AI-powered marketing automation recorded a global corporate investment of approximately $94 billion in 2021. Businesses depend on data, and AI marketing automation helps decision makers intelligently choose important information from each interaction with their customer and leads. Only by gathering contact information, site behavior and buying preferences can you fine-tune products or processes to enhance customer engagement.
Artificial learning can help you choose which insights to track and follow. Statista’s February 2022 survey revealed that 32% of marketers boosted marketing automation with artificial intelligence to personalize offers and emails, as well as for paid advertising.
How To Execute Marketing Automation Using AI
Since artificial intelligence (AI) deals with intelligent algorithms capable of producing human-like thinking skills of deducing, generalizing, reasoning, inferring meaning, learning from experience, and constantly evolving, it has transformed how corporates engage with their intended audiences and users. Apart from automating repetitive tasks, machine learning can analyze data to gauge consumer responses to products and how they are presented.
Businesses can also leverage artificial intelligence to learn how their customers engage with their brand and identify the leads most likely to convert into customers. Marketers are using ML to automate pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, search engine marketing (SEM), keyword research, SEO and social media marketing (SMM).
Using Machine Learning Algorithms
Buyers spend a lot of time online searching for the best products and services. According to recent Salesforce research, 66% of consumers want e-commerce businesses to offer product recommendations as part of their personalization strategy. Fifty-two percent of buyers expect only personalized promotional offers.
AI can dynamically populate products on apps, webpages or via email based on data assimilated about customer attributes, browsing patterns, or situational context to create a personalized shopping experience. These dynamic ads adapt their content and promotions automatically according to each user.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/10/26/an-overview-of-ai-powered-marketing-automation/?sh=5df48ed96e83

Issues of female entrepreneurship and gender equity have made their way into the headlines recently. In early September, reports were released that showed the proportion of U.S. women between the ages of 25 and 54 in the workforce climbed back up to pre-pandemic levels, which is fantastic given the current talent shortage we're facing; it signals an opportunity for both women and the companies that need to hire.
At the same time, we have a long way to go.
Recent Bain & Company research noted that fewer than 30% of women in the U.S. currently feel included in the workplace, which is problematic from a retention standpoint. If women don't see themselves as part of a team or company, they feel less job satisfaction, comfort and belonging that could incentivize them to stay in their position.
Also, according to Bain & Company, women hold far fewer positions compared to their male counterparts in fields such as computing (females represent 25% of the workforce) and engineering (just 13% of engineers are women)—careers that not only pay well but drive innovation. Without gender balance in these areas, progress suffers.
Perhaps more shocking are the findings from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On September 13, 2022, the Foundation released its 2022 Goalkeepers Report, and researchers concluded that gender equality won't be a feasible reality on a global scale until 2108 at the earliest. That's almost 100 years from now and a far cry from the U.N. General Assembly's stated goal of achieving global gender equality by 2030. Even when I became an officer in the U.S. Air Force years ago (something I was told I had a 12% chance of achieving without a STEM background), I never believed it would take 100 more years to reach gender equality in the workforce—and I refuse to believe it now.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/10/25/how-to-incorporate-smart-finance-to-help-further-female-entrepreneurship/?sh=1ec4196f2044

Addressing shortcomings in data management and infrastructure, as well as internal structural and process rigidities and talent deficits, loom large among challenges that are holding AI progress back.
Artificial intelligence is seen as a compelling solution that can vastly expand business intelligence. But are businesses really ready for AI and the infrastructure it requires? Not quite, a study of 600 executives published by MIT Technology Review suggests.
“Addressing shortcomings in companies’ data management and infrastructure, as well as internal structural and process rigidities and talent deficits, loom large among challenges,” the survey’s authors state. Seventy-two percent of executives say data issues may hold back their AI progress. Improving processing speeds, governance, and quality of data, as well as its sufficiency for models, are the main data imperatives to ensure AI can be scaled, they report.
A relatively small number of organizations, 14%, can be considered on the way to becoming “AI-driven.” which the survey’s authors define as “AI and machine learning underpinning almost everything the enterprise does—by 2025.”
Continue reading: https://www.rtinsights.com/ai-is-ready-for-business-but-are-businesses-ready-for-ai/

In August 2022, Forbes reported that a housing market recession had officially started just a month prior, when the decline in US home sales marked its sixth consecutive month. Builders are struggling to build, with permit applications falling 1.8 percent from June to July 2022 and homes newly under construction falling 9.6 percent in the same period.  
The commercial construction and real estate market is struggling as well, with downtown vacancies remaining high post-covid as many organization reevaluate their space needs.. Materials still have record wait times due to the supply chain issues caused by Covid-19, interest rates climb higher and higher, and prospective  buyers are once again being effectively driven out of the real estate market. 
But even before this year, and well before the Covid-19 pandemic, the construction market was precarious at best. Data tells the tale of a gloomy prospect, but innovative technology will be able to prove decisive and indispensable in the fight against the crisis facing us, resulting in better living conditions and fairer opportunities for all.  
A report by 5Jewels Research estimates the role that digital technologies played in preventing around 20 percent of global GDP from being wiped out in 2020. This accounts for a total saving of $17 trillion in favor of the global economy, which tells us something worth highlighting: technology can drive a sustainable economic recovery, and can be harnessed to “enable the widespread integration of renewable energy, make cities more livable, render transport more efficient and vastly improve healthcare delivery.” 
Continue reading: https://www.facilitiesnet.com/software/article/How-Blockchain-Can-Improve-Real-Estate-Transactions--19687

The forces pushing environmental, social and governance practices to the forefront of bank operations have been building for a generation. This has only accelerated in the past couple of years.
The Biden Administration, including through the use of executive orders leveraging the National Economic Council, is pushing hard on investment in green technologies and industries. The European Union is seeing a flurry of ESG-related regulatory changes.
The fact that one of the world’s banking hubs, London, just saw heat records shatter to the point that part of an airport runway melted was its own form of motivation.
One tech innovation that is increasingly understood as a powerful tool banks can use to improve ESG solutions is blockchain. Although cryptocurrencies are the best-known use of blockchain—and one with a significant environmental downside—the technology has other uses that leave a far smaller energy footprint and are more directly useful in meeting current challenges.
Blockchain—a decentralized and continuously updated flow of data—brings a level of accuracy and transparency that allows for the complex functioning of environmentally vital sectors like supply chain management to be monitored and examined. With aspects that can provide both the privacy of data sources with overall transparency of information, blockchain tools provide ESG managers the opportunity to produce documentation that meets regulatory requirements and to make timely decisions on how best to use finite resources.
Here are five ways banks can use blockchain to improve ESG efforts and offset carbon footprint issues:
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2022/10/24/5-ways-banks-can-use-blockchain-to-improve-esg-efforts/?sh=dc9d2d770e36

The internet has evolved from the “read-only” Web 1.0 to the current state of Web 2.0, which is often described as participatory and social-driven. Now, we are gradually moving toward the next phase of the internet, Web 3.0, often styled Web3 in the digital asset space. Web3 holds the promise of allowing people to own things digitally, easily transact online, and have more control of their personal data. Blockchain and crypto ecosystems already have working products for Web3. For example, users can make peer-to-peer (P2P) payments and collect digital items with crypto wallets. Many blockchain-based projects are decentralized by design and allow anyone to use them.
Introduction
Digital assets can become an intrinsic part of Web3 – a new internet that is expected to remedy the ills of the current Web such as the concentration of power at the hands of a few centralized social media platforms and exploitation of users’ personal data. The decentralized and permissionless nature of blockchains is instrumental in distributing communication power rather than granting it to central authorities.
While digital assets bring native digital payments to Web3, they can also function as tokens programmed to play a wide range of roles in digital economic systems. Blockchain and crypto could also make Web3 more community-centered through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). 
How is Web3 different from Web2?
The main evolutionary steps of the internet are often represented as the qualitatively different phases dubbed Web1, Web2, and Web3. In the Web1 era, users couldn't change online data or upload their own content to the websites they were interacting with. The internet back then consisted of static HTML pages that enabled simple, one-way experiences, such as reading information forums.
Web2 allowed content consumption and simple interaction. Then, Web2 has gradually emerged as a more interactive internet where users were more involved in generating their own content. Since these modes of online interactions were mainly facilitated by social media platforms, Web2 saw the rise of new types of centralized tech giants.
The current Web2 ecosystem is changing again as more of its failings get exposed. For example, internet users have become more concerned about data tracking and ownership, as well as censorship issues.
The power of centralized companies has become especially noticeable when they began leveraging it to ban specific users and organizations form their platforms. Web2 companies also use the data to keep users on their websites and create targeted ads for third parties’ benefit. Such economic incentives can drive such companies to act not in users’ best interest.
Continue reading: https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-s-the-relationship-between-blockchain-and-web3

A distributed database or ledger shared by computer network nodes is a blockchain—a blockchain functions as a digital database for data storage.
Maintaining a safe and decentralized record of transactions in cryptocurrency systems like Bitcoin is the most well-known application of blockchain technology.
By guaranteeing the accuracy and security of a data record, blockchain innovation promotes confidence without the need for a responsible third party.
Data is often organized very differently from how it is organized on a blockchain. Information is gathered in a blockchain in groups called blocks, each of which contains a set of data.
When a block is filled, it is sealed and linked to the block before it forms the data chain known as the blockchain. Blocks have predefined storage capacities.
When the chain is complete, a new block is created from each piece of information that follows that just-added block and adds to the chain.
How Does a Blockchain Work?
Blockchain aims to enable sharing and recording of digital information without editing. A blockchain serves as the basis for immutable ledgers or records of transactions that cannot be changed, removed, or destroyed. Blockchains are also distributed ledger technologies because of this (DLT).
The blockchain idea was first launched as a research project in 1991, long before Bitcoin became a widely used application in 2009. Since then, the introduction of numerous cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and smart contracts has led to explosive growth in the use of blockchains. If you want to explore these numerous coins, visit blockchain exchange CEX.IO
Continue reading: https://www.vizaca.com/what-is-blockchain-and-how-does-it-work/

The hackathon was hands down one of the highlights of ETHWarsaw 2022. It followed the first two days of the conference and included overnight “hacks” that brought in “opportunities for teams and individuals to get hands-on, practical experience working with applications and advanced tools”. There was also $50,000 in rewards to be won from various competitions.
The hackathon’s most valuable add-on, however, was the stage it set for the blockchain and web3 community to network, exchange ideas, and forge new alliances and collaboration. We took the opportunity to discuss this with many of the industry insiders that participated in the event. 
We asked them how events like the ETHWarsaw hackathon help community building, and almost all of them unanimously agreed that hackathons do, in fact, strengthen the web3 community. More on that in a bit.
Web3 hackathon benefits
For those out of the loop, a hackathon is an event where developers, non-technical founders, and other creatives can get together to build a solution to problems that are presented in front of them as a challenge. 
Hackathons bring excellent opportunities for existing and new web3 developers when it comes to turning ideas into actual products, and potentially a web3 startup backed by VCs. 
The key benefits of web3 hackathons include:
Continue reading: https://beincrypto.com/how-hackathons-strengthen-the-blockchain-and-web3-community/

There’s no denying that blockchain is the wave of the future but, for some, it’s currently too nebulous and intangible to consider heavily investing in.
Following the crypto crash earlier this year, the crypto market has seen colossal corrections and some sizable recoveries. That uncertainty is perhaps understandably set to continue but blockchain VC fund Mocha Ventures believes these corrections are healthy for the industry as a whole, and are providing tremendous opportunities for savvy investors to step into the digital assets market at the right time with the right partner.
The team behind Mocha Ventures is on a mission to reassure that “Blockchain networks and digital assets are landmark innovations that will fundamentally reshape the global financial system, and investors should be able to participate in this transformation”.
By working with early-stage blockchain projects and offering professional data-driven solutions for digital-asset investors, they are presenting a new way to understand and invest in the space.
Ahead of partnering with Campden Wealth at The 24th European Family Office Forum in London on November 1 and 2, Mocha Ventures’ general partners discuss how they are capturing some of the most innovative technologies in the blockchain revolution and why family offices should be getting involved…
You focus on early stage blockchain companies with global growth potential. How do you identify those companies and what is the criteria they need to fulfil? Renato Brioni: As VCs, we transitioned in 2020 from standard investments into the blockchain because we saw the remarkable opportunities after one of our funds took on tremendous multiple returns on exit. We felt that was something happening there.
We decided to not get involved with bitcoins and cryptocurrencies because they're completely unpredictable. So we thought, why don't we be different? During the crypto crash in summer of 2022 we analyzed more than 200 crypto companies, and discovered patterns that revealed to us what separates the winners from the losers. Of those firms, 100 simply disappeared, 60 were surviving and 40 were thriving.
Continue reading: https://www.campdenfb.com/article/why-family-businesses-need-not-fear-blockchain

Using blockchain and cryptocurrency to crowdfund is an emerging trend. Are you a creator who might want to try it? I am here to share with you some straightforward tips. Read on to get a leg up and fund your next production.
1. Do your homework on the tech.
The best way to ensure that your campaign runs smoothly is to gain an understanding of the technology before you start. Learn how a blockchain works, how to use popular wallet software and how to move between cryptocurrencies and fiat in your local area.
There are plenty of resources to get you started: Binance Academy is a beginner-friendly resource that can take you all the way from the basics to more advanced topics. (Disclosure: My company runs features on the Binance smart chain.) If you prefer video resources, you may want to start by watching online tutorials and educational videos related to blockchain.
Although this does require a little extra effort on your part, the perks can be well worth it: full transparency and global reach that breaks down borders and opens your campaigns to the world.
2. Clearly outline what contributors can expect from you.
Anytime you are requesting funding from your fan base, it is important to clearly outline what you plan to use the money for. For example, a musician might clearly state, “I have recorded a demo song, and I am raising money to re-record the song professionally, fund the production of a lyrics video and carry out paid promotion on social media.” If you tell your contributors exactly what you plan to do with the money, I’ve found they will be more likely to help fund your next endeavor.
Continue reading? https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/10/21/five-tips-for-creators-who-want-to-crowdfund-using-blockchain/?sh=1e7e43942fef

Women in tech start-ups in South Africa make up less than 25% of the workforce but those that do thrive, stand out. Amanda Fischer is a partner and head of legal and compliance at Skrmiish, ensuring all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed but also, helping to pioneer a unique company that is operating on the threshold of global tech.
Coming from a background in legal and compliance, Fischer was uniquely positioned to jump on a plane with Skrmiish co-founder Chris Heaton in early 2019 to meet with regulators on the Isle of Man and start to understand the international legalities around what this plucky start-up was trying to achieve.
Based in the Isle of Man, but building out of Cape Town, Skrmiish is the world’s first app that gives any gamer the opportunity to monetize their matches in the games they love to play. Boasting the world’s first competitive blockchain-based gaming wallet, the company represents a revolution in play-to-earn and Fischer has been firmly helping at the helm every step of the way.
Building a great business
“I joined Skrmiish before there was even an office,” laughs Fischer, “and we have been through all the usual challenges that tech start-ups face. But we have always remained focused on building an exceptional business by making gaming more exciting for players. Enabling them to earn while playing, having fun and by proving their superior skills. It’s a unique model.
“Top-level esports competitors make up less than 1% of a 3 billion player market. Skrmiish is focused on the other 99%,” she says.
Continue reading: https://ventureburn.com/2022/10/women-in-tech-start-ups-drive-good-governance/

Decision-making powered by AI can lead to incredible actionable insights. Mithun Nagabhairava, Manager – Data Science, Kalypso, explores how expanding the role of AI helps enable autonomous decision-making, as well as augment the remaining human decision processes with context and decision support mechanisms.
As organizations lean further into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), they look to achieve more with less human input to reduce the increasing risks of over-reliance on human presence and human decision-making for business-critical operations. They call for practical, actionable, data-driven recommendations to help achieve autonomous decision-making capabilities in key areas such as supply chain, advanced planning and scheduling, inventory management, warehouse automation, resource allocation, and logistics.
Any company’s success depends highly on many effective decisions taken on time. However, in many instances, organizational decision-making has reached a complexity ceiling among businesses. The number of factors that come into play when making critical decisions and the complexity of the situations in which these decisions have to be made has far exceeded the human capacity to make the right choices consistently. Also, from what we have witnessed over the past couple of years, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the liability human-dependent operations pose to business continuity and excellence.
To address these challenges, leading organizations prioritize adopting decision intelligence, which frames a wide range of decision-making techniques, bringing together advanced data science and multiple traditional disciplines to monitor, model, optimize, execute and maintain decision models & processes. Gartner recently named decision intelligence as one of its top technology trends for 2022 and predicted that, by 2023, more than one-third of large organizations would use AI-enabled decision intelligence technology, including decision modeling.
Continue reading: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/guest-article/leveraging-ai-to-embed-actionable-decision-intelligence/

“Despite the awesome predictive powers of AI, measured productivity growth has declined by half over the past decade.”
What’s going on here?
The impact of AI will take time until it is felt, argue Aja Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, co-authors of Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Right now, AI is confined to point solutions, and they call this phase — the introduction and proliferation of technology, prior to tangible benefits being realized — as “The Between Times.” What we have yet to see, they continue, are a “plethora of high-value solutions for AI.”
The two questions that need to be asked of AI include “What is AI really giving us?” and “If we are designing our business from scratch, how would we build our processes and business models?”
For starters, Agrawal and his co-authors advise, stop talking about AI as the avenue to “insights.” Insights “is a trigger word for us because it represents precisely this wrong way of thinking about how an AI advance will create value. For a new AI prediction, ‘insights’ is code for ‘we don't know what to do with that prediction.’”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2022/10/25/the-value-of-artificial-intelligence-isnt-just-insights/?sh=39386da67bee

AI adoption is rapidly moving from an experiment to an essential part of business practices and planning. Across every industry, more use cases are being developed for AI to drive business efficiencies, optimize data, improve the customer experience and support business goals and initiatives. Companies looking to mature their AI programs should keep an eye out for these important conversations around the adoption of AI tools and technology.
Trend 1: When In Doubt, Automate
Machine learning is a valuable tool that has benefited businesses for decades but only became widely popular recently. In this new era of digital acceleration, companies are looking for ways to drive efficiency in their companies—and for many, the answer lies in automation.
It’s a common misconception that machine learning and automation will take over the majority of human jobs. This rumor was largely spread due to reports indicating that large amounts of displaced jobs were more entry-level positions that machines could easily replace. And while machine learning and AI have taken on many progressive companies’ more routine day-to-day tasks, it actually frees up employees to ideate, create and do the work uniquely suited to human beings.
Companies that want to drive efficiency should look to machine learning and automation to streamline processes and bolster productivity. Automation through intelligent document processing can improve your paperwork and records filing, glean information from documents with near-perfect accuracy and streamline mailrooms. Consolidating document capture through machine learning and automation decreases error and helps your employees clear their schedules of the tasks that are best suited to AI—tasks that are repetitive, and procedural in nature, where machines can perform faster and more accurately than humans. Human Intelligence (HI) can then focus on the tasks they are supremely well suited for: those that are more expansive, where we can use unique human senses of anticipation, feel, emotion and imagination. Overall, it’s a win-win for you and your employees. Automation can drive efficiencies and accuracy while opening doors for humans to do what we are uniquely created to do.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/10/24/four-ai-trends-to-watch/?sh=3df89cbf40bf

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being widely used in the business sector. According to McKinsey’s 2021 survey, 56% of respondents are adopting AI in at least one of their daily functions. Machine learning is doing more than speeding up service operations and compiling data. In many cases, these technologies are improving the digital experience for consumers.
For companies looking to evolve their marketing and sales strategies, it is imperative to embrace the present AI era: a time when machines can respond to customer queries with intelligent, automated responses, engage with prospects through personalized advertising, and integrate with your current sales applications. These technologies aim to optimize your digital marketing efforts by analyzing customer data and creating a tailor-made experience for each user.
Many marketers are concerned that relying on machine learning will remove too much emotion—particularly for strategies rooted in pathos—and keep prospects from connecting with brands. In my experience, however, AI can better guide marketers in creating content that aligns with their customers’ needs and behaviors. Moreover, it is not meant to eliminate human-to-human communication but accelerate the buyer’s journey through a solid first impression.
The AI industry will contribute an additional $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030. But to fully reap these benefits, companies must put these tools into practice now. Here are a few ways our agency leverages AI and machine learning to help organizations gain a competitive advantage.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2022/10/24/ai-is-now-heres-what-it-looks-like-in-practice/?sh=36c0212530c8

Gartner defines artificial intelligence as a technology that applies logic-based techniques and advanced analysis, including machine learning for interpreting events, supporting and automating decisions, and taking actions. It is the buzzword for organizations grappling with customer demands that are ever-changing, and a shortage of skilled labor.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has a knack of freeing up employees so that they can focus on things that are more important, such as being creative, solving problems that are complex, and allowing customers to get facetime, etc., and for managing repetitive and mundane tasks. When it comes to supply chain management, AI has gained momentum quickly.
It may have to deal with plenty of inefficiencies, but the expectation still remains that it must perform at higher levels of speed and efficiency. That’s why this vital business component remains ripe for automation and improvement through machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Market Worth Billions
A new report from Research and Markets has already revealed that artificial intelligence has revamped the operational processes and facilitated supply chain solutions that are cost-effective. The report states that different forms of artificial intelligence have been integrated into solutions for supply chain management for improving everything from processing automation to offering enhanced visibility into real-time and static data and management information systems that are related.
Apart from decision-making that is fully automated, artificial intelligence systems have also leveraged different forms of cognitive computing to optimize the combined efforts of human and artificial intelligence. The report from Research and Markets has estimated that the global market for artificial intelligence in supply chain management is going to reach $1.4 billion by the year 2025.
Continue reading: https://irishtechnews.ie/ai-and-the-supply/

Opinion polls show that people are growing increasingly uneasy about artificial intelligence, and yet the technology is expanding into almost every walk of life and becoming more and more embedded in the way we live. 
So how do we bring greater transparency to how AI works and help to allay people’s fears? Peter Scott is the founder of the Next Wave Institute and the author of Artificial Intelligence and You.
SCOTT: Fear might be justified, but it’s not productive. If you’re attacked by a tiger rushing at you, you’re justified in feeling fear. But if that causes you to remain paralyzed or not do whatever you’re supposed to do when a tiger comes at you, then it doesn’t help. 
What I find is that the fear people have of an AI future is proportional to how little agency they perceive that they have. They feel like they’re being taken on a ride by technology companies that don’t know where they’re going and who are driving a car at breakneck speed down the highway, while everyone else sits in the backseat terrified. And when I talk to technologists, I try to make them aware that their natural enthusiasm can create this response. 
It Looks Like Magic
Arthur C. Clarke’s third law was that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And to people looking at what AI is doing today, with things like the large language models, or the amazing image synthesis tools, it does look magical. But when we see AI doing one kind of magic, we assume that it can do all kinds of magic, because how are we supposed to know where the boundaries are? 
So we instantly jump to the idea of AI being a threat, or becoming conscious, or running amok. And all of those things are relatively unlikely. Mostly what AI is doing at the moment is exposing the fact that a lot of the things that we do cognitively as humans can be achieved by narrow artificial intelligence using its capability for finding patterns.
And the more familiar you get with it, the more you can understand that what’s going on is this pattern-finding. There’s this cognitive mismatch between what we’ve been told to expect any day now and what’s realistic. Most roboticists say that AI is not going to become generally intelligent until it understands the real world as well as we do.
Continue reading: https://www.brinknews.com/how-to-stop-being-scared-of-ai-and-learn-to-love-it/

As pharmaceutical executives grapple with a growing array of complexities, costs and regulations, a greater number of them are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) as a possible solution. As a matter of fact, a recent global market report for the pharmaceutical industry suggests that spending on AI will surpass $3.6 billion by 2026. Use cases for the technology include applications for drug discovery, manufacturing, diagnostic assistance, drug commercialization and business operations. Yet, despite the industry’s commitment of capital and resources to the promising technology, confusion remains among executives about how to best utilize AI.
Especially in the pharmaceutical industry, requirements for data integrity, compliance and government oversight all create an environment where risk mitigation often outweighs continuous innovation. However, I believe pharmaceutical companies can utilize best practices in order to ease the transition to AI tools that can enable insights and shortcuts.
Implementing AI Applications Within New Environments
It’s important to note that the AI’s algorithms don’t just invent information. They need to derive their actionable insights from the data you already have. A critical first step for any organization looking to utilize AI is getting your data in order. The benefits of AI-powered insights are clear, but those capabilities will remain unachievable if an organization’s data management practices remain basic. And no matter how innovative an AI’s algorithms are, results will be disappointing if they run on top of scattered, inconsistent and outdated data.
While AI can take years of sales data and scientific findings and organize them in minutes to uncover precious insights, for companies that have not worked with AI previously, this can mean a complete reorganization of their data foundation and digitization of offline records.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/10/20/how-ai-can-improve-pharmaceutical-commercial-operations/?sh=4302e8f97663

A blockchain is a network of decentralized and distributed data (ledger), meaning the users share the ownership and management of the network through computer nodes. As a database, blockchain stores information in a digital format.
Blockchain technology stores data in blocks and link them together to form a chain. The blocks have a specific capacity and, when filled, are closed and linked to the previous block. Any newly added information after the last block is compiled into a newly formed block and added to the chain once filled.
Blockchain is famous for its critical role in cryptocurrency systems like Bitcoin. It maintains a decentralized and secure record of crypto transactions. Therefore, blockchain can guarantee the fidelity and security of data records and generate the need for a third party.
Advantages Of Blockchain Over Non-Blockchain Database
• Immutability. Blockchain supports immutability, meaning it is impossible to erase or replace recorded data. Therefore, the blockchain prevents data tampering within the network.
Traditional data do not exhibit immutability. The conventional database uses CRUD (create, read, update and delete) at the primary level to ensure proper application operation, and the CRUD model enables easy erasing and replacing of data. Such data can be prone to manipulation by rogue administrators or third-party hacks.
Continue reading: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/10/20/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-blockchain-technology/?sh=275386c53453

We spoke to industry leaders about how to break into the music industry and foster an engaged audience using a Web3 toolkit.
It’s hard to break into the music industry and even harder to succeed as an artist in the long term. Traditionally molded by industry gatekeepers, curated Top 40 lists, and contracts with legacy record labels, rejection is a common hurdle for new artists climbing the industry ladder.
But blockchain technologies, such as non-fungible tokens (NFT), are shifting the power dynamics within the music industry and creating new opportunities for growth and engagement. Proponents of change say NFTs give artists the tools they need to grow an engaged community from scratch, starting with just a small group of loyal fans. This “1,000-true fans” model was first coined by Wired’s Kevin Kelly in 2008 and suggests that an artist really only needs 1,000 engaged fans to achieve success.
Musicians arguably now have more tools at their disposal to bypass, or at least get a headstart on, the traditional pathway to career success by building their online communities from day one. Web3 – what some are calling the next blockchain-based iteration of the internet – will likely transform the way fans consume music and interact with artists.
“The ethos and focus of Web3 is identity, ownership and community,” said Shannon Herber, managing director of A0K1VERSE, an NFT-gated fan community created by DJ and crypto collector Steve Aoki. Because many new NFT projects are centered around fostering community, having a few thousand followers on social media is what Herber calls “actually quite a large number in terms of Web3 fandom.”
We spoke to industry leaders with collective decades of experience about how to break into the music industry and cultivate an engaged audience using a Web3 toolkit.
Continue reading: https://www.coindesk.com/learn/the-web3-guide-to-getting-into-the-music-industry/

The jury is still out on the usability of blockchain and Web 3.
Today's blockchain landscape has a lot in common with the early Internet: It's an unwieldy, unsafe, and unregulated "wild west" of loosely connected protocols that hardly appear to form the infrastructure for future commerce. The internet's early critics were clearly wrong that no one would ever want to use email. With blockchain, however, the jury is still out.
Concrete usability is one of the biggest challenges in moving blockchain past its wild-west phase. Using crypto for its original purpose of financial transactions is still comparatively difficult. But more importantly, the broader Web3 ecosystem still lacks the practical functionality and UX to form the infrastructure that will replace Web2.
Web2 is an incredibly well-oiled and easy-to-use organism. Think of Facebook, Google, Uber, DoorDash and your favorite banking app. Crypto lovers often complain about the problems with centralization in Web2, but the end user sees proper functionality and an excellent user experience. In Web3, on the other hand, they see only a trendy UX dumpster fire with potential.
One of the major players behind current — and therefore Web2 — IT technology is, of course, Microsoft and its Office Suite. Microsoft Office found its way into almost every business and every home since the late '90s. Excel rules finance, and Outlook rules email. These software were so functional that even hard-hitting critics and competitors had no choice but to use them. Nowadays, we can almost say the same thing for Google. Try as you may to cut yourself off from Google's products, but you will barely last a week.
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/science-technology/web3-is-the-future-of-the-internet-but-how/436320

The only descriptive word to mark a trend that may be more overused than “quiet” right now—think quiet quitting, quiet firing, even “quiet fleecing”—is “great.” Amid all the names for the “Great Resignation”—the Great Reshuffle, the Great Re-Invention, the Great Relocation—we now have the Great Layoff (seriously?) and what McKinsey and LeanIn.org call the “ Great Breakup.”
As senior contributor Kim Elsesser writes, this isn’t about senior women quitting or exiting the workforce. It’s about moving to companies that share their values—prioritizing career advancement, supporting flexibility and work-life balance and emphasizing diversity and inclusion.
While this many seem like just another name for the Great Resignation, McKinsey and LeanIn’s research is interesting because it reminds us that people aren’t just changing jobs for better pay elsewhere; they’re actively leaving organizations they don’t align with anymore—even in a worsening economy. It’s little surprise this is happening as more workplaces compel employees to come back to the office—the survey, for instance, finds that while nearly 20% of men want to work primarily on-site, just 10% of women, who often play the default role of primary caregivers, feel the same.
Such trends have lasting impact. If fewer women are stepping into a company’s leadership ranks, they’ll have fewer shots to reach the highest rungs. My colleague Maggie McGrath—see the featured story below—recently found that there are just three all-female CEO-CFO duos running the 500 largest U.S. public companies, following the news that GSK had named Burberry executive Julie Brown as its new chief financial officer, joining CEO Emma Walmsley in GSK’s C-suite.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/10/19/the-great-breakup-among-women-leaders-rebounding-from-layoffs-and-metaverse-skepticism/?sh=58e34da4722b

Women in tech, media, and telecom industries have difficulty adjusting to hybrid work schedules, according to research from consultant Deloitte, which also suggests that women report low levels of motivation, higher feelings of stress and burnout, and poor work-life balance.
Deloitte's analysis upholds the message in its title: For women in tech, media, and telecom, hybrid work may not be working. 
The analysis found that 51% of women in tech, media, and telecommunications work in a hybrid setting, while 39% work remotely. The same study concluded that women find it more challenging to work in a hybrid environment than to work fully remote or entirely in-person.
At the same time, just one-third of women in tech, media, and telecommunications said their productivity and motivation were good or extremely good at work, and only one-third are satisfied with their work-life balance. 
So, why are women in these industries unhappy with hybrid work when everyone else raves about it? 
Gillian Crossan, Deloitte's global technology sector leader, says women aren't fond of the unpredictable nature of hybrid working. She explains that it's important for employees, particularly women, to receive precise schedules of when to show up to the office. 
Continue reading: https://www.zdnet.com/article/hybrid-working-why-more-needs-to-be-done-to-help-women-thrive/

Health and safety are critical components of any business, but those in the construction sector need to take additional steps to look out for the safety of workers and protect their own construction firm from the potential financial, legal and reputational consequences associated with failures or shortcomings, in this area.
Video surveillance can play a vital role here, and the rise of cloud video analytics, artificial intelligence technology, and video surveillance as a service (VSaaS) offerings has the potential to take this to the next level. Let’s look at precisely how AI and VSaaS are combined to improve safety within the construction sector.
Understanding AI and VSaaS
First, it is essential to define precisely what is meant by artificial intelligence and video surveillance as a service. The former refers to technology that allows computers to perform complex actions, which have traditionally relied upon human intelligence, and is especially useful for automation and analysis of data.
VSaaS, on the other hand, refers to cloud-based surveillance services offered by third-party service providers. With a cloud-based video management system, users can remotely access the data captured by their surveillance system. Data is also stored in the cloud rather than on-site, allowing more footage to be stored while improving accessibility.
The two technologies can combine to provide cloud video analytics offerings. This will feed data from surveillance cameras through a layer of AI, pattern recognition, machine learning, and similar technologies to extract meaning from it and alert users to any actions, scenes, or situations deemed worthy of attention. As explained in an article from SDM, cloud deployment allows more processing power to be used for analytics purposes.
Continue reading: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/guest-article/how-ai-and-vsaas-are-improving-safety-in-the-construction-sector/

An ensemble of algorithms working together will produce far more accurate predictions than one working alone. In other words, the collective power of the weak is mightier than that of the strongest individual. 


The debate between meritocracy and affirmative action has long simmered, and the arguments on both sides are familiar. But quickly to recap, let’s look at an exchange between two people, each on either side of the argument. 
Vivek Ramaswamy is a self-made multimillionaire who founded a biotech company at the age of 28. He is a celebrity in conservative circles, having been a regular guest on Fox News and last year published Woke, Inc: Inside the Social Justice Scam, which takes corporations to task for — as he sees it — overstepping the mark in becoming involved in moral issues best left to society.  
Recently, he recalled a debate with Kenneth Frazier, the former chief executive of the pharmaceuticals company Merck. Frazier had said in the wake of the police killing of African-American George Floyd: “There are, in fact, barriers that are faced by African Americans … We still have customs. We still have beliefs. We still have policies. We have practices that lead to inequity.” Therefore, he argued, “Businesses have to use every instrument at their disposal to reduce these barriers that existed [sic].” In short, he believed that companies needed to actively tilt the balance in favor of the disadvantaged.  
Yet Ramaswamy was skeptical. For him, racial diversity was just another fashionable social cause, such as (as he saw it) gender or climate change. Companies embraced these causes because they were on trend, he asserted. A pharmaceutical company should focus instead on serving patients first, and that means, Ramaswamy wrote: “We don’t care if the scientist who discovers a cure to COVID-19 is white or black, or a man or a woman.” 
If only things were that simple. We are all human. We have limited knowledge. We may understand others well if they have had similar life experiences to ours. Human psychology tricks us, too. It makes us want to be around people who are like us — people with whom we can sympathize. That is all very innocent until you consider the cost to society. 
Continue reading: https://www.imd.org/ibyimd/magazine/what-ai-can-teach-us-about-human-bias-in-decision-making/