We're all acutely aware of the powerful capabilities and potentially dangerous consequences of AI innovations, a topic I wrote about in April of last year, but we are only beginning to put more thought into preparing for the global workforce to undergo a massive technological shift that many are calling the "fourth industrial revolution."
According to a recent release from the International Data Corporation (IDC), "worldwide revenues for the AI market ... were forecast to grow 16.4% in 2021, equating to $327.5 billion. By 2024, the market is expected to break the $500 billion mark with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5% and total revenues reaching an impressive $554.3 billion.”
In order to ensure ethical use and development of AI solutions, I have been investing time with AI tech and thought leaders to establish the commonly raised concerns surrounding the impacts of AI on women in tech and begin formulating recommendations for organizations in their ethical adoption of AI.
Interwoven into all of the topics raised during these conversations were three fundamental strategies needed to achieve fairness in AI development and use: executive leader readiness, representation of women and people of color and stakeholder governance.
Executive Leader Readiness To Drive Rapid Change
It's widely agreed that organizations that want to tackle the problem of the underrepresentation of women and minority voices in AI need diversity in the leadership ranks, which can affect how problems are recognized and how talent is developed. Beyond diversifying leadership, it's also vital that leaders leading AI initiatives and companies are prepared for all facets of new wave of innovation. 
Leaders must be experienced with or trained in managing rapid change and in supporting their teams in times of great digital transformation by, for example, making change leadership training a vital resource for leader readiness. Similarly, leaders must develop innovation principles for their organizations that ensure representation and accountability in AI systems and uphold consequences for any developers or users who fail to meet these standards. These principles should serve as a scorecard to rate and monitor the progress of AI innovation for transparency, security, diversity and representation, accessibility and market readiness.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/02/25/the-strategic-building-blocks-of-ethical-ai-representation-governance-and-leadership/?sh=3be1132e738f

As we wrap up Black History Month and head into Women’s History Month, it’s important to highlight the diversity, equity and inclusion challenges still facing the cyber workforce. As our companies, hospitals and schools continue to face the brunt of large-scale ransomware attacks, the United States still does not have the people to defend against these threats. The Making Space Initiative at the R Street Institute aims to expand the cybersecurity field by addressing the diversity problem in the workforce head-on—because for us, diversity is security.
A lack of diversity of people—women, Black cybersecurity professionals, Hispanic professionals and the neurodiverse—makes organizations weaker to vulnerabilities. This is especially dangerous as a homogenous workforce is also more susceptible to groupthink. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that this environment doesn’t just increase the likelihood of more mistakes—it also means people are more likely to copy poor decisions within a team. In short, without concrete plans, incentives and programs to change who we hire and how we adapt to problems or find solutions, we are setting ourselves up to fail.
In an effort to combat this problem, we’ve partnered with dozens of organizations and individuals to begin fixing the cybersecurity workforce diversity crisis.

• First, by raising awareness.
• Second, by building relationships and bringing a broad range of thinkers and experts into the space, and promoting them and their work.
• Third, by finding new avenues in public-private partnerships and public policy to create sustainable change.

When It Comes to Workforce Diversity, What Are the Biggest Challenges?
The main challenge to implementing true workforce diversity is that too many people continue to think this isn’t an issue. They are blind to the reality we now face.
As we were reaching out to find partners for the Making Space pledge, as an example, we encountered a number of organizations who swore that they already had diverse and inclusive panels, but signing a pledge to that effect wouldn’t make sense for their organization. We had others say that the fear of one panel for which they couldn’t find a woman or person of color meant they couldn’t pledge to the broader goal. This attitude is the epitome of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. These organizations, and many others, find themselves unwilling to publicly project values we should strive to achieve.
Continue reading: https://msmagazine.com/2022/02/25/diversity-cybersecurity-black-women/

The use of drone technology in precision agriculture has gained popularity in recent years.
However, there are still legislative barriers preventing widespread adoption, something which Agri-EPI and Connected Places Catapult explored in a recent webinar.
Currently, farmers can use drones for surveying, mapping, crop monitoring and disease detection.
But advances in technology mean autonomous crop pesticide applications could be a reality – if the regulations keep up.
Drones 
Hannah Tew, ecosystem director at Connected Places Catapult, explained:
“Precision technology can tackle key agricultural challenges – using variable rate and precise application can reduce spray use and improve yields.”
However, in the UK, the Sustainable Use Directive 14 forbids aerial spraying, including the use of drones. However, there is a derogation available through the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
And drone technology is advancing all the time, as Bryn Bircher, policy officer at HSE highlighted.
He said: “We are heading into the fourth agricultural revolution. Things are changing rapidly. However, chemicals will still be around for a while.”
“There is the issue of drift; we know there is a lot of drift with a boom sprayer, but we don’t know the effect of drift from drones yet.”
And some drones do boast an impressive time-saving. “A drone with a 20-litre tank can cover 15 hectares an hour,” explained Robert Pearson at Auto Spray Solutions.
Continue reading: https://thatsfarming.com/latest-news/drone-farmers-uk/

This is part 2 of our drone catalogue series, showing the farming drones that are currently available for you to purchase. The drones can be found in our drone buyers guide, which was released in 2021. The buyer's guide gives an overview of the (11) agricultural drones that are currently available for purchase, with many specifications like max payload capacity, flight time, and price.
Read more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an7fC-SqkFo

• The US is responsible for the highest percentage of open blockchain jobs
• The adoption of blockchain across different sectors would also increase the demand for blockchain jobs
• Blockchain topped the list of most in-demand hard skills for LinkedIn in 2020

 
The blockchain is a distributed database that allows for secure, transparent, and tamper-proof transactions.  Because it is decentralized, blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt many industries. 
When most people think of blockchain, they think of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Although blockchain technology originated in the financial sector, it has quickly spread to other industries. 
There are now countless blockchain technology applications that go far beyond banking and cryptocurrency. 
The US responsible for the highest % of open blockchain jobs
The US is responsible for almost 40% of all open blockchain jobs worldwide. The state of California has the most blockchain job opportunities, with 22% of the roles in the sector still open. 
In contrast, search interest in blockchain jobs is highest in New York, despite being responsible for only 12% of US job opportunities. According to data from LinkedIn, the US has the highest number of jobs in the blockchain industry on offer, with 19,029 vacancies advertised on the platform. 
New job opportunities created by blockchain
There is a broad spectrum of jobs available in businesses where some roles incorporate blockchain technology while others focus on it. This may sound surprising, but Uber, eBay, Capital One, Match.com, and GEICO rank among the companies searching for and contacting candidates who have listed “bitcoin” or “blockchain” in their skillset.
The fintech sector could be one of the sectors affected by need for blockchain innovation. The blockchain will allow for more secure and efficient transactions, making fintech products more user-friendly. 
In the Future of Jobs report by the World Economic Forum, nearly 31% of agricultural organizations, 40% of automobile organizations, and 41% of consumer organizations have expressed interest in blockchain adoption. Health and healthcare companies’ adoption rate is 72%, while 61% of companies are in education and exactly half (50%) in the energy and utility sector most like to adopt blockchain.
Continue reading: https://techhq.com/2022/02/blockchain-jobs-are-more-than-just-cryptocurrency/

In the drive to reduce costs and fund growth, the tide could be turning on blockchain and crypto: Garter predicts that 20% of large organisations will have adopted digital currencies for payments, stored value and the like in less than three years.
Most organisations will not need to develop their own customised blockchain application stack because many large financial services and digital-asset firms have already done the heavy lifting. But what about data management?
Daniel Bizo, research director for Uptime Institute Intelligence, says that energy-intensive crypto and digital currency networks typically do not run in “normal” datacentres, requiring special hardware at the node for economic viability.
The “immediate global problem” is power use, which remains difficult to track and attribute.
For crypto, the energy gap to fiat currencies is still “vast, up to five orders of magnitude”, says Bizo.
This might entail changes in power capacity, cooling infrastructure, equipment form factors and serviceability in facilities, compared with mainstream IT infrastructure. Those differences could indeed be large enough to create operational challenges for facility operations staff, says Bizo.
So what’s driving the shift? Gartner says blockchain and digital currencies retain theoretical appeal among chief financial officers. The hope is for lower costs, faster transaction processing, continuous accounting and auditing, as well as global reach in a low-error environment.
Continue reading: https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Cracking-the-code-on-blockchain-and-crypto-What-might-adoption-mean-for-datacentres

A Berlin-based blockchain startup called Arweave is attempting to turn the phrase “history is written by the victors” on its head.
As the Russian military continues its assault on Ukraine and panicked citizens leave in droves before it is too late, there is a fear that key artifacts of Ukrainian history and culture could be whitewashed in the aftermath of the conflict. This includes important news articles, documents, videos, social media posts, and all sorts of digital forms of media. Arweave is calling its blockchain platform the ‘permaweb’ because it is hoping to provide an indelible receptacle to preserve such content. Think of it as a Noah’s Ark for documents, a perfect preservation for future historians and researchers.
In the last few weeks alone the platform, which claims to have found a way to cheaply and permanently store virtually unlimited amounts of data, has absorbed more than 6.5 million pieces of information surrounding the Ukraine conflict uploaded onto its software by an eager network of global participants. A week ago the platform only held 100,000 different entries. In total, the platform is now safeguarding over 50 terabytes of data.

Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/02/25/a-blockchain-based-noahs-ark-is-being-used-to-preserve-a-record-of-the-ukraine-conflict/?sh=1b316ce46651

CRYPTO ENTHUSIASTS AND government officials are not natural allies, at least outside Miami. And yet Colorado governor Jared Polis received a warm welcome when he appeared onstage at last week’s ETHDenver conference to present his vision for making Colorado the “first digital state.”
That’s because he came bearing good news for the crypto faithful. Polis, a libertarian-leaning Democrat who made a fortune as an internet entrepreneur in the 1990s, has high hopes for blockchain technology. “Most people don’t trust either big corporations or big government, and that’s what blockchain allows us to solve for,” he declared to the applause of the ETHDenver crowd. “We see it as a critical part of Colorado’s overall innovation ecosystem.” To that end, Polis announced, the state will soon become the first to let residents pay state income tax and other fees using cryptocurrency, although the money will be converted into good old US dollars before it lands in the treasury.
Polis also plugged Colorado’s co-op statutes, which, he said, make the state particularly hospitable to “decentralized autonomous organizations,” or DAOs, a form of blockchain-based co-op. And he discussed a project that aims to move the state’s cattle-brand system onto the blockchain.
Wait—blockchain? Cows? While Polis found purchase among the ETHDenver acolytes, his presentation raised more questions than it answered. This week, the governor spoke to WIRED about his plan to make Colorado, including its livestock, the most blockchain-friendly state in the union.
WIRED: How would you explain to someone who doesn't already know much about blockchain why you think this is an important technology?
Jared Polis: A secure, distributed ledger technology is very attractive compared to the legacy, centralized database systems for a number of reasons. One is privacy and distributed control over your own information. Another is security because when you have a centralized system, it can always be vulnerable, no matter how much protection you have, in ways that a distributed system inherently isn't. Third, it can be more egalitarian. And fourth, it can be more welcoming for disruption and startups. When you have legacy systems, whether they're corporate or government, they can have an anticompetitive impact.
What does any of this have to do with cattle brands?
Cattle brands are exactly what you think they are. They are a distinctive logo, which ranchers sometimes have passed down in their families, that’s put onto cattle raised in Colorado—and other states with cattle have similar systems—and it's added to a registry. You apply for your brand and there are tens of thousands of brands, many of which are no longer used, but you can't use one that somebody else uses. The current system for that in Colorado and other states is a centralized database, a centralized ledger.
I'm from New Jersey, so just to make sure I'm with you: The point is that if my cow wanders off, or gets stolen, we know who owns it.
Absolutely. They do wander off and they get stolen and then you know who it belongs to, indisputably; it's registered. It's also used to capture and prosecute cattle rustlers who steal cattle. So it's used to prevent both theft and loss of cattle, which is a multibillion-dollar industry in the state of Colorado.

In conjunction with MWC Barcelona 2022 which will be taking place from the 28th of February to the 3rd of March, Tara Neal, Executive Editor of The Fast Mode spoke to Alexis Susset, Vice President of Global Product and EU Sales, Soracom on the company's plans and showcases for this year's event.
Tara: What do youthink MWC 2022 will be all about? And what are your MWC 2022 plans?
Alexis: IoT especially is reaching a new level of maturity, with more and more use cases and supporting technologies reaching broader market understanding. We are seeing IoT products moving into a full understanding of their value chain. With IoT-driven LPWAN, LTE-M and NB-IoT networks as well as 5G reaching widespread deployments, we look forward to MWC 2022 as the place where the providers building this new connectivity ecosystem can come together to advance technologies for users around the world. 
Soracom will take advantage of MWC 2022 to connect again with our ecosystem of providers, partners and customers and continue to develop solutions that address both low-data use cases such as Smart Health, Payments, Asset Tracking, and Facility Management as well as high-data end use cases such as Autonomous Vehicles and Connected Cameras. We understand the crucial role that IT plays in successful IoT projects, and this is supported by platform software layers providing these integration points. This is our focus for MWC 2022.
Tara: How has the pandemic impacted the operational and business landscape of the tech segment you are operating in?
Alexis: While social distancing and travel restrictions have slowed some deployments, we have also seen accelerated adoption of IoT technologies in many categories, especially those related to the connected health and digital payment spaces. These use cases have become ever more important as the world has adapted to take on the challenge of a global pandemic. As adoption of IoT technology has grown around the world, we have also seen supply chain pressure related to the production of chipsets to support this demand. This has been true in the IoT space and continues to be a challenge where production of devices may currently be constrained relative to demand.
Continue reading: https://www.thefastmode.com/expert-opinion/23296-soracom-at-mwc-barcelona-2022-digital-platforms-essential-in-supporting-growing-demand-for-iot

The Ethereum blockchain isn’t exactly the first thing that springs to mind when you’re thinking of solutions to climate problems, but that’s what Nori has built as an engine to encourage farmers to use carbon-negative farming methods to pull carbon from the air and put it back into the ground. The company just raised $7 million of venture capital to shed some of the painful irony inherent in running carbon removal on one of the most wasteful blockchains in the world by moving its operations off Ethereum and onto Polygon. The company is also exploring new sources for carbon capture, further building its carbon removal marketplace, and releasing a token to facilitate it all.
Nori focuses on carbon removal rather than emissions reductions or avoidances. Its marketplace provides financial rewards to farmers, who use regenerative farming practices that involve soil carbon sequestration. Soil sequestration is the first of Nori’s carbon removal offerings, with additional methodologies coming to market in the future.
To date, the company has around 10 farms on its program, has distributed $1 million to its farmers and has seen around 2,200 transactions from buyers for carbon credits.
Continue reading: https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/24/nori-series-a-carbon-blockchain/

On February 10, 2022, the first NFT-based property was bought through an auction on Propy, a blockchain-focused real estate company. The Florida home was sold for $653,163 worth of Ether, and the home’s property rights were minted as an NFT on the blockchain as a digital representation of ownership over the physical real estate. (See our previous blogs about NFTs here and here). This is significant for many reasons and has the potential to significantly disrupt the way that the real estate industry has historically functioned. As mentioned below, while other real estate transactions have already occurred utilizing blockchain technology, this is the first US transaction where the ownership of the real estate asset was minted as an NFT and then sold on the blockchain.
What is blockchain? At its core, a blockchain is a distributed ledger for recording transaction data. A ledger is merely a list of transactions. Traditional paper-based ledgers include consecutive pages where each line records a transaction and when the page is full, the process repeats on the next page. With many blockchains, each “block” is like a page. Transactions are verified and written into a block and, when the block is full, a new block is created. Unlike traditional ledgers, when a block is filled, the system creates a hash value, which is just a random number generated by an algorithm based on the contents of the block. This hash value is then written as an entry in the new block, thereby “chaining” the blocks, hence the term “blockchain.” If someone attempts to change an entry in a prior block, the hash value would no longer match what was written into the new block and that attempt would be deemed invalid. In part, this is how blockchain creates a secure and unalterable record. As discussed below, the application of utilizing the blockchain for a real estate transaction is a logical progression.
Continue reading: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/blockchain-technology-is-changing-the-1791259/

Research by Inmarsat, a global, mobile satellite communications company, reveals relatively few businesses derive maximum benefit from the Internet of Things (IoT) data that they gather.

Most of today’s businesses only share IoT data within their own organizations, with security and privacy concerns preventing them from disseminating it to organizations in their wider supply chains. Infrequent data collection and lacking an IoT data strategy leaves many businesses surveyed struggling to extract full value from their IoT data.
A more strategic, ambitious and open approach to gathering and sharing non-sensitive data could unlock substantial benefits for business struggling to make the most of IoT projects.
Collecting and sharing the right data at the right time enables companies and their partners to take better, more proactive decisions across the value chain to optimise operations as soon as a problem occurs, or even anticipate and mitigate it before it happens. Such data driven insight can help businesses reduce waste, increase productivity, improve customer service and run more sustainable operations.
The research was based on the interviews of 450 global respondents across the agriculture, electrical utilities, mining, oil and gas, and transport and logistics sectors. According to the research, of those who worked in oil and gas, as many as 89% of respondents admit their organization does not use the data collected from IoT projects as effectively as it could.
This is despite high levels of IoT adoption overall. The most prevalent barriers are security and data privacy concerns, cited as a barrier by over half (53%) of all respondents, closely followed by a lag between data collection and availability (52%) and followed by the lack of an IoT data strategy (34%).
Accelerating IoT adoption over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the fact that many businesses’ data sharing strategies are not yet as advanced as they need to be. Currently, only 16% of all oil and gas organizations make non-sensitive IoT data available to anyone in their organization, and to their partners, to access and to use. Conversely, just over two in five (43%) limit the use of IoT data to certain departments involved in their IoT projects. However, this is set to change, with a larger proportion of oil and gas organizations (41%) shifting towards sharing data with their wider supply chain and far fewer (16%) planning on limiting IoT data to specific departments. This change is occurring as more businesses come to understand that the responsible and secure sharing of IoT data is a necessary step towards unlocking the maximum value of that data.
The research reveals that having a formal IoT data strategy is a vital step towards drawing the optimum benefits from the technology, ensuring data is produced, shared, and analysed between the right parties at the right time. Oil and gas organizations with a formal IoT strategy are far more likely to gather data points in their IoT projects in real time (68% of respondents compared to only 15% amongst organizations without an IoT strategy).
Continue reading: https://www.worldoil.com/news/2022/2/24/security-and-privacy-concerns-prevent-effective-use-of-iot-data-inmarsat-research-shows/

Most of us are unaware of the day-in-day-out pain that we suffer on behalf of antiquated tracking of vehicles. We stand in quasi-zombie lines with hundreds of weary owners awaiting paperwork from a government worker. We pay for more expensive insurance to cover the clandestine fraud occurring throughout our society. We unknowingly accept increased product prices to cover the costs of software recalls from cybersecurity hacks or skyrocketing product liability insurance. All of these appear as pocket change to an individual, yet amount to billions in waste in the aggregate.
A new day, though, has emerged in the life of the automotive industry: the beginnings of blockchain that, if cultivated, shall reap additional benefits. That said, considering 75% of the population has no idea what blockchain is and how this traditionally-financial-sector tech will transform businesses, let’s start with a definition, then explain its interesting introduction and finally the likely, future benefits.
The What’s and Why’s Of Blockchain
Long ago at … well … my birth, society only kept records via paper and filing cabinets. There were (and continue to be) several problems with such systems: 1) the entire process is manually intensive, 2) the information is not accessible outside of that location, 3) back-up systems are even more expensive (e.g., copying, sending) and frequently forgotten thereby making 4) restoring information from disasters nearly impossible.
Then along came the computer, and all of those problems went away. Sort of. If a local server wasn’t sufficiently backed-up there could still be issues, but the bigger concern was now cybersecurity. Any online ledger invited hackers to destroy or alter its information.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevetengler/2022/02/24/a-new-dawn-blockchain-tech-is-rising-on-the-auto-horizon/?sh=4345150c68af

As cost and expertise remain key barriers to scaling IoT security, new report calls for increased industry collaboration to speed adoption.
The PSA Certified 2022 Security Report predicts that this year will mark a turning point in securing the Internet of Things, as the industry collectively commits to addressing the historic lag between the rate of digital transformation and the speed of securing the ecosystem.
The annual barometer of industry perceptions and intentions around IoT security, now in its second year, surveyed 1,038 technology decision makers across Europe, USA, and APAC, and signals a positive turning point for security with organizations placing it at the center of IoT strategy and organizational culture. 90% of respondents have increased the importance placed on security in the past 12 months, almost 9 in 10 deem security in their top three business priorities and 42% of those rank building a ‘security-first culture’ as their top organizational priority.
The study indicates that increased consumer expectations and growing cyber risk are largely driving the change. Debunking the myth that consumers are purely driven by product features and price, a majority (83%) of respondents state they look for specific security credentials when buying connected products. Over a third of companies believe distributed working has increased the likelihood of an IoT hack and one in five respondents work for companies that had been victims of hacks due to vulnerabilities in third-party products or services.
Security positively impacts the bottom line but expertise remains a barrier
Not only is a security-first culture deemed critical to protecting businesses against cyber-risk, it’s also recognized as a driver of commercial value. Nearly all (96%) tech decision makers say that having security in their products positively impacts the bottom line, with nearly seven in ten citing they can charge a premium for built-in security.
Over half of respondents believe IoT security implementation makes people more likely to trust their products, four in ten claim that it helps them differentiate their product, enabling them to sell and ship in larger volumes.
Despite almost universal acceptance that IoT security commands a premium, nearly a third of those asked identified cost as inhibiting them from implementing stronger security, while perceived expense and a lack of ROI were the biggest barriers to conducting external lab testing. Only 31% of technology decision makers feel “very satisfied” with their level of security expertise in-house and ‘a lack of security specialists’ ranked in the top three barriers to IoT security.
“IoT security has moved well beyond the stage of early adopters and the direction of travel is clear: security is foundational, not optional,” said David Maidment, senior director, Secure Devices Ecosystem at Arm (a PSA Certified co-founder). “This report is an important reminder that security must be integrated into every device, process, company and culture if we are to take advantage of its potential as an enabler of digital transformation – and that continued industry collaboration around security best practice is critical to driving this forward.”
Guidance, education and certification will unlock IoT potential
The desire for guidance is higher than ever: 96% say they would be interested in an industry-led set of guidelines on IoT best practices – a considerably higher finding than the 84% in 2021. Security frameworks and step by step guides were ranked as the most useful tools for deploying secure products to market, underlining the criticality of education and support in shaping a more secure IoT.
Continue reading: https://iotbusinessnews.com/2022/02/24/47941-96-percent-of-tech-decision-makers-say-device-security-positively-impacts-the-bottom-line/

Learning how to code changed Baratang Miya's life.

Miya is the founder and head of GirlHype, a non-profit that empowers disadvantaged young women and girls to connect to the digital world, learn how to write code and build a career in tech.

Miya tells SciDev.Net that her message to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in December was that women must be included in internet governance to ensure that girls and women are not left behind.
Why focus on technology? What can coding offer girls and women that other fields can't?
You learn problem solving … and it builds girls' tenacity and resilience. They learn how to program and set content, you can't get that anywhere else. They live in these environments where the problems exist, and problems create opportunities. Somebody's looking out and says "there's a lot of issues in Africa." I'm looking at it and feeling like, "wow, so many opportunities in Africa and they need to be solved."
One graduate who stands out for me is a girl from Khayelitsha, a little town in South Africa. She came from poverty. She learnt HTML, CSS, went on to Python, and Java became her best language. She went straight from high school at age 18 to work for Microsoft as an intern. Within two years, she was living in one of the high suburbs of South Africa. Seeing her changing her whole family's life was mind-blowing.
Continue reading: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-women-leaders-internet.html

Men dominate computer science and a lot of other tech fields—which can discourage girls, as they do not see a lot of female role models. Here is some advice that I hope will inspire anybody.
DREAM BIG
Dreaming inspires the heart, motivating us to overcome the adamantine hurdles that inevitably arise. Seeing my mother’s hard work and success as a physician, I dreamed of being an engineer when I was in high school. I was inspired by the success of my family members who are well-recognized and decorated for their research in the field of medicine.
In the early 1940s, my grandmother was the first woman in the entire Indian state of Jind, India, to earn an undergraduate degree. My parents were awarded the B.C. Roy Award, the highest honor doctors can receive in India, from the country’s president. My father also received the Padma Shri Award, which recognizes citizens’ contributions in various fields including arts, education, science, and others.
After completing my engineering bachelor’s degree at Thapar University in Patiala, India, I started working as a software developer. Despite my 60-hour workweeks, I made it a priority to pursue a postgraduate diploma in finance and information technology, to grow in my career.
Continue reading: https://spectrum.ieee.org/moms-in-stem-role-models

Mary-Ann Russon, a BBC technology of business reporter recently asked: “What can we do to get more women into coding?” My answer is “lots”, but if you work in the tech industry, you might not want to hear it.
I’ve been programming and teaching it most of my life. The demands of conceptualizing problems, finding solutions, crafting symbols a computer can execute, then testing and making that usable by another human are generally underestimated. What we call “coding” is one somewhat overrated part of a larger skillset that takes 10 to 20 years to master.
The highest attainment is purpose, not just knowing what you’re doing but why you’re doing it. Sadly, the word “hacker”, once preferred by internet founders, is damaged by misuse. Its friendlier replacement “coding” omits the playful, curious, creative, interpersonal and moral aspects  of our work, and so obscures a grander socio-political reality.
So what is coding? Is it science? Engineering? As a computer scientist and electronic engineer with deep roots in physics and math, I can assure you it’s really neither. But don’t take my word for it. Revered computer scientist Donald Knuth titled his lifelong work, an impeccable grimoire of algorithms before which all mortal computer scientists bow, The Art of Computer Programming – note the word “art”. Meanwhile, two of the greatest instructors of code, Hal Abelson and Gerald Sussman, tell us that programming is a form of “creative magic”.
Continue reading: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-do-we-get-more-women-coding-fix-how-its-taught-and-used

Today’s Woman in Tech: Andrea Nagel, Product Leader, Digital Transformation at VMware Tanzu Labs
Andrea Nagel is a Product Leader at VMware Tanzu Labs, where she focuses on Digital Transformation projects, particularly in App Development & Modernization. Andrea has over 10 years’ experience in product management for a range of companies, and is driven by a desire to build and retain diverse, successful teams within the product field.
When did you become interested in technology? What first got you interested in tech?
My interest in technology started when I was a kid playing with devices we had at home. I was excited by the creative side of computers and digital games, and enjoyed sketching out concepts and ideas for new games. I also spent a lot of time making movies with a simple Movie Maker CD Rom.
As I got older, I found I gravitated towards technology when opportunities came up. I remember jumping at the chance to build an online magazine at university – I taught myself basic HTML & CSS to win the job. So, the interest was always there, from an early age.
How did you end up in your career path? What obstacles did you have to overcome?
Initially, I started my career in marketing and made the move into product management later on. I always wanted to work and collaborate with the product team and was encouraged to do so through the support of an amazing head of product that I’d worked with.
For me, the biggest obstacles were knowledge, access, and confidence. I initially assumed I would have needed to study a technical discipline to work in technology and as a result, alternative pathways to a career in technology were not obvious to me.
Continue reading: https://jaxenter.com/women-in-tech-nagel-176723.html

When I was working on my book Breaking the Gender Code, it was my son who helped me to see that the biases around gender are a type of coding, inspired by his own computer coding lessons at school. We’re coded by the Gender Code to see men and women as intrinsically different. And to lean into stereotypes around men being better at STEM and women being better at creative and caring roles.
So in honor of IWD 20222, here’s five ways we need to break the bias and ditch the out of date Gender Code:
1. Early intervention matters
Gender stereotyping starts from birth, with studies revealing toddlers are spoken to differently, based on their gender. Boys are typically spoken to about counting and numbers as much as three times more than girls, and another study found that in museums, boys are engaged with 2-3 times more than girls.
By setting these biases and limiting beliefs early, we’re clipping the wings of young girls who might actually love a future working in technology and STEM.
Break the Bias: Babies and children are naturally curious, so encourage their natural curiosity and nurture their unique interests, rather than looking at them through a gender lens. Encourage girls in primary and high school to see tech and science as exciting prospects for jobs and careers, while at the same time encouraging boys to consider more ‘caring’ careers rather than being pigeon-holed into traditionally male roles.
For leaders, decision makers and people who have the power to effect change in tech businesses:
2. Hiring more women
While we’re seeing more women in tech roles and interviewing for tech roles, there’s still a huge barrier for women in terms of unconscious and conscious bias in the hiring process.
Diversity and gender targets can help with this, but we need to break the biases and remove any barriers to women entering the sector.
Break the Bias: Putting forward anonymous applications for jobs that don’t mention name/gender can help, and so can looking at female-only recruitment for roles, in order to level out the playing field.
Continue reading: https://womenlovetech.com/5-reasons-to-break-the-bias-around-women-in-tech-for-iwd/

Intelligent technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI), vast amounts of data, and machine learning are increasingly becoming an integral part of our everyday life. This is no longer the future; instead, it is a present-day reality that has already occurred.
Despite individuals having different opinions about artificial intelligence, it is impossible to deny that technology presents us with enormous prospects. Indeed, this is particularly true in economic terms since this sector is of interest to both commercial firms and government entities. Here are a few of the most significant benefits associated with artificial intelligence, which can substantially impact business and the workplace.
1. Analytics in Real-Time
One of the most significant benefits of artificial intelligence for business is handling large amounts of data and evaluating it in real-time. Businesses may make critical choices and respond considerably more quickly due to this method, ensuring that the company's competitive position stays strong. This information may be made available to any end consumers in certain places. For example, drivers may get real-time information on traffic jams depending on their location and alter their routes accordingly in the transportation business.
2. Further development of IoT
You have previously seen why you should invest in IoT development. The prospects that artificial intelligence (AI) provides to the industries mentioned above add yet another compelling argument to the list. Because these areas are intimately connected, any advancement in one place will positively impact the others.
IoT devices based on AI-enabled platforms are becoming more popular, which may pave the way for groundbreaking technological breakthroughs in the near future. This act will have a positive significance on both enterprises and consumers.
Continue reading: https://www.indianweb2.com/2022/02/top-7-unmatched-benefits-of-artificial.html

That's according to a recent World Health Organization policy brief explaining that data used by A.I. in healthcare can be unrepresentative of older people. A.I. is a product of its algorithms, the brief explains, and can draw ageist conclusions if the data that feeds the algorithms is skewed toward younger individuals. This could affect, for example, telehealth tools used to predict illness or major health events in a patient. It could also provide inaccurate data for drug development. Ultimately, not including older adults in the development process for A.I. can make it harder to get them to adopt new A.I. applications in the future.
"To ensure that A.I. technologies play a beneficial role, ageism must be identified and eliminated from their design, development, use and evaluation," Alana Officer, Unit Head, Demographic Change and Healthy Ageing at WHO writes in a summary of the report. She added that the biases of society are often replicated in A.I technologies.
Here are eight ways to make sure A.I. doesn't discriminate against older consumers, as listed in the WHO policy brief.
1. Include older consumers in the design of A.I. technologies.
When developing any A.I. technology, make sure you have older people participating in any focus groups and in giving product feedback.
Continue reading: https://www.inc.com/anna-meyer/ageism-artificial-intelligence-world-health-organization.html

There’s no denying AI made immense progress in 2021. Moving into 2022, as the CEO of a global AI company creating industrial-grade solutions, it’s looking as though, while innovation will endure, critical advancements won’t necessarily be from the technology itself but more in the way it’s utilized and operationalized. Digitalization implementation is about to hit significant strides, particularly in major sectors with integral impacts on human lives. There’s no limit to what the future holds as AI and machine learning (ML) work their way into our world’s biggest industries.
Common Ground In 2022: Energy, Healthcare, Aerospace, Supply Chain And Construction
AI will prove itself instrumental in the transformational phase confronting these sectors in 2022 and will lead the way when it comes to compelling approaches for elevating entire industries.
1. Energy
AI has already commenced digitalization efforts across the energy industry with promising prospects for results in 2022 that will look to more optimized operations with greater efficiency and sustainability. For example, AI companies are creating and implementing decision-support software within major energy players’ refineries designed to make timely, explainable recommendations that empower operators to close profitability gaps in real time, maximizing the efficiency of entire operations and resulting in increased sustainability as a critically important byproduct, considering regulations on the sector are only expected to expand.
When discussing the impact of AI and other digital solutions on the industry, according to McKinsey & Company, “Asset productivity increases of up to 20% are possible, and overall maintenance costs may be reduced by up to 10%.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/02/24/the-top-five-sectors-where-ai-is-poised-to-make-huge-industrial-impacts-in-2022/?sh=463826442f9c

Many large enterprises use one form or another of a supply chain application to help manage their supply chains. Supply chain vendors have been touting their investments in artificial intelligence (AI) for the last several years. In the course of updating our annual research on the supply chain planning market, I talked to executives across the industry. Alex Pradhan, Product Strategy Leader John Galt Solutions, told me that “all planning vendors have bold marketing around AI.” But the trick is to find suppliers with “field-proven AI/ML algorithms” that “have been delivered at scale.”
Further, while artificial intelligence helps solve certain types of problems, Jay Muelhoefer - the chief marketing officer at Kinaxis pointed out - optimization and heuristics work better for other types of planning problems. This article, which is focused on the different types of artificial intelligence used and the types of problems they are solving, is aimed at helping practitioners cut through the hype.
Let’s start with a definition: any device that can perceive its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal is engaged in some form of artificial intelligence (AI). AI can refer to several different types of math. But, in the supply chain realm, machine learning (ML) is where most of the activity surrounding artificial intelligence has been focused.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2022/02/24/companies-improve-their-supply-chains-with-artificial-intelligence/?sh=1ab7eb4b3c86

Achieving success in AI adoption was never going to be easy, but the past few years have brought significant progress, with McKinsey & Company reporting that many businesses are starting to see the value, including impact on revenues. Put simply, we may be entering a new phase on the artificial intelligence journey.
In 2020, there was actually “no increase in AI adoption,” according to McKinsey’s The State of AI (published in November of that year); rather, companies were “capturing value from AI at the enterprise level” in terms of revenue and cost reductions, with some even attributing 20% or more of their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to AI.
Following the Covid-19 outbreak, PwC has found that 52% of businesses accelerated their AI adoption plans, with 86% saying that it was becoming a “mainstream technology” in 2021. Many companies are now embarking on AI journeys, but there’s a difference this time: they’re not going into it blind. It’s now a more familiar technology, and rather than being a “bright, shiny object,” is becoming central to organizations.
The problem with AI adoption
The journey to achieving full value from AI will be longer and messier than in most technology transformations. The data, tech and talent involved will impact various functions across your organization, as well as those you partner with.
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/416119

Walgreens and Wing Aviation tested delivery drones in Texas last year after work first began in 2019. The U.S. aviation authority will soon begin field tests for routine flights of drones beyond the visual line of sight of pilots, a capability supported by industry. (Walgreens)
Field-testing of small drone traffic management in airspace below 400 feet will begin this spring, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announced earlier this month. Testing is expected to last into 2023.
Test results could have a far-reaching impact on industrial users of drones. The FAA will use insights from the tests to develop new policies and help industry groups develop updated standards to allow drones to routinely fly beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS, of their operators while also not under air traffic control.  
FAA and industry partners will run multiple drone flights in realistic test scenarios to learn how to manage drone traffic in different environments. The main objective is to find ways to safely integrate drones into the national airspace.
The agency created a BVLOS Aviation rulemaking committee in June 2021 to provide recommendations for regulations for normal flights that are safe, scalable and economically viable while not under air traffic control.
Such flights are allowed today with waivers or exemptions, a spokesperson told Fierce Electronics, and the FAA has approved about 189 waivers for BVLOS operations. Drone pilots must provide a detailed risk analysis and risk-mitigation strategy. “Evaluations and approvals of waiver applications for these types of complex operations can take significant time to ensure the operation can be conducted safely,” the spokesperson added.
Industrial users of drones have been pushing for BVLOS operations for years and see the potential for GPS mapping and AI to help guide drones when out sight of operators.  For example, in a disaster response scenario there might be the need to fly over an area out of the view of the operator that is hard to reach on foot. Package delivery via drone can run over longer distances with BVLOS increasing the economic benefit of such a service.
The FAA has granted Part 135 certification to allow flights by three drone air carriers, with the first granted to UPS Flight Forward in September 2019. Its first package delivery by drone was a flight of medical supplies at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“As the FAA works to safely integrate drones in the National Airspace System, the agency is taking a risk-based approach to assessing current regulatory requirements for proposed aircraft operations, safety, aircraft capabilities handling and impacts on airspace capacity,” the FAA spokesperson said.
“The FAA’s number one priority remains safety as drones are integrated…The FAA is encouraging innovation and working with industry, state, local and trial governments to identify the societal benefits of drones.”
Continue reading: https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/faa-begin-field-tests-drones-flying-beyond-line-sight