According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, as of July 2022, nine climate disaster events exceeded $1 billion in losses. Hurricane Ian, which has a reported death of more than 100 people and caused as much as $47 billion in insured losses, could make it the most expensive storm in Florida's history.
Since June 2022, floods in Pakistan have killed 1678 people and washed away villages and infrastructure leaving behind 3.4 million children at increased risk of waterborne diseases, drowning and malnutrition. Hurricane Fiona left 900,00 people without power in Puerto Rico.
With natural disasters globally becoming more and more prevalent and dangerous, the application of technology like artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to prevent or mitigate the destruction.
According to Neil Sahota, IBM Master Inventor, lead artificial intelligence advisor at the United Nations, and co-founder of the AI for Good Global Summit, people see natural disasters as extreme, sudden events. But in reality, Sahota says that thousands of subtle, slow-moving clues indicate the likelihood and severity of a natural disaster.
"As humans, we're wired for those fast-moving, immediate threats [..]; unfortunately, we're not good with the slow-moving, long-term threats," said Sahota. "Thankfully, AI is, and that's why it has become a powerful tool in predicting natural disasters and enabling us to take steps to mitigate and even prevent it."
Sahota uses wildfires as an example of how AI is good at processing vast amounts of data in real time and finding those subtle connections among the variables. "We tend to look at climate conditions, amount of brush and other potential fuels, and the area's topography to assess the fire risk," said Sahota. "But as more AI wildfires tools have been developed, we have learned about many other factors involved, including ignition."
Sahota says data from research with mining companies shows that lightning strikes can be a major source of wildfires, but how can we assess something so random?
"People may struggle with this, but AI has had a much easier time predicting where lightning storms may occur, the likelihood of where it will hit the ground, and what are the "hotspots" that would catch on fire," said Sahota. "As a result, we now examine far more ignition sources like static electricity, hot surfaces and even friction to assess the threat of a wildfire."
Sahota maintains that AI can prevent the next natural disaster by determining the ripple effect or the indirect impacts of a potential natural disaster.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2022/10/05/a-look-at-how-artificial-intelligence-could-prevent-natural-disaster/?sh=29475e0758da

Bring your gently used shoes to a CompTIA event and we will ship them back to our partner, Share Your Soles. Find more on what shoes are needed here. 2022 Events:

• North America Fall Summit, Nashville, TN Wednesday, October 26, 2022
• CompTIA EMEA Member & Partner Conference, London, United Kingdom, October 31- November 1, 2022
• CompTIA ANZ Community Meetings
  • Sydney November 8, 2022
  • Auckland November 10, 2022
  • Melbourne November 11, 2022
• CompTIA Benelux Community Meeting Breda, Netherlands November 22, 2022

You can make financial donations here.

My last article was the beginning of a series on eliminating noise in existing operations. In that article, one simple rule of thumb that was suggested is to identify noise in operations that does not require human intervention. In this series of articles, I will focus on what contributes to this noise in the form of the machine (environment), method (workflow and processes) and model (people and skills) and how to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques to identify and remove the noise. This article covers machine-induced noise.
Before we get into that, I would like to draw your attention to the core functions of AI for IT services (or, for that matter, any kind of service), which is to learn how problems are currently solved, identify the flaws in the current method of problem solving and build intelligence on how to solve problems differently to achieve peak business performance. Here, looking at the way problems are solved is of top importance, and in the upcoming articles, I will examine how the environment, process and people together are producing the noise we aim to eliminate.
Let us focus on machine-induced noise now.
One of the most low-hanging opportunities for a technology-driven transformation has been end-of-life products. Although upgrades and replacements are common sense, it is of paramount importance to first establish the connection between the end-of-life machine to the noise in the AI-driven IT services framework. We also need to quantify how much of the end-of-life machine noise is causing noise in the method and model. CXOs should be able to determine how the end-of-life machine noise, which reflects on the method and model, impacts business performance. This relationship in the form of behaviors and patterns is available in the historical data, as mentioned in my previous article.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/10/05/preparing-for-artificial-intelligence-enabled-it-services-machine-induced-noise/?sh=5e66ca40454d

Key takeaways

• Tesla AI Day came and went, they delivered on the humanoid robot prototype announced last year and poised to hit the market long before the decade’s end.
• Companies like Amazon are built around the power of artificial intelligence, with every aspect of the business using AI, from customer recommendations to their highly profitable cloud-based services.
• AI is changing every industry, from health care to education to investing, so here’s a list of possible AI investments.

We absolutely can’t ignore that artificial intelligence is changing the way we do everything in every industry, from the possibility of self-driving cars to social media algorithms showing you customized content. You may have heard of some of AI's advances in text or image generation. You may have even heard about AI being used in health care, as the World Economic Forum just announced how AI could detect tuberculosis.
The hope is that machines will eventually replicate human intelligence without the need for human input or interference. This space is growing rapidly, and it seems likely that every industry will be impacted by it. Many major companies have invested heavily in AI, and it feels like if you don’t take it seriously, you could be left behind.
What’s happening with AI?
Basic forms of AI are currently being used across many industries. Colleges are using AI for admissions and financial aid decisions. E-commerce platforms use AI to help make product recommendations. Many businesses are using AI for fraud detection and budgetary oversights.
AI is now allowing computers to make decisions that historically required human beings. Issues are resolved within a company without humans ever interacting. AI is being used to solve complex problems, automating new tasks and business functions, minimizing errors, leading research and data analysis, and even - ahem - enhancing customer service.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/10/05/how-to-invest-in-artificial-intelligence/?sh=2ec3502a1438

Far from being a futuristic concept relegated to the realms of science fiction, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is becoming more common. The benefits of using AI are often cited by reference to time and productivity savings. However, the challenges of implementing AI into HR practice and procedures should not be underestimated.
AI technologies are already being used across a broad range of industries, at every stage in the employment cycle. From recruitment to dismissal, their use has significant implications. In recent months, incidents at Meta, Estee Lauder and payment service company Xsolla have hit the headlines for utilizing AI when dismissing employees.  
All three companies used algorithms as part of their selection process. For Meta and Xsolla, the algorithms used analyzed employee performance against key metrics to identify those who were “unengaged and unproductive”. These employees were subsequently dismissed.
Similarly, Estee Lauder used an algorithm when making three makeup artists redundant, which assessed employees during a video interview. The software measured the content of the women’s answers and expressions during interview and evaluated the results against other data about their job performance. It led to their dismissal. 
Where algorithms are used in place of human decision-making, they risk replicating and reflecting existing biases and inequalities in society. 
Continue reading: https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Artificial-Intelligence-in-the-Workplace

Less than half of businesses are adequately addressing the issue of identity security, despite the growing threat of identity-based attacks, according to a SailPoint survey of more than 300 global cybersecurity executives.
The survey also indicated that as enterprises increase their identity security maturity, they become better at using their security tools more efficiently.
Of the companies in the beginning stages of maturity, over a quarter said they allocated more than 15% of their cybersecurity budget to identity while 71% of more mature companies said they spend a smaller share of their budget but get more value.
Survey respondents are looking to tap into technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to boost their identity security capabilities, or plan to do so within the next two years. This investment is occurring as the total number of identities is projected to grow by 14% over the next three to five years, according to the survey. 
Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at Delinea, a provider of privileged access management (PAM) solutions, said one of the main challenges for organizations with regard to securing identities is that mobility and cloud environment identities are everywhere. 
“The growth in mobility and the cloud greatly increases the complexity of securing identities,” he explained. “Therefore, organizations still attempt to try and secure them with the existing security technologies they already have. This results in many security gaps and limitations.” 
He added that some organizations fall short by trying to ‘checkbox’ security identities with simple password managers.
“However, this still means relying on business users to make good security decisions,” Carson says.
Continue reading: https://securityboulevard.com/2022/10/businesses-look-to-ai-ml-to-boost-identity-security/

Gently worn shoes needed:

• Athletic (both children and adults)
• Black school shoes (children)
• Black flat work shoes (women & men)

Dress Shoes and High Heels:

• Gently worn. These shoes will be inspected and if there is a specific need for a woman these shoes will be directly passed on. If they are good dress heels that would not be used in many places, these shoes will be sold by Share Your Soles through auction with all of the proceeds going to buy the shoes needed.

Children's Shoes:

• Baby shoes 
• Athletic shoes
• Boots

How to donate:
Shipping:  11201 S Cottage Grove Chicago, Illinois 60628 (708) 448-4469 [email protected]  

CompTIA's Advancing Women in Technology group has partnered with Share Your Soles to assist women and children.
As the AWIT Advisors considered how we help more women and children find a career in technology we started to talk about what the barriers to the workforce include. We also talked about something we all have in our closets: shoes. The longer we talked, the more we discussed the importance of shoes to help individuals. Not just in our backyards, but around the globe. That is where Share Your Soles comes into play. They are located in Chicago but donate shoes to groups and individuals around the world. Our Advancing Women in Technology group has members in 146 countries today - and shoes are being delivered to those who need them most. Learn more here about what shoes are needed and how you can donate your gently used shoes or make a financial donation here.

To the average person, green crypto seems like an oxymoron, right?
As an environmental action company that puts carbon offsets onto the blockchain, we are accustomed to people looking at us a little sideways when we tell them that’s exactly what we want to be, a green blockchain with a purpose. But that’s exactly what we’ve tried to create at the Land Betterment Exchange (LBX), by tokenizing carbon offset credits achieved through land remediation and restoring impacted land abandoned by fossil fuel companies. We found our purpose, and in the process created a win-win scenario for all the players involved, including environmental specialists, corporations looking to meet carbon pledges, local displaced workers, and, of course, the environment itself. We don’t, however, trick ourselves into thinking we are the only purposeful blockchain out there. We wouldn’t want to be anyway–when you are trying to fix the world, you want as much company as possible. So, below we are going to shout out five of our favorite green blockchain solutions that all try, in their own way, to make the world a little better. 1. Hedera Hedera relies on its revolutionary hashgraph consensus mechanism (https://hedera.com/how-it-works) to deliver faster and cheaper transactions at a fraction of the energy cost typical of blockchain.
Built around two key innovations—which they call “gossip about gossip” and “virtual voting”—hashgraph allows Hedera to provide a rapid, fair, stable, and secure platform that uses an average .00017 KWH per transaction, compared to Ethereal’s 102 KWH and Bitcoin’s staggering 885 KWH. Read that last part again—.00017KWH per transaction v. 885 KWH. There are fractions…and then there are fractions of fractions (of fractions). This energy efficiency does not, however, slow Hedera down. Quite the opposite, actually: It averages 10,000 transactions per second, compared to Bitcoin’s 3, for an average fee of $.0001 per transaction, compared to Bitcoin’s $22.57. Hedera isn’t just producing a more sustainable and scalable version of blockchain, it is making it more democratic and accessible to everyday people. Developers can mint and manage fungible and non-fungible tokens, record verifiable event logs for any app or permission framework, and deploy smart contracts in popular language to create centralized apps and protocols.  
Continue reading: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/756411-we-love-5-green-blockchain-projects

What Is Blockchain Technology?
Blockchain is a cutting-edge database technology that drives transparent data-sharing over a network. Blockchain databases retain chronological consistency, preventing data from being deleted or modified without network consensus. Developers can use this feature to create a secure, immutable ledger for tracking values such as payments, orders, and user accounts.
Blockchain gets its name due to its architecture: data is stored in ‘blocks’ connected in a ‘chain’. The block is the structure that records transactions, while the chain consists of numerous databases connected over a network using peer-to-peer nodes. Such a configuration, also known as a ‘digital ledger’, allows the system to support built-in mechanisms for preventing unauthorized entries. Users can access a consistent ‘shared view’ of data with it.
Despite its recent popularity, blockchain originated in the late 1970s. Ralph Merkle, a computer scientist, created the base for modern-day blockchain by patenting Hash trees. Also known as Merkle trees, these computer science structures store data using cryptography to link blocks.
Just before the turn of the millennium, W. Scott Stornetta and Stuart Haber created a system that used Hash trees to prevent document timestamps from being modified arbitrarily. And thus, the first instance of blockchain came into existence.
Today, blockchain is leveraged to record data securely. Making unauthorized changes to the information stored in a blockchain database is challenging. This is possible because the ‘distributed ledger’ created by blockchain duplicates and transmits the records of every transaction across the computers that are a part of the blockchain network.
Continue reading: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/devops/articles/what-is-blockchain/

Web3 technology is gaining traction — and in many ways, it is leading the charge of political and economic revolution. Many leaders and innovators are taking up the challenge of finding ways to use Web3 technologies to make the world a better place.
I recently spoke with Jeff Wong, Chief Innovation Officer for EY, a multinational professional services company headquartered in London. We discussed his predictions about the ways Web3 will change how businesses operate and the way we work.
What Exactly Is Web3?
Wong and I started our conversation by discussing the definition of Web3. He said:
“When I talk about Web3, I like to start with the architecture of it, which is built upon the basics of blockchain. Blockchain is an immutable database that allows you to hold, store, and trade value, and pay for the assets that you're trading without a central authority. It allows for all the things that you see today…you see the exchange of value through cryptocurrency, you see the exchange of the value of NFT. So I can hold an NFT, I can trade an NFT, and I can get paid for that NFT without a central authority — all because of the blockchain. It’s an entirely different theory of how you hold property and exchange property.”
So how has our journey to Web3 evolved? During the Web 1.0 era, it was expensive to have a website, and only the big companies who could afford to build and support large servers could get sites up and running. Then Web 2.0 technologies cropped up, and companies and individuals could harness cloud architecture and cheaper hardware. Very quickly, website services became much cheaper, and it was possible to launch a site for a few hundred dollars, without needing to learn how to code.
Web3 represents an even bigger step away from both of these phases because it turns the idea of centralized control on its head. Wong uses the example of a new streaming service that might be set up using a Web3 architecture. He says:
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/10/05/what-is-the-business-impact-of-web3/?sh=a2e235279b2a

Drones are becoming a more and more common sight. What was once little more than a cool toy for hobbyists has blossomed into an array of new applications. It’s not uncommon to encounter a drone at a concert or other public gatherings, quietly capturing video to document the event. We find them at weddings, taking photos, and on movie sets catching shots you couldn’t get any other way. As the technology advances and becomes more affordable, we’re likely to see drones being used in all new ways.
 
They’re already being used to quickly deliver heart defibrillators to the scene of medical emergencies and protect our crops from pest animals. Agricultural use of drones was the inspiration for the movie Hover which imagines a world in which the ubiquity of drones causes dire consequences. Faced with environmental collapse, humanity turns over the tending of our crops to drones — or, more accurately, the corporation which owns and operates the drones — to dystopian results.
Whether drones become a threat to our species in the future remains to be seen, but in the meantime, they continue to move into more and more industries. In a recent issue of the journal Nature, an international team of scientists revealed a collaborative swarm of 3D printing drones which could be the construction crew of the future.
While drones have been slowly filling our skies, 3D printing has likewise been gaining ground among hobbyists and scientists. It was only a matter of time before the two technologies joined forces to create machines which can construct new structures on the fly.
Continue reading: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/future-houses-could-be-built-by-3d-printing-drones

Apple CEO Tim Cook has warned that the shortage of women could hamper the future of tech - but tackling the shortage of women in tech means tackling the shortage of girls in the tech classroom.
In an interview with the BBC this week, Cook said there were “no good excuses” for the shortage of women in tech.
And the result of the lack of diversity is that technology will fail to live up to its potential.
“I think the the essence of technology and its effect on humanity depends upon women being at the table,” he said.
“Technology's a great thing that will accomplish many things, but unless you have diverse views at the table that are working on it, you don't wind up with great solutions.”
Around 35% of Apple’sAAPL +2.3% workforce are women, slightly higher than sector average, according to a recent Deloitte report, although the authors warned that issues such as workload and access to flexible work mean recent progress is in danger of stalling.
But while tech firms can make a difference both through their hiring practices and their approach to employee pay and conditions, they can also only work with what they have.
At some level, tackling the shortage of women in tech means tackling the shortage of girls in the tech classroom.
In the same interview, Cook called for all students to take a coding course in school, to give them a working knowledge of how to code and how apps are created.
England became the first country in the world to make it mandatory for all students to study coding up to the age of 16, but taking some of the optionality out has not led to the sort of progress in closing the gender gap that we might have expected.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2022/09/30/tackling-the-shortage-of-women-in-tech-means-tackling-the-shortage-of-girls-in-the-tech-classroom/?sh=6d420baf2b7b

This summer, founder Adriana Gascoigne moved the headquarters of the Girls in Tech nonprofit women’s tech community group she started from California to Nashville, Tennessee. Oakland was becoming a tough place to stay, so she and her husband had tried to find another place in California. They succeeded for a short time and then picked up their things and relocated to Nashville.
Their story was a microcosm for many people who are leaving the ivory towers of Silicon Valley for cheaper and more livable places. In the meantime, during 2022 alone, Girls in Tech has grown from 80,000 to 130,000 members, as chapters around the globe are taking off.
As the organization’s own many chapters proved, Gascoigne found plenty of places outside of Silicon Valley — like Nashville — where technology communities are prospering. The pandemic also taught us that you can pretty much work from anywhere. With 55 chapters in 42 countries, Gascoigne could have pretty much moved anywhere.
I talked to Gascoigne, a tech executive who started Girls in Tech in 2007, about these issues, as well as how the organization coped with the pandemic and moved most of its programming online. We talked about toxic masculinity, Web3, career development and the goals ahead.
Girls in Tech recently had an event in Nashville that was attended by a few hundred people in person. AWS, Oracle and Meta all host offices there, as do a number of game companies. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/games/adriana-gascoigne-why-girls-in-tech-moved-to-nashville/

The “new normal” is unsettling chief executives and business executives everywhere. A post-lockdown global survey by the Gallup Group shows that only 21% of employees are engaged in their jobs. By contrast, start-ups are promising purpose and flexibility — and with funding boosted by Covid-era stimulus packages, they are attracting top talent away from traditional businesses. 
Inflation, resulting from high energy prices, cheap cash and low productivity, reduces companies’ profits and increases the cost of capital. Even technology is turning into a terrible foe, producing nimble and innovative new vessels, able to outrun and outmaneuver yesterday’s finest.
Further out on the horizon are blockchain applications — the submarines prowling for legacy vessels steered by chief executives asleep at the wheel. The battle lines have been drawn in no uncertain terms, and many experienced executives are feeling insecure, worrying whether their traditional values of consistent hard work and integrity in leadership will be able to stand against these new and unfamiliar threats.
But when the going gets tough…
We can begin the story of blockchain with the pivotal technology breakthrough of World War II. Alan Turing believed that he could break Enigma — the cypher machine encoding communication for the German fleet — through more computing power and smarter programming. Through his unwavering focus, coupled with the actions of brave servicemen, the U-boat threat was undone and the Allies won the Battle of the Atlantic.
Continue reading: https://mg.co.za/opinion/2022-10-03-blockchain-and-the-battle-for-the-future-of-business/

If you’ve been shopping recently and found an empty shelf where your favorite cereal or ice cream is usually stocked, you know that the global supply chain is facing some serious hiccups right now.
The global supply chain has always been a delicate and complex system, which has only been further complicated recently by an ongoing global pandemic and war. An estimated 90 percent of the world’s goods are shipped by sea via roughly 60,000 cargo vessels. The largest cargo vessels carry 24,000 containers. At that scale, it’s not hard to understand why everything from the coffee you drank this morning to the microchip in the device you are reading this on can be lost or delayed.
There have been problems with supply chains long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past few decades, businesses made investments in information technology that helped improve the flow of goods around the world. IT investments in ERP systems, EDI exchanges, and standards such as ISO 9001 helped make global supply chains more efficient. But as the modern-day shopper can attest, there is more work to do.
Supply chain adaptability, agility
Today, up to 80% of critical business data now lives outside a company’s four walls. Suppliers, manufacturing sites, distributors, wholesaler dealers — there are too many parties trying to coordinate their transactions using disparate systems that don’t communicate well with each other. This situation creates a host of problems, because every one of these businesses requires critical, accurate and timely data about the goods they’re transacting, as well as information on any incidents that could have serious implications for their supply chains, customers and individual brand reputations. With the increased complexity of the global supply chain and deep dependencies among suppliers and manufacturers, companies are experiencing new backlogs and information breakdowns on a regular basis, with empty store shelves and lower profits among the inevitable results.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/datadecisionmakers/blockchain-could-repair-our-broken-global-supply-chain/

My Name is Hanu; Fejiro Hanu Agbodje. I am the Founder and CEO of Patricia. Patricia started as an exchange for gift cards and has swiftly metamorphosed into a crypto exchange that has grown to become one of Africa’s leading crypto and infrastructure providers.
We at Patricia believe that a critical utility of Blockchain lies in its ability to solve inherent, Africa-specific problems to democratize the financial landscape. As a company, we have tackled some of those problems for 900,000 Users and Merchants. In doing so, we have contributed to financial inclusivity, job creation, the development of a talent-based economy, and the creation of new wealth amongst young Africans.
Being different makes you stand out, and taking the path less travelled is crucial to greatness and impact, a trait the typical African youth possesses. I write this memo, ‘The state of Blockchain in Africa, that I might pay forward some of the knowledge I have garnered with other brilliant, disruptive, “typical” young Africans, who also might want to do the most.
African problems, particularly problems in African finance, require ingenious solutions for real change. In most instances, change in the ecosystem often requires large degrees of disruption; the more disruptive you are, the more reward there appears to be. For substantial advancement to be made on the continent, we must drive innovative and disruptive solutions that allow for leap-frogging and transformation. It is this transformative power that blockchain technology possesses. We have seen some level of this disruption in the eastern African finance ecosystem with notable successes around MPESA (mobile money).
Aside from transparency and accountability, the Blockchain can provide high levels of financial inclusion and accessibility that is not currently available on the continent and could be applied in other systems. In a few weeks, I will turn 27 years old. Over the past 27 years, most African nations have suffered from high inflation rates, corruption, poverty, resource misappropriation, unemployment, and many more afflictions that rob citizens of wealth and purchasing power. Currently, the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 goals seem unrealizable due to the constant depletion of infrastructure and human development on the continent.
Continue reading: https://guardian.ng/features/blockchain-memo-the-state-of-blockchain-in-africa/

“Make sure to wear shoes, ladies. There’s glass everywhere.”
Or so the now-famous slogan goes. But putting aside historical moments of hope when the glass ceiling for women has become the glass floor, it’s been a rough few years for gender equality.
Women have suffered disproportionately throughout the pandemic; they are more likely to be the primary caregiver, carry the domestic burden, be the home educator and, consequently, take career breaks or stop working altogether.
Climate change’s effects have also worsened in recent years, and women have been significantly impacted, especially in developing countries where they shoulder most of the responsibility for providing food and looking after their families.
These factors and more are conspiring to push many women out of the workforce and to widen the gender equality gap, which is now predicted to take 136 years to close.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/10/03/bridging-the-digital-divide-and-the-gender-gap/?sh=ef51edc87493

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being used these days in businesses of all kinds to streamline operations, make better decisions, and predict the future behaviors of employees and customers. In many cases AI simply does what humans have long done—only faster and better.
This is especially true in marketing. Marketers have long known that a deep and thorough understanding of their customers can help them develop marketing messages and materials and select the right channel to drive their messaging home most effectively. But AI can do that and more. AI can leverage data—lots of data—to do things more quickly, more accurately, and more cost-effectively than humans ever could.
In fact, sometimes AI yields some very surprising results. Simran Cashyap, head of product and design at Echobox, a company that uses AI to generate and streamline marketing content for social media and content distribution, recently had such an experience. Cashyap noticed that Echobox’s AI had scheduled a post for one of its publishing clients to go live in the middle of the night, defying standard marketing best practices. Despite thinking the AI had made a mistake, he let the portal do its job.
The result: It was one of the highest-performing posts he’d recently seen.
In considering why this occurred, Cashyap realized that the post, which was related to the British Royal family, would have a significant international audience playing out across various time zones. It’s an example of how AI can take trends and data into account that the average human is likely to miss.
Continue reading: https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Using-AI-to-Make-Marketing-Resonate-155179.aspx

When I began learning about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), it was from the perspective of trying to help very smart people do challenging tasks. This is opposed to learning about an AI algorithm and trying to see how far I could push it for the sake of science (which has its own merits) and then searching for an application in the real world. Some early examples of AI systems were for fire prevention on naval ships, predicting component failure causes in jet engines and classifying reasons for claim denial by health insurance companies.
Some lessons I learned were that smart people solve these problems every day, so an AI system needs to augment their intelligence and not provide a poor replacement for it. When we hear about AI systems like chatbots giving illogical replies, large language models failing with edge cases and image-generating systems creating nonsensical outputs, I believe we are witnessing a lack of AI specialization or use-case customization. Here are three reasons why specialization is needed in real-world AI systems.
1. Experts rely upon a few high-quality, specialized sources to make inferences.
In my experience fine-tuning AI language models for finance tasks, I’ve found that many AI models are increasingly trained using massive datasets. These models represent an achievement of both engineering and mathematics, and although they show increased performance with representative datasets, they rarely achieve the same kind of performance with most industrial applications.
The sheer volume of data means it can never be thoroughly cleaned or sampled for a specific use case. For example, my main focus is on using AI to understand the material relationships between companies (what drives their performance now and in the future). We need to develop a specialized fine-tuning approach using both thousands of labeled data as well as data labeled using an “adversarial” model.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/10/03/three-reasons-why-artificial-intelligence-wins-with-specialization/?sh=58fd0d3e4966

While many companies invest all their marketing dollars in digital marketing, leaders in the public relations (PR) space claim they can achieve similar or better results combining public relations with artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies have penetrated every aspect of life. In a survey of 6000 consumers, 33 percent responded that they think they use AI technology; in reality, 77 percent were using AI.
Public relations is often an integral part of companies, big or small. But traditionally, most PR operations rely on humans. For instance, press releases, memos, and other written communication are done by PR specialists, either inside the company or hired through an agency.
AI is now making strides in the PR industry, with many impressive tools in the market utilizing AI to improve PR capabilities for PR agencies and businesses alike. Still, PR has a long way to go toward fully embracing AI.
Here are five ways AI can benefit and change PR:
Speech to Text Conversion
AI’s capabilities to transcribe speech can come in handy for PR teams immensely. This technology can be a big time saver because there’s a lot of use of audio speech in PR, from transcribing interviews to writing about podcasts.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniefine/2022/10/02/how-leaders-are-investing-in-artificial-intelligence-to-improve-public-relations/?sh=1d97b37727bb

AI has the potential to deliver enormous business value for organizations, and its adoption has been sped up by the data-related challenges of the pandemic. Forrester estimates that almost 100% of organizations will be using AI by 2025, and the artificial intelligence software market will reach $37 billion by the same year.
But there is growing concern around AI bias — situations where AI makes decisions that are systematically unfair to particular groups of people. Researchers have found that AI bias has the potential to cause real harm.
I recently had the chance to speak with Ted Kwartler, VP of Trusted AI at DataRobot, to get his thoughts on how AI bias occurs and what companies can do to make sure their models are fair.
Why AI Bias Happens
AI bias occurs because human beings choose the data that algorithms use, and also decide how the results of those algorithms will be applied. Without extensive testing and diverse teams, it is easy for unconscious biases to enter machine learning models. Then AI systems automate and perpetuate those biased models.
For example, a US Department of Commerce study found that facial recognition AI often misidentifies people of color. If law enforcement uses facial recognition tools, this bias could lead to wrongful arrests of people of color.
Several mortgage algorithms in financial services companies have also consistently charged Latino and Black borrowers higher interest rates, according to a study by UC Berkeley.
Kwartler says the business impact of biased AI can be substantial, particularly in regulated industries. Any missteps can result in fines, or could risk a company’s reputation. Companies that need to attract customers must find ways to put AI models into production in a thoughtful way, as well as test their programs to identify potential bias.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/09/30/the-problem-with-biased-ais-and-how-to-make-ai-better/?sh=6513f40e4770

Everyone reading this has been told or has told someone that a cross-platform strategy is critical for brand visibility, recall, and, ultimately, sales. Yet, marketers worldwide will nod in agreement when I say implementing an effective cross-platform strategy is easier said than done.
That is until artificial intelligence (AI) became easily accessible and understandable. 
Cross-Platform Marketing Strategy Is Of Absolute Importance
Today, there are myriad marketing channels and innumerable ways to get your brand in front of your target audience. Audiences are typically present across multiple channels and frequently switch between them a dozen times per day. This customer behavior has already been recognized as a goldmine of an opportunity for brands to make it to the top of their customer’s minds and stay there. 
Companies that have strong cross-channel customer engagement see 89% of their customers return for more (compared to 33% for companies that have weak cross-channel customer engagement). Add to this the discovery that about 90% of customers expect consistent interactions with a brand, regardless of channel, and it becomes abundantly clear that cross-platform marketing is a must-do. 
So, what exactly is preventing brands from implementing cross-platform strategies?
Critical Challenges To Overcome
The biggest challenge we see today is not a lack of data, but rather a sense of being overwhelmed by the data that brands already have. For every channel or customer touchpoint that a brand invests in, there exists an application to collect the details of the interaction. Now imagine the multiple channels and touchpoints a brand sets up, and juxtapose that with the software collecting that information.
Continue reading: https://inc42.com/resources/how-startups-can-use-ai-to-build-cross-platform-growth-strategies/

The White House wants Americans to know: The age of AI accountability is coming. 
President Joe Biden has today unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights, which outlines five protections Americans should have in the AI age. 
Biden has previously called for stronger privacy protections and for tech companies to stop collecting data. But the US—home to some of the world’s biggest tech and AI companies—has so far been one of the only Western nations without clear guidance on how to protect its citizens against AI harms. 
Today’s announcement is the White House’s vision of how the US government, technology companies, and citizens should work together to hold AI accountable. However, critics say the plan lacks teeth and the US needs even tougher regulation around AI.
In September, the administration announced core principles for tech accountability and reform, such as stopping discriminatory algorithmic decision-making, promoting competition in the technology sector, and providing federal protections for privacy.
The AI Bill of Rights, the vision for which was first introduced a year ago by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), a US government department that advises the president on science and technology, is a blueprint for how to achieve those goals. It provides practical guidance to government agencies and a call to action for technology companies, researchers, and civil society to build these protections. 
“These technologies are causing real harms in the lives of Americans—harms that run counter to our core democratic values, including the fundamental right to privacy, freedom from discrimination, and our basic dignity,” a senior administration official told reporters at a press conference.
AI is a powerful technology that is transforming our societies. It also has the potential to cause serious harm, which often disproportionately affects minorities. Facial recognition technologies used in policing and algorithms that allocate benefits are not as accurate for ethnic minorities, for example. 
The new blueprint aims to redress that balance. It says that Americans should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems; that algorithms should not be discriminatory and systems should be used as designed in an equitable way; and that citizens should have agency over their data and should be protected from abusive data practices through built-in safeguards. Citizens should also know whenever an automated system is being used on them and understand how it contributes to outcomes. Finally, people should always be able to opt out of AI systems in favor of a human alternative and have access to remedies when there are problems. 
“We want to make sure that we are protecting people from the worst harms of this technology, no matter the specific underlying technological process used,” a second senior administration official said. 
The OSTP’s AI Bill of Rights is “impressive,” says Marc Rotenberg, who heads the Center for AI and Digital Policy, a nonprofit that tracks AI policy.
“This is clearly a starting point. That doesn't end the discussion over how the US implements human-centric and trustworthy AI,” he says.” But it is a very good starting point to move the US to a place where it can carry forward on that commitment.”
Willmary Escoto, US policy analyst for the digital rights group Access Now, says the guidelines skillfully highlight the “importance of data minimization” while “naming and addressing the diverse harms people experience from other AI-enabled technologies, like emotion recognition.”
Continue reading: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/04/1060600/white-house-ai-bill-of-rights

Drones are pretty common in the electoronics landscape today, and are more than just a fun hobby. They’ve enabled a wide array of realtors, YouTubers, surveyors, emergency responders, and other professionals to have an extremely powerful tool at their disposal. One downside to these tools is that the power consumption tends to be quite high. You can either stick larger batteries on them, or, as [Nicholas] demonstrates, just spin them really fast during flight.
We featured his first tests with this multi-modal drone flight style a while back, but here’s a quick summary: by attaching airfoils to the arms of each of the propellers and then spinning the entire drone, the power requirements for level flight can be dramatically reduced. This time, he’s back to demonstrate another benefit to this unique design, which is its ability to turn on its side and fly in level flight like an airplane. It’s a little bizarre to see it in the video, as it looks somewhat like a stationary propeller meandering around the sky, but the power requirements for this mode of flight are also dramatically reduced thanks to those wings on the arms.
There are a few downsides to this design, namely that the vertical wing only adds drag in level flight, so it’s not as efficient as some bi-wing designs, but it compromises for that loss with much more effective hover capabilities. He also plans to demonstrate the use of a camera during spin-hover mode as well in future builds. It’s an impressive experiment pushing the envelope of what a multi-rotor craft can do, and [Nicholas] still has plans to improve the design, especially when it comes to adding better control when it is in spin-hover mode. We’d expect plenty of other drones to pick up some of these efficiency gains too, except for perhaps this one.
Continue reading: https://hackaday.com/2022/10/02/winged-drone-gets-forward-flight-capability/