this physical voucher system] was very successful … but it got quite corrupt in the end. By putting that sort of a system onto the blockchain, the corruption element is eliminated.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinrivers/2021/09/23/planting-the-seeds-of-a-crypto-revolution-how-blockchain--decentralized-finance-can-feed-the-poor-in-africa/?sh=cbd168f59c6d

Databases have always been able to do simple, clerical work like finding particular records that match some given criteria — say, all users who are between 20 and 30 years old. Lately database companies have been adding artificial intelligence routines into databases so the users can explore the power of these smarter, more sophisticated algorithms on their own data stored in the database.
The AI algorithms are also finding a home below the surface, where the AI routines help optimize internal tasks like re-indexing or query planning. These new features are often billed as adding automation because they relieve the user of housekeeping work. Developers are encouraged to let them do their work and forget about them.
There’s much more interest, though, in AI routines that are open to users. These machine learning algorithms can classify data and make smarter decisions that evolve and adapt over time. They can unlock new use cases and enhance the flexibility of existing algorithms.
In many cases, the integration is largely pragmatic and essentially cosmetic. The calculations are no different from those that would occur if the data was exported and shipped to a separate AI program. Inside the database, the AI routines are separate and just take advantage of any internal access to the data. Sometimes this faster access can speed up the process dramatically. When the data is substantial, sometimes merely moving it can take up a large portion of the time.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2021/09/23/how-do-databases-support-ai-algorithms/

As the United States emerges from the pandemic, many state and local government agencies are struggling to hire and retain workers. Not only have many retirement-age employees decided to accelerate their plans to retire, but agencies face stiff competition for workers from the private sector. As a result, for a number of key positions, especially those in IT, many government agencies are receiving fewer qualified applicants than the number of jobs available. To address this challenge, government agencies should start making use of AI tools to improve how they acquire and retain workers. A growing number of tools make use of AI to help organizations recruit and hire talent more effectively. First, AI can help candidates and employers find one another. Job boards like ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn use recommendation algorithms to suggest candidates and job openings, and services like Textkernel can parse resumes with natural language processing to build semantic search engines that allow recruiters to search for concepts like “IT security” rather than specific keywords or job titles. For example, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Defense and Veterans Affairs worked with the private sector on an AI challenge to help employers hire veterans who have valuable skills but whose profiles might not show up on a typical search based on their previous job titles.
Continue reading: https://www.govtech.com/opinion/the-case-for-artificial-intelligence-in-recruiting-it-talent

In 2022, we will see artificial intelligence continue along the path to becoming the most transformative technology humanity has ever developed. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, its impact will be even greater than that of fire or electricity on our development as a species. This may seem like a very ambitious claim, but considering it is already being used to help us tackle climate change, explore space, and develop treatments for cancer, the potential is clearly there.
The full scale of the impact that giving machines the ability to make decisions – and therefore enable decision-making to take place far more quickly and accurately than could ever be done by humans – is very difficult to conceive right now. But one thing we can be certain of is that in 2022 breakthroughs and new developments will continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Here’s my pick of the key areas and fields where those breakthroughs will occur in 2022:
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/09/24/the-7-biggest-artificial-intelligence-ai-trends-in-2022/?sh=66f980f22015

It's impossible to discuss modern marketing without talking about the latest trends and the increased use of artificial intelligence. Today, A.I. is changing the paid advertising realm while presenting many new opportunities to marketers.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, it's predicted that A.I. and machine learning will collectively generate up to $2.6 trillion in value by helping to solve problems related to sales and marketing in the coming years.
The question you have to answer is: What does this mean for your paid advertising and PPC (pay-per-click) efforts?
Technology develops quickly, meaning even new technologies are promising. While A.I. recently gained momentum, it has already proved to be extremely beneficial in many areas, including in the marketing realm.
Continue reading: https://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/how-artificial-intelligence-can-improve-your-pay-per-click-ad-efforts.html

A technology-led revolution, dubbed Industry 4.0, is gathering pace in the industrial world where traditional processes and legacy technologies are being replaced by smart devices, automated machines and advanced forms of computing. The rise of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), owing to exponential growth in technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, robots, drones, sensors, etc., is helping manufacturers improve efficiencies, productivity and the autonomous operation of production lines. Businesses are pouring billions of dollars in AI and automation, and the Industrial IoT (IIoT) alone is set to become a $500 billion market by 2025.
IT/OT convergence could spell disaster for industries.
As smart factories and supply chains connect the production line to the outside world via IIoT, digitally connected industries are becoming increasingly appealing to cybercriminals, who now have the opportunity to hijack high-value targets. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) has warned of a rising barrage of ransomware attacks resulting from IT/OT convergence — the integration of information technology systems with operational technology (OT) systems — and the resultant expanded threat surface. Last year, 41% of all ransomware attacks targeted OT. IoT attacks soared by 700% (registration required) during the pandemic, while infected IoT devices grew 100%.
Continue reading: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/09/23/artificial-intelligence-the-future-of-cybersecurity/?sh=5209623c454c