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Daily Archives: February 5, 2022
Jacinda Ardern: Our plan to reconnect New Zealand to the world – The Spinoff
Posted: February 5, 2022 at 5:31 am
The prime minister today gave a speech outlining the five-step plan to reopen the countrys borders and close the MIQ system. This is what she said.
Kia ora koutou katoa
It is an honour to be hosted by Mind Lab in conjunction with Business New Zealand today. A special thank you and acknowledgement to CEO, Frances Valintine.
I recall first meeting Frances several years ago when she was chief executive of the media design school. It would be fair to say that those several years now feel like another lifetime entirely.
And thats probably because many of us feel like time is in two parts. There was life before, and now life with Covid.
Butthat also means there will be life after Covid too. A life where we have adapted. Where we have some normality back, and where the weather can once again take its rightful place as our primary topic of conversation.
We are well on our way to reaching that destination. Were just not quite there yet.
Today I want to talk about the next set of changes that will take us a long way on that journey back to a new normal, and that is our reconnection with the world.
I can vividly remember the early days of the Covid pandemic. I recall the emergency cabinet meeting where we discussed the very first border closure which in the first stages was country by country.I remember the moment we decided to require every traveller to self-isolate. I remember the cases that arose from people who then didnt self-isolate. And I remember the establishment of our managed isolation and quarantine system on the 10th of April almost two years ago.
Its easy to hear the word MIQ and immediately associate it with heartache. There is no question that for New Zealand it has been one of the hardest parts of the pandemic. But the reason that it is right up there as one of the toughest things we have experienced, is in part because large-scale loss of life is not.
The anguish of MIQ has been real, and heartbreaking. But the choice to use it undeniably saved lives.
Some of the letters I have received over the past two years have summed up the hard trade-off that had to be made.One just this summer captured that well. It said: As a Kiwi living in Japan, I was sitting in my two-plus year remote-work home, thinking of the happy day when I could fly back and see my family when it made me wonder if anyone took the time to say thank you. While I desperately want to return and visit my retired folks, I am heartened by the rules and guidelines in place Thanks for keeping them all safe.
MIQ meant not everyone could come home when they wanted to. But it also meant that Covid could not come in when it wanted to either.
And thats meant we have been able to build our defences.
To become one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.
To set up public health measures that we know work.
To get our children vaccinated and our adults boosted.
To keep our economy strong.
To see people stay in work with unemployment at a record low of 3.2%.
To return growth to pre-Covid levels and a return to surplus three years ahead of forecast.
To have debt well below many of the countries we compare ourselves with, using the IMF measure of 24.1% in 2024, compared to Australia at over 44%, the UK at more than 98% and the Euro Area at 80%.
All of these markers of success in this pandemic that has hit everyone around the world, they have been hard-earned by every Kiwi here, and every Kiwi abroad too.
But the tools we used yesterday to help us battle this health crisis wont stay the same.
You might remember that before omicron arrived we talked about moving to self-isolation for returning Kiwis. On the 17th of January we were due to start that new way of operating with Kiwis travelling to and from Australia first.
With omicrons arrival, we pushed that change in border settings out, to give ourselves the chance to roll out boosters a chance most other countries never had. And a chance for Kiwis to take a breath after a hard year, and prepare for the next phase.
Yesterday we reduced the time between second doses and the booster which means over 3 million New Zealanders are able to get boosted from this weekend and that, by the end of February, 3,345,173 people will be eligible to be boosted. Thats 92% of the population over 18.
With our community better protected we must then turn to the importance of reconnection. Families and friends need to reunite. Our businesses need skills to grow. Exporters need to travel to make new connections.
Its time to move again.
And so today, in five steps, we move forward with our plan to reconnect New Zealand to the world.
Beginning with step 1.
Today I am announcing that fully vaccinated Kiwis and other currently eligible travellers from Australia will be able to travel to New Zealand from 11.59pm Sunday 27 February, and instead of going into MIQ, will be able to self-isolate.
In step 2, just two weeks later, fully vaccinated New Zealanders and other currently eligible travellers from the rest of the world will also be able to travel into New Zealand without going through MIQ.
The two weeks between each of these steps has been requested by our public health advisors to give time for our systems to adjust for the likelihood of more cases in our community, and for our border systems to keep scaling up in the safest way possible.
At step 2 at 11.59pm on Sunday 13 March, there will also be an expanded border exception for critical workers, and skilled workers earning at least 1.5 times the median wage, who will also be eligible to enter New Zealand, along with highly skilled workers family members who may have been separated from their loved ones.
This means that health workers, farm managers, horticultural workers, tech sector professionals, those working for accounting services, in education and construction will all be eligible to enter New Zealand, self-isolate for a short period and then go about their business. Adding to the more than 17,000 critical workers who have already come to New Zealand since our borders closed.
Our working holiday schemes will also reopen in stages from step 2.
Step 3 begins from 11.59pm on Tuesday 12 April. Here we further extend our border extension to include a large international student cohort of up to 5,000 students for entry ahead of semester two and temporary visa holders who still meet relevant visa requirements.
Step 4 sees the biggest expansion yet, and includes our Australian cousins and all other visitors and business travellers who can normally enter New Zealand without a visa. This stage is likely to begin when we have much larger case numbers than we have now. For planning, we anticipate this stage will begin no later than July. I want to place strong emphasis on this being the latest we expect this to begin. There is a high likelihood of this date coming forward as we progress through the next stage of the pandemic.
From July those on the new accredited employer work visa will open including for workers offshore. At this point, the critical worker border exception will be removed. The new work visa will be mainly available to workers earning over the median wage as part of the Immigration Rebalance changes. The minister of immigration will have more to say about this and other immigration rebalance measures soon.
And finally, step 5 begins in October and includes all other visitors and students who require a visa to enter New Zealand, with normal visa processing resuming.
Two important questions I know travellers and Kiwis will have. The first is isolation requirements.
While we will no longer require people to enter managed isolation, at this stage travellers will be asked to follow broadly the same requirements we have in New Zealand for close contacts at the time of their travel. Thats because, as travellers, it is highly likely that theyll come in contact with the highly transmissible omicron variant on their journey, a fact you can see in our current numbers at the border, even with pre departure testing in place.
That means currently, returning New Zealanders will need to self-isolate for 10 days. But as the isolation period drops for close contacts here in New Zealand, as it does in phase two of our omicron response, so too will returnees only need to isolate for seven days.
And so our system for travellers and contacts will be broadly aligned.
When it comes to testing, all arrivals will be given three rapid antigen tests upon arrival at the airport, to take home. One for use on day zero/one, and one for use on day five/six, with one extra for backup. That gives us the best chance of identifying cases that have come across the border.
If a positive result is returned at any point, returnees will be asked to get a follow up PCR test at a community testing station. That will help us to monitor any possible variants that may emerge. It will also help us assess when its safe to lift self-isolation requirements.
I know while many will celebrate todays reopening, others will feel anxious about the resumption of people across our border. But here are the safeguards, we will be as boosted as possible at the end of February, the phasing reduces the risk of a surge in cases, and travellers will be testing and isolating, with MIQ remaining for the unvaccinated. This means we will know quickly if a traveller has the virus including any new variants.
And on that point I want to note that we will be continually monitoring the need for and the value of self-isolation.The strong advice from our public health officials is that we still need it to manage our way through omicron, but there will be a time in the not too distant future when that will not be the case.For now though we must continue to heed the public health advice that has served us so well.
Overall, opening back up in this managed way balances inflows of travellers so people can reunite and fill our workforce shortages, while also ensuring our healthcare system can manage an increase in cases. After all, our strategy with omicron is to slow the spread, and our borders are part of that.
As for MIQ, it will continue to be used for high-risk travellers such as those who are unvaccinated.
That means the Defence Force will begin the process of withdrawing from MIQ, with some hotels returning to traditional use to support the return of our tourists. A core quarantine capacity will be maintained that can be scaled up as required, which will form the basis of a future National Quarantine Service. More on this in the future.
But for now, I do want to pause and say thank you to a very special group of people. Our MIQ workers. For almost two years you have welcomed home over 200,000 Kiwis and critical workers, and 3,600 people from within our community who have had Covid-19. Thats more than the population of Napier, Masterton, Invercargill, Whanganui, Wanaka and Otaki put together.
You have done it with care, professionalism and at considerable risk to yourselves. You worked at the frontline of Covid when there was no way to protect yourself other than rigorous infection controls some of which meant you gave up your normal lives to protect others. I cant imagine the burden that presented.
No story for me sums up what you have done better, than that shared with me by a Kiwi who came home after spending the first wave of Covid overseas. As she stepped on New Zealand soil, a member of the Defence Force gave the newest arrivals a briefing and concluded with: Welcome home, you are all safe now. It was enough to make that returning Kiwi break down and cry.
Thank you. You made all of us safe at a time when we needed you most. And we owe you a debt of gratitude.
But for now, its time to keep moving.
To continue with our plan that has seen us through each stage of Covid, and beyond.
Reconnecting New Zealand is of course more than the family and friends who will be reunited.It is also a critical element in our plan for a high wage, low carbon economy.The New Zealand economy has shown remarkable resilience through Covid-19, and I am determined that we will build on this base to deliver prosperity and security to all New Zealanders.
Our exporters have worked hard during the pandemic, achieving some incredible results and returns. I am proud of the contribution that we made to the air freight subsidy scheme that has kept planes flying in and out of New Zealand. I am equally proud that we have secured a free trade agreement with the UK at a crucial time in our Covid recovery. And as we scale up the movement of our people, the physical support of our exporters will only grow.
I see this as a key part of my role, and thats why I am confirming today that I will lead trade delegations and trade-supporting visits into four key markets this year Australia, Asia, the United States and Europe.
New Zealand is in demand. Our exports are at record highs, people want to live and work here, international students want to study here, our friends and whnau want to return.
Todays reconnecting plan will help grow an already strong export base, bring in new skills, address the shortages standing in the way of growth, and build new connections with the world.
Its part of moving forward. But that doesnt mean a return to life before Covid when we can be better than that.
Covid laid bare our unsustainable reliance on temporary migrant labour. Immigration will continue to be a part of our economic story, but we have the opportunity now to build resilience into our workforces while also attracting the skills and talent we need.
We have a chance to do things differently.
I hear much talk of a return to business as usual. But we are better than business as usual.
And in the same way we cut our own path in our Covid response, saving lives and our economy, we must now carve our own recovery. On our terms. A recovery that began with $23 billion invested in our Covid economic support schemes.
A recovery where our focus is on creating higher wage jobs through lifting our productivity, growing our skills and investing in our innovation.It is a future where the environmental challenge of climate change is matched by the economic opportunities of low emissions technology and regenerative agriculture.
And thats a job we have already started.
Underpinning our approach is a record investment in infrastructure. We will continue to push forward having already secured record numbers of building consents and the largest house building programme in modern times.
Having already set out a plan to future proof Auckland transport links, including an additional Waitemat Harbour crossing, CBD to airport light rail and a linked-up rapid transport network.
We have also started the work on rebuilding our hospitals, and our schools, and securing our renewable energy supply.
And weve already made a dent in upskilling New Zealanders for jobs of the future, with 171,000 people taking up free trades training, including 81,000 apprenticeships, and Industry Training Plans that make that crucial connection between training our workers of the future, for the jobs of the future.
In fact, when we look back in 20 years time at this period in our countrys history, I dont want people to just see Covid. I want them to see an economy and country that was fundamentally repositioned to become more sustainable and resilient and taking on the challenges of poverty, inequality, climate change and mental health, problems the world is grappling with.
These are challenges I know we can tackle head on because we already are.
But as I conclude today, I want to acknowledge that we are in a new phase in our Covid response. Covid as an illness hasnt touched many of us to date. But with the transmissibility of omicron we know we will experience the virus more directly. But the difference here is that we have all the tools possible now to prepare.
We are vaccinated, increasingly boosted, and continue to prepare ourselves at home and work with a plan.
And so now it is time to move forward together, safely.
More here:
Jacinda Ardern: Our plan to reconnect New Zealand to the world - The Spinoff
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John Roughan: Why light rail is the wrong road for New Zealand – New Zealand Herald
Posted: at 5:31 am
The Government has chosen its preferred option for a new mass transit service from the city centre to Mngere. It's a light rail line that will run in tunnels all the way from Wynyard Quarter to Mt Roskill.
OPINION:
There is something to commend in the latest version of light rail for Auckland. If we ignore the additional cost for the moment, as this Government seems blithely able to do, putting a line underground is vastly preferable to light rail on streets.
It removes the nightmare of trams running between lanes of traffic in already congested streets such as Dominion Rd, stopping with the traffic at intersection lights and forcing traffic to stop for people crossing to tram stops in the middle of the road.
That was a nightmare that could only be dreamed up by city planners who believe light rail marketing art depicting streets miraculously cleared of all but the odd car. Next time these dreamers are in London, Tokyo, Melbourne or anywhere with an enviable urban rail system, they should look at the streets. They are full of cars.
The reason should be obvious most people prefer to travel by car. It is not until their route becomes too congested for their patience that they might use public transport, and if enough of them switch to create available space on the road, others will quickly fill.
Road traffic thus tends to remain at an optimum tolerable capacity and, as Aucklanders know, the optimum is fairly high. Traffic on the city's motorways is crawling at peak times. Drivers constantly complain about this but their actions belie their words. They continue to take the car.
They will say, if guilted, they would use public transport if it was any good, which means they have probably never tried it. Auckland's bus service is surprisingly good. I live in a small, fairly distant suburb and a bus comes every 20 minutes. It passes the Northern Busway where I've waited at most three minutes for a connection that gets to the CBD in eight minutes.
Those who say they would use public transport if it was better are probably comparing it to their car, which the best public transport could never match for convenience, comfort, privacy and the ability to go anywhere they might need to go. I usually take the car.
Opponents of more roading implicitly acknowledge its optimum use when they point out, quite rightly, new roads quickly fill up with cars. But they do not realise the same thing happens if they reduce a busy road's capacity. Displaced traffic will find another.
So it is better that the latest light rail scheme puts the line underground from the city to Mt Roskill, before surfacing to continue alongside (not on) the motorway to the airport. But the cost cannot be ignored. The long tunnel would lift the line's estimate from $9 billion to $15 billion.
14 Jan, 2022 04:00 PMQuick Read
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Whenever we talk billions, we are making a very big bet for an economy or our size. The right infrastructure can add to a country's productive capacity, the wrong sort subtracts wealth. Broadband cable has created wealth, railways lose it. Our national railway survives from one capital injection to the next and governments no longer pretend the next tranche will turn it around.
Rail costs more than it can earn because fixed tracks severely limit the destinations trains can serve. Beats me why anyone would want to convert the Northern Busway to a railway, which has been the plan. Buses can, and do, range more widely when required.
But whether we're contemplating buses or trains, this is a bad time to be making a major investment in public transport. As everyone has noticed, buses are being driven around Auckland these days mostly empty because the roads are within their optimum capacity.
Lockdowns have given more people a taste for working at home. This looks likely to be the most significant social change wrought by Covid-19.
Roads will be less congested, cars will continue to be preferred, owned or on-call, with climate friendlier fuel, self-driven or with sensors enabling drivers to form trains, joining and exiting at will. That, I suspect, is the future for urban transport.
Beware of "visions" though. It's not 10 years since Len Brown persuaded Auckland a rail tunnel from the CBD to Mt Eden was the key to an integrated public transport system.
Now, with that tunnel under way, we're told we need another, longer, duplicating a stretch of an existing line.
Its viability depends on persuading more people to live in an area of the western isthmus that has never attracted much development. I doubt the reason was a lack of public transport. The municipal bus depot was right there.
Let bigger, richer countries indulge in light rail. We are the smallest and most remote of trading nations, we can't afford to lumber our trim little economy with unnecessary costs.
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John Roughan: Why light rail is the wrong road for New Zealand - New Zealand Herald
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Kiwis stranded in Australia resort to legal action against NZ Government – 9Homes
Posted: at 5:31 am
In a small caravan in regional Western Australia, stranded Kiwi holiday-maker Ashley Smith is hunched over his laptop screen.
"This is it, let the hunger games begin," he says to himself.
Mr Smith is desperate to secure a place for himself and his wife, Kerry, in the New Zealand Government's hotel quarantine system through a controversial online lottery system.
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"I've had to get up at 4am so I could enter the lottery. Even in my own mind, I knew I would fail," Mr Smith told A Current Affair.
Mr Smith is one of the thousands of so-called grounded Kiwis, stranded Down Under by Jacinda Ardern's strict government border measures.
"We are like a black plague on the outside trying to get back in," Mr Smith said.
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Mareta Cardwell and her husband Sio moved out of their Sydney home, withdrew their kids from school, and sold the car to be closer to family in Christchurch.
But they've been stonewalled by the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) lottery system which only offers up 4500 places every week for around 30,000 hopefuls.
"It is like you see on the TV as far as numbers all jumble up and a ball comes out and that's your number," Ms Cardwell said.
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Some personal tales are harrowing, with New Zealanders either holidaying or living overseas unable to return home to be with dying family members, or to be part of milestone moments.
Last month the situation was made even worse when NZ stopped the lottery system altogether amid the Omicron scare.
No one has any idea when a new prized tranche of quarantine spots will be offered up next.
READ MORE: Watchdog crackdown on retailers price gouging rapid antigen tests
"There's meant to be an announcement in late February, but they are not going to announce you can come," Mr Cardwell said.
Ninety per cent of New Zealanders are vaccinated and just eight people with the virus are in hospital.
Ms Ardern's tough stance to combat COVID-19 has been described as draconian and dysfunctional.
"The fact is there is day after day, there are too many areas where this is a demonstrable failure," former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters told A Current Affair.
The lockout has triggered unprecedented legal action.
The "Grounded Kiwis" group has raised over $180,000 to take the NZ Government to court in a last-ditch bid to cross the ditch.
"We are alleging the way they have operated the system amounts to a breach of the bill or rights', Grounded Kiwis spokesperson Alexandra Birt said.
The case is due to be heard in the High Court on February 14 and 15.
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Kiwis stranded in Australia resort to legal action against NZ Government - 9Homes
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New Zealand-born Halafihi to make Italy debut in France Six Nations opener – The42
Posted: at 5:31 am
FORMER HURRICANES BACK-ROWER Toa Halafihi will make his Italy debut in this weekends Six Nations trip to France.
Halafihi, 28, qualifies for the Azzurri on residency grounds after joining Treviso in 2018.
The number eight, originally from Gisborne on New Zealands north island, benefits from injuries to the likes of Jake Polledri and Johan Meyer as well as Sergio Parisses potential return later in the tournament.
His club team-mate and winger Tommaso Menoncello is another uncapped player named in Kieran Crowleys starting lineup for Sundays fixture.
Here is the @federugby squad that will challenge @FranceRugby at the Stade de France this Sunday. #FRAvITA #GuinnessSixNations pic.twitter.com/FQ204nUwMl
Two further Treviso squad members in 21-year-old flanker Manuel Zuliani and teenage fly-half Leonardo Marin are set to win their first caps from the bench.
The work done in these weeks of preparation, towards the start of the Six Nations, has been intense and of quality, Crowley said.
There is a lot of energy in the group and awareness of taking the field in one of the most important tournaments in the world of rugby and sport.
Earlier on Friday, France head coach Fabien Galthie told AFP he had tested positive for Covid-19 and team manager Raphael Ibanez will take hands on charge of the team for the game in Paris.
15. Edoardo Padovani
14. Tommaso Menoncello
13. Juan Ignacio Brex
12. Marco Zanon
11. Monty Ioane
10. Paolo Garbisi
9. Stephen Varney
1.Danilo Fischetti
2. Gianmarco Lucchesi
3. Tiziano Pasquali
4. Niccolo Cannone
5. Federico Ruzza
6. Sebastian Negri
7. Michele Lamaro (captain)
8. Toa Halafihi
Get closer to the stories that matter with exclusive analysis, insight and debate in The42 Membership.
Replacements:
16. Epalahame Faiva
17. Ivan Nemer
18. Giosue Zilocchi
19. Marco Fuser
20. Giovanni Pettinelli
21. Manuel Zuliani
22. Callum Braley
23. Leonardo Marin
AFP 2022
Source: The42 Rugby Weekly/SoundCloud
Bernard Jackman, Murray Kinsella and Gavan Casey discuss Irelands 23 to face Wales, look ahead to the Six Nations generally, and give their thoughts on Malakai Fekitoas move from Wasps to Munster.
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New Zealand-born Halafihi to make Italy debut in France Six Nations opener - The42
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Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: Boost the Growth in 2022 – IoT For All
Posted: at 5:29 am
Industry leaders around the world are using artificial intelligence to enhance their business with marketing technology. Whether its analyzing consumer interests and data, guiding sales decisions and social media campaigns or other applications, artificial intelligence is changing the way we understand marketing in many industries. Lets talk about the latest ways that businesses can utilize these powerful tools to achieve their marketing goals.
Technology changes every day. A lot can change over several years, especially intrending artificial intelligence technologies. The same goes for AI in marketing applications. Understanding the basic ideas behind applications of AI in marketing solutions can generate unique ideas that can break new ground in various industries.
AI can help automate projects to make businesses more efficient. According to Accenture, the productivity of businesses can be improved by 40 percent when utilizing AI. This not only can save time and money but can enable your company to focus their efforts on providing quality experiences for customers rather than spending too much time moving things from one spreadsheet to another.
AI can also help minimize errors in marketing processes. Artificial intelligence can complete specialized tasks with greater efficiency than humans can so long as supervision and guidance are involved. Often in cases where AI fails to provide the right results, human error was involved in setting up the AI program with appropriate data or it was used in a way that was not intended.
Because AI can dramatically speed up the process of marketing campaigns, reduce costs, and improve efficiency, artificial intelligence is much more likely to result in an increased return on investment (ROI).
Artificial intelligence is a strong tool when used alongside high-quality data. Many companies have had positive results in the real world when combining their market research data with artificial intelligence. This enables them to do all sorts of things. A big part of this trending use case is target group segmentation. AI is far quicker and more efficient at performing this task than humans are.
By investigating their target audiences more deeply, businesses can make more personalized offers to them that they are more likely to accept.
When we examine how this looks up close, we can get a better understanding of how it works. A nationwide department store can take a look at the data theyve collected on their customers and narrow down their search to those interested in food. Using artificial intelligence, we can identify customers that have a strong preference for organic foods. By quickly using AI to analyze the habits and preferences of these consumers, campaigns can be tailored toward them with greater efficiency to improve sales.
Target group segmentation is one of the keystone elements of personalizing a marketing campaign, but there are many other ways that artificial intelligence can help businesses personalize experiences for their audiences and customers. According to Salesforce, 76 percent of customers want businesses to have a clear understanding of their personal expectations.
One way that businesses do this with AI is to use predictive marketing analytics. By having AI analyze data of past events, it can reasonably and accurately infer how performance will look in the future based on a variety of factors. More importantly, analyzing what users like most can be useful when looking to suggest products to them.
For example, Amazon is the champion of this strategy. When browsing on their site, Amazons artificial intelligence knows about what you have bought in the past. Based on this, it can suggest products to you in your feed. It also knows what other users like you are interested in, meaning that they can provide suggestions based on that activity. This results in very personalized suggestions that can lead to higher conversions.
Spotify also takes advantage of this to make more effective music suggestions for you. It also uses this data to invest in artists to create new music that will be generally liked by a wider audience on a broader scale.
However, most personalization methods with AI tend to start from the top-down and personalize to the individual instead of an entire group. The more that the system can understand the individual user, the more likely that conversions can be made. Every user has variations that differentiate them from the larger group, so no group marketing campaign will ever be as effective as a campaign that targets specific individuals and their own interests.
The ability to use artificial intelligence to predict the success of marketing campaigns and to better personalize experiences for users is a powerful technological trend that will continue for years to come. Adaptation to include this tool in your arsenal is critical for relevancy at scale.
One of the most difficult challenges of the onset of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was a surge in sales of various products by stockpilers. Shortages of toilet paper became a notorious meme on the Internet as stores struggled to maintain stock in the face of the buying panic. Eventually, stock would be controlled by buying limitations. However, there was an important lesson to be learned here: demand forecasting and dynamic pricing could have prevented a great deal of this struggle.
Earlier we established that artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for analyzing past data in order to predict future activity. The same principle can be applied here. Its possible that AI can be used to analyze consumer interests, world events, and other sources to determine if there will be a rise in demand for certain products.
Using the pandemic as an example, BlueDot is a program that already can analyze the likelihood of a disease spreading across the world. If worldwide or nationwide emergencies can be predicted in this manner, stores can automatically begin ordering more products like toilet paper, medicine, and more. Not only can this help maintain stock and improve sales for stores, but it can also help the public better manage the disaster and lead to a swifter recovery.
This can also be used to dynamically and automatically raise prices. This can be used to better control stock during times of high demand and panic buying, naturally dissuading customers from bulk buying beyond reasonable amounts, as well as optimizing revenue for your business.
Dynamic pricing and demand forecasting for every business is unique. From the types of items that you carry to the types of consumers that you are serving, a custom solution made by your team or by an external vendor may be the best option for creating a system that can accomplish your goals.
Providing unique and engaging content can be challenging. While AI can automatically generate content, it often can be more trouble than its worth.
Although this technology is improving and can be very effective in some contexts, a more widely accessible and reliable possibility is for AI to offer intelligent suggestions to human writers. AI-guided suggestions for writers form the basis of features in applications like Grammarly, Microsoft Editor, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Yoast, SEMRush, and more.
Adobe Premiere Pro uses AI for a variety of purposes, such as automatically matching colors and managing sound mixing against voiceovers. Whats great about content creation is that humans can create unique and interesting content that AI cannot, but AI can help us augment our talents to improve the quality of the final product.
AI can also help us with image generation and manipulation tasks:
All this can be done with the help of generative adversarial networks (GANs) that learn the structure of the complex real-world data examples and generate similar synthetic examples.
Does it mean that robots can replace designers? Absolutely not. The power ofAI in designis mostly about optimization and speed. Designers armed with AI tools can work faster and more effectively.
One particular avenue of AI in content creation comes from its role in marketing campaigns via email. eBay is a particularly good example of AI email marketing, utilizing a third-party service called Phrasee andnatural language processingto improve email open rates by 15.8 percent and improve clicks by 31.2 percent.
This technology is used to optimize the subject text and headline copy automatically to find the most effective variation to use with eBays audience. The AI-generated portions of the emails are attentive to the tone of voice to maximize their success.
Aside from the fact that natural language processing is improving as years go by, AI-based email marketing at its most basic can be automated with a series of A/B testing. However, the more demographic data and natural language processing that can be incorporated into the project, the better the results. Advanced artificial intelligence algorithms can improve the dynamic optimization of email marketing greatly, as seen in eBays case.
Ultimately, the future of AIs role in marketing technologies will be determined by imagination and innovation. Combining different technologies together can result in businesses outcompeting other leading players in the market for years. At the bare minimum, understanding whats already in use is important for bringing your company up to speed to remain relevant and competitive in the market.
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Artificial Intelligence Creeps on to the African Battlefield – Brookings Institution
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Even as the worlds leading militaries race to adopt artificial intelligence in anticipation of future great power war, security forces in one of the worlds most conflict-prone regions are opting for a more measured approach. In Africa, AI is gradually making its way into technologies such as advanced surveillance systems and combat drones, which are being deployed to fight organized crime, extremist groups, and violent insurgencies. Though the long-term potential for AI to impact military operations in Africa is undeniable, AIs impact on organized violence has so far been limited. These limits reflect both the novelty and constraints of existing AI-enabled technology.
Artificial intelligence and armed conflict in Africa
Artificial intelligence (AI), at its most basic, leverages computing power to simulate the behavior of humans that requires intelligence. Artificial intelligence is not a military technology like a gun or a tank. It is rather, as the University of Pennsylvanias Michael Horowitz argues, a general-purpose technology with a multitude of applications, like the internal combustion engine, electricity, or the internet. And as AI applications proliferate to military uses, it threatens to change the nature of warfare. According to the ICRC, AI and machine-learning systems could have profound implications for the role of humans in armed conflict, especially in relation to: increasing autonomy of weapon systems and other unmanned systems; new forms of cyber and information warfare; and, more broadly, the nature of decision-making.
In at least two respects, AI is already affecting the dynamics of armed conflict and violence in Africa. First, AI-driven surveillance and smart policing platforms are being used to respond to attacks by violent extremist groups and organized criminal networks. Second, the development of AI-powered drones is beginning to influence combat operations and battlefield tactics.
AI is perhaps most widely used in Africa in areas with high levels of violence to increase the capabilities and coordination of law enforcement and domestic security services. For instance, fourteen African countries deploy AI-driven surveillance and smart-policing platforms, which typically rely on deep neural networks for image classification and a range of machine learning models for predictive analytics. In Nairobi, Chinese tech giant Huawei has helped build an advanced surveillance system, and in Johannesburg automated license plate readers have enabled authorities to track violent, organized criminals with suspected ties to the Islamic State. Although such systems have significant limitations (more on this below), they are proliferating across Africa.
AI-driven systems are also being deployed to fight organized crime. At Liwonde National Park in Malawi, park rangers use EarthRanger software, developed by the late Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, to combat poaching using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics. The software detects patterns in poaching that the rangers might overlook, such as upticks in poaching during holidays and government paydays. A small, motion-activated poacher cam relies on an algorithm to distinguish between humans and animals and has contributed to at least one arrest. Its not difficult to imagine how such a system might be repurposed for counterinsurgency or armed conflict, with AI-enabled surveillance and monitoring systems deployed to detect and deter armed insurgents.
In addition to the growing use of AI within surveillance systems across Africa, AI has also been integrated into weapon systems. Most prominently, lethal autonomous weapons systems use real-time sensor data coupled with AI and machine learning algorithms to select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator. Depending on how that definition is interpreted, the first use of a lethal autonomous weapon system in combat may have taken place on African soil in March 2020. That month, logistics units belonging to the armed forces of the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar came under attack by Turkish-made STM Kargu-2 drones as they fled Tripoli. According to a United Nations report, the Kargu-2 represented a lethal autonomous weapons system because it had been programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and munition. Although other experts have instead classified the Kargu-2 as a loitering munition, its use in combat in northern Africa nonetheless points to a future where AI-enabled weapons are increasingly deployed in armed conflicts in the region.
Indeed, despite global calls for a ban on similar weapons, the proliferation of systems like the Kargu-2 is likely only beginning. Relatively low costs, tactical advantages, and the emergence of multiple suppliers have led to a booming market for low-and-mid tier combat drones currently being dominated by players including Israel, China, Turkey, and South Africa. Such drones, particularly Turkeys Bakratyar TB2, have been acquired and used by well over a dozen African countries.
While the current generation of drones by and large do not have AI-driven autonomous capabilities that are publicly acknowledged, the same cannot be said for the next generation, which are even less costly, more attritable, and use AI-assisted swarming technology to make themselves harder to defend against. In February, the South Africa-based Paramount Group announced the launch of its N-RAVEN UAV system, which it bills as a family of autonomous, multi-mission aerial vehicles featuring next-generation swarm technologies. The N-RAVEN will be able to swarm in units of up to twenty and is designed for technology transfer and portable manufacture within partner countries. These features are likely to be attractive to African militaries.
AIs limits, downsides, and risks
Though AI may continue to play an increasing role in the organizational strategies, intelligence-gathering capabilities, and battlefield tactics of armed actors in Africa and elsewhere, it is important to put these contributions in a broader perspective. AI cannot address the fundamental drivers of armed conflict, particularly the complex insurgencies common in Africa. African states and militaries may overinvest in AI, neglecting its risks and externalities, as well as the ways in which AI-driven capabilities may be mitigated or exploited by armed non-state actors.
AI is unlikely to have a transformative impact on the outbreak, duration, or mitigation of armed conflict in Africa, whose incidence has doubled over the past decade. Despite claims by its makers, there is little hard evidence linking the deployment of AI-powered smart cities with decreases in violence, including in Nairobi, where crime incidents have remained virtually unchanged since 2014, when the citys AI-driven systems first went online. The same is true of poaching. During the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer tourists and struggling local economies have fueled significant increases, overwhelming any progress that has resulted from governments adopting cutting-edge technology.
This is because, in the first place, armed conflict is a human endeavor, with many factors that influence its outcomes. Even the staunchest defenders of AI-driven solutions, such as Huawei Southern Africa Public Affairs Director David Lane, admit that they cannot address the underlying causes of insecurity such as unemployment or inequality: Ultimately, preventing crime requires addressing these causes in a very local way. No AI algorithm can prevent poverty or political exclusion, disputes over land or national resources, or political leaders from making chauvinistic appeals to group identity. Likewise, the central problems with Africas militariesendemic corruption, human rights abuses, loyalties to specific leaders and groups rather than institutions and citizens, and a proclivity for ill-timed seizures of powerare not problems that artificial intelligence alone can solve.
In the second place, the aspects of armed conflict that AI seems most likely to disruptremote intelligence-gathering capabilities and air powerare technologies that enable armies to keep enemies at arms-length and win in conventional, pitched battles. AIs utility in fighting insurgencies, in which non-state armed actors conduct guerilla attacks and seek to blend in and draw support from the population, is more questionable. To win in insurgencies requires a sustained on the ground presence to maintain order and govern contested territory. States cannot hope to prevail in such conflicts by relying on technology that effectively removes them from the fight.
Finally, the use of AI to fight modern armed conflict remains at a nascent stage. To date, the prevailing available evidence has documented how state actors are adopting AI to fight conflict, and not how armed non-state actors are responding. Nevertheless, states will not be alone in seeking to leverage autonomous weapons. Former African service members speculate that it is only a matter of time before before the deployment of swarms or clusters of offensive drones by non-state actors in Africa, given their accessibility, low costs, and existing use in surveillance and smuggling. Rights activists have raised the alarm about the potential for small, cheap, swarming slaughterbots, that use freely available AI and facial recognition systems to commit mass acts of terror. This particular scenario is controversial, but according to American Universitys Audrey Kurth Cronin, it is both technologically feasible and consistent with classic patterns of diffusion.
The AI armed conflict evolution
These downsides and risks suggest the continued diffusion of AI is unlikely to result in the revolutionary changes to armed conflict suggested by some of its more ardent proponents and backers. Rather, modern AI is perhaps best viewed as continuing and perhaps accelerating long-standing technological trends that have enhanced sensing capabilities and digitized and automated the operations and tactics of armed actors everywhere.
For all its complexity, AI is first and foremost a digital technology, its impact dependent on and difficult to disentangle from a technical triad of data, algorithms, and computing power. The impact of AI-powered surveillance platforms, from the EarthRanger software used at Liwonde to Huawei-supplied smart policing platforms, isnt just a result of machine-learning algorithms that enable human-like reasoning capabilities, but also on the ability to store, collect, process collate and manage vast quantities of data. Likewise, as pointed out by analysts such as Kelsey Atherton, the Kargu 2 used in Libya can be classified as an autonomous loitering munition such as Israels Harpy drone. The main difference between the Kargu 2 and the Harpy, which was first manufactured in 1989, is where the former uses AI-driven image recognition, the latter uses electro-optical sensors to detect and hone in on enemy radar emissions.
The diffusion of AI across Africa, like the broader diffusion of digital technology, is likely to be diverse and uneven. Africa remains the worlds least digitized region. Internet penetration rates are low and likely to remain so in many of the most conflict-prone countries. In Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and much of the Lake Chad Basin, internet penetration is below 20%. AI is unlikely to have much of an impact on conflict in regions where citizens leave little in the way of a digital footprint, and non-state armed groups control territory beyond the easy reach of the state.
Taken together, these developments suggest that AI will cause a steady evolution in armed conflict in Africa and elsewhere, rather than revolutionize it. Digitization and the widespread adoption of autonomous weapons platforms may extend the eyes and lengthen the fists of state armies. Non-state actors will adopt these technologies themselves and come up with clever ways to exploit or negate them. Artificial intelligence will be used in combination with equally influential, but less flashy inventions such as the AK-47, the nonstandard tactical vehicle, and the IED to enable new tactics that take advantage or exploit trends towards better sensing capabilities and increased mobility.
Incrementally and in concert with other emerging technologies, AI is transforming the tools and tactics of warfare. Nevertheless, experience from Africa suggests that humans will remain the main actors in the drama of modern armed conflict.
Nathaniel Allen is an assistant professor with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University and a Council on Foreign Relations term member. Marian Ify Okpali is a researcher on cyber policy and an academic specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors.
Microsoft provides financial support to the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit organization devoted to rigorous, independent, in-depth public policy research.
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Artificial intelligence (AI): 3 everyday IT tasks where automation fits – The Enterprisers Project
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If I were to ask someone why they chose a career in information technology, I doubt they would respond withI love data entry!,I could debug code all day long!, orHandling tickets is so much fun, Id do it even if I didnt get paid for it.
Fortunately, AI can help. Here are the top three ways AI can help automate manual IT tasks, thereby freeing up precious resources and benefiting your teams, businesses, and customers.
Grace Murray Hopper was a Navy rear admiral and computer programming pioneer who worked on the Mark II computer at Harvard in the 1940s. On September 9, 1947, Hopper traced an error with the Mark II to of all things a dead moth in the relay. The insects remains were taped in the teams logbook with the caption, First actual case of a bug being found.
While Hopper and her team werent the first to use the term bug to describe a system glitch, they certainly helped popularize it. Of course, software bugs are decidedly unpopular. IT departments and software engineers have all felt the pain of toiling over lines of code trying to reproduce and locate problems.
[ Check out our primer on 10 key artificial intelligence terms for IT and business leaders:Cheat sheet: AI glossary. ]
To be as good as human engineers, an AI tool would need to possess levels of reasoning and creativity it simply hasnt yet reached. But AI can still be tremendously effective in exception and anomaly detection. You train it on normal usage and it detects when something is off.
Another advantage AI has over humans is its pattern detection. Lets say a system is crashing at the same time every week or after memory usage hits a certain level. An AI tool could easily connect the dots. AI can learn which behaviors of your developers and which code patterns that are checked into your repo are correlated to bugs. This can be used to notify developers that they have done something that is likely to break and ask them to check again.
If you had a moth infestation in your home, you could certainly go around swatting them one by one. But wouldnt it be a lot easier to discover where they hide and put out traps?
The adage an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is as true in IT as it is in medicine. Monitoring operations and taking proactive action instead of just reacting to problems as they arise can prevent unexpected downtime and expensive failures.
CIOs and IT professionals are familiar with the value of preventative maintenance to some degree, whether its installing software updates or creating backups. That kind of maintenance is done after a certain amount of time has elapsed or usage has been logged. Its like eating vegetables or getting exercise theyre sound practices for a company.
[ Read also:4 Robotic Process Automation (RPA) trends to watch in 2022.]
Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is individualized and custom-tailored. It monitors the equipment and its environment, performs tests, and receives equipment feedback to generate individualized predictions. Its like having a blood test show that youre pre-diabetic and in response, you design a low-sugar diet.
People may be uncomfortable with the idea of machines watching them all day. But with AI-enabled predictive maintenance, you watch the machines with other machines.
Dealing with IT tickets can feel like playing a perpetual game of Whack-A-Mole, but with all of the exhaustion and none of the fun carnival music and prizes.
Dealing with IT tickets can feel like playing a perpetual game of Whack-A-Mole, but with all of the exhaustion and none of the fun carnival music and prizes.
As we all know, some incidents are worth your attention and others arent at all. And without a proper way to triage incidents, IT departments become overwhelmed. Enter intelligent filters. Theyve been around for years in search engines and email inboxes, distinguishing between good and bad, important and unimportant. For IT departments, they can distinguish between real incidents and noise.
More on artificial intelligence
Using AI techniques like case-based reasoning can help decide which solution to explore first or what additional information to request from a customer to make a diagnosis quickly and accurately. Case-based reasoning systems learn from success and failure, apply sophisticated probabilistic reasoning to identify promising solutions, and create a valuable knowledge base.
With intelligent filters and case-based reasoning, IT managers can better allocate resources for incidents that require human intervention.
While there are numerous existing AI applications that help IT departments and many more yet to be discovered debugging, predictive maintenance, and intelligent filtering are three applications of AI that are essential for any great IT department today.
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into our work, any organization that is not actively exploring automating its more manual IT tasks is wasting valuable financial and human capital and may eventually fall behind.
[ How does AI connect tohybrid cloud strategy? Get the free eBooks,Hybrid Cloud Strategy for DummiesandMulti-Cloud Portability for Dummies. ]
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(New Report) Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning Market In 2022 : The Increasing use in Insurance, Banking and Capital Markets is…
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[90 Pages Report] Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning Market Insights 2022 This report contains market size and forecasts of Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning in China, including the following market information:
China Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning Market Revenue, 2016-2021, 2022-2027, (USD millions)
China top five Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning companies in 2020 (%)
The global Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning market size is expected to growth from USD million in 2020 to USD million by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of % during 2021-2027.
The China Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning market was valued at USD million in 2020 and is projected to reach USD million by 2027, at a CAGR of % during the forecast period.
The Research has surveyed the Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning Companies and industry experts on this industry, involving the revenue, demand, product type, recent developments and plans, industry trends, drivers, challenges, obstacles, and potential risks.
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Leading key players of Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning Market are
Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning Market Type Segment Analysis (Market size available for years 2022-2027, Consumption Volume, Average Price, Revenue, Market Share and Trend 2015-2027): Smart Wallets, Voice-Assisted Banking
Regions that are expected to dominate the Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Machine Learning market are North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa and others
If you have any question on this report or if you are looking for any specific Segment, Application, Region or any other custom requirements, then Connect with an expert for customization of Report.
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Celestial AI Raises $56 Million Series A to Disrupt the Artificial Intelligence Chipset Industry with Novel Photonic-Electronic Technology Platform -…
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SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Celestial AI, an AI-accelerator company with a proprietary hardware and software platform for machine learning chipsets, today announced a $56 million Series A investment led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) with participation from Temaseks Xora Innovation fund, The Engine, the venture firm spun out of MIT, Tyche Partners, Mercks corporate venture fund, M-Ventures, IMEC XPand, and venture capital investor in the Princeton University ecosystem, Fitz Gate. The new capital will be used for expanding the global engineering team, product development and strategic supplier engagements, including Broadcom, to build the companys Orion AI accelerator products. Celestial AIs mission is to fundamentally transform the way computing is done with a new processing system, based on their proprietary Photonic Fabric technology platform, that uses light for data movement both within chip and between chips.
Driven by advancements in data communications, robust silicon photonics technology and volume manufacturing ecosystems have been established. The industry is ripe for commercial implementation of Machine Learning (ML) and high-performance computing (HPC) solutions that leverage integrated silicon photonics for data movement. For AI computing applications, data movement is the dominant contributor to system power, and most leading competitive architectures are trading off moderate power reductions for increased system and software complexity. Celestial AIs Photonic Fabric enables optically addressable memory and compute (within chip and chip-to-chip) that decouples their technology from the limitations of electronics and slowdown of Moores Law. Their proprietary architecture enables elegant, low-complexity system software, allowing highly efficient mapping of data and compute without the need for complex optimizations. This software advantage extends to multi-chip exascale systems as the Photonic Fabric democratizes optical access to effectively limitless memory and compute. Celestial AIs Orion AI accelerator products serve an addressable market that is projected by Omida to exceed $70 billion in 2025.
We are addressing the problem of our time in computing efficient data movement, said Celestial AI founder and CEO David Lazovsky. Celestial AIs hybrid photonic-electronic platform allows us to leverage the complementary strengths of electronics for high-performance, high-precision computing and photonics for high-speed, low-power, high-bandwidth data movement. The result is transformational performance advantages relative to electronic-only systems. The ML application benefits extend beyond performance and low power to latency, user friendly software, and low total cost of ownership. Our competitive differentiation will increase with time, as AI model complexity increases, driving increased data movement.
Domain-specific architectures targeted to AI workloads can make up for some of the slowdown in CMOS advancements, but that approach also has its limits. By integrating photonics into accelerators for AI workloads, Celestial AI enables step-change advancements in AI computation. Chips and server systems are limited today by power budget (Thermal Design Power or TDP). The Celestial AI Photonic Fabric allows a redistribution of the fixed power budget from data movement to compute, providing sustainable and expanding performance advantages over all electronic-only solutions. Every Joule of energy saved on data movement can be spent on compute.
Photonics is poised to be the technology to usher in the next era of rapid growth in AI and high-performance computing, and we believe the Celestial AI team has the experience and vision to drive this industry transformation, said Isaac Sigron, Managing Director of KDT, and newly-appointed Celestial AI Board Member. It was Celestial AIs software advantages that ultimately drove our decision to lead this financing. Their system architecture enables unparalleled software simplicity, which translates to ease of use for customers and reduced time to market. Software is the pathway to revenue, and Celestial AIs solution changes the game in this large and rapidly expanding market.
Celestial AI has developed an architecture that uniquely scales across multi-chip systems, and greatly diminishes the development burden on AI teams bringing new applications to market. As the world moves to increasingly complex AI models, we believe that Celestial AIs competitive advantage will only grow over time, said Phil Inagaki, Managing Director at Xora Innovation.
ABOUT CELESTIAL AI
Celestial AI is an AI accelerator company with a proprietary hardware and software technology platform which enables the next generation of high-performance computing solutions. Celestial AIs mission is to fundamentally transform the way computing is done with their proprietary Photonic Fabric technology that uses light for data movement both within chip and between chips.
ABOUT KOCH DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) is a unique investment firm, focused on empowering founders to create a could-be world. KDT provides a flexible, multi-stage investment approach which includes both traditional venture and growth stages. We work with principled entrepreneurs who are building transformative companies, disrupting the status quo, and creating new platforms. KDT is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held companies in the world with $115 billion in revenue and operating in more than 70 countries. KDT helps its partners unlock their full potential by bringing Kochs capabilities and network to them, structuring unique capital solutions, and embracing a long-term, mutual benefit mindset. For more information, visit http://www.kochdisrupt.com.
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The algorithm will see you now: artificial intelligence in the prediction of pregnancy – ESHRE
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A web-based cohort study suggests that, if machine learning algorithms are provided with a sufficiently wide range of predictive data, they can be induced to analyse epidemiologic data and predict the probability of conception with a discrimination accuracy which exceeds earlier studies.
One focus for AI research has been in predicting the chance of pregnancy - with varying success. A study last year found an AI-based model outperformed clinicians in assessing embryo viability, while a poster from last years annual meeting of preliminary research into predicting embryo ploidy showed that the algorithm tended to classify embryos as aneuploid.(1,2)
Adding to this evidence base, a new large prospective study has now found that algorithms are able to forecast the probability of conception among couples trying to get pregnant if given a wide range of data on predictors of fecundability (defined as the per-cycle probability of conception).(3) Based on a study participation cohort of more than 4000 women, results showed an overall discrimination performance of around 70% for six different supervised machine-learning algorithms in distinguishing between women who were likely to conceive and those who were not.
It was an outcome which, the authors say, exceeds results from predictive models in previous studies and demonstrates that such models can be created with reasonable discrimination using self-reported data. They add that this is in the absence of more detailed medical information such as laboratory or imaging tests.
Earlier work in this area has focused primarily on identifying individual risk factors for infertility. Several predictive models have been developed in sub-fertile populations but with limited power and using little or no data on lifestyle, environmental and sociodemographic factors. In contrast, a total of 163 predictors of fecundability were considered in this new study to anticipate the cumulative likelihood of pregnancy over six and 12 menstrual cycles.
The data were based on 4133 women from the ongoing Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), a web-based preconception cohort study which is analysing the impact of environmental and behavioural factors on fertility and pregnancy. Participants in the study were aged 2144 years, from the US or Canada, were not using fertility treatment, reported no more than one menstrual cycle of pregnancy attempt at study entry, and were actively trying to conceive at enrolment (20132019).
The female patients completed extensive questionnaires at enrolment (eg, marital status, reproductive and diet history, male partner characteristics, etc). Some of this information (eg, menstrual cycle dates) was updated via follow-up questionnaires completed bimonthly for 12 months, or until conception/cessation of pregnancy attempts or study withdrawal.
Next, the data were used to develop models to predict the probability of pregnancy. These were based on three time periods: pregnancy in fewer than 12 menstrual cycles (model I, n = 3195); pregnancy within six menstrual cycles (model II, n = 3476); and the average probability of pregnancy per menstrual cycle (model III, n = 4133). Additional models were also developed for women (n = 1957) who had never been pregnant but had no history of infertility: pregnancy in fewer than 12 menstrual cycles (model IV); pregnancy within six menstrual cycles (model V); and predicting fecundability (model VI). Six different supervised machine learning algorithms were then applied to each model to establish how each algorithm performed.
Results showed 86% of women in model I became pregnant and 69% in model II within the timeframes. For all six algorithms, the AUC (for prediction accuracy) was as follows: model I 68-70% (SD: 0.8%-1.9%); model II 65-66% (SD: 1.9%-2.6%); model III (63%); model IV 69.5% (SD: 1.4%); model V 65.6% (SD: 2.9); and model VI 60.2% concordant index.
Female age, female BMI and history of infertility were the predictors inversely associated with pregnancy in all models. The predictors positively associated with pregnancy in the first three models were having previously breastfed an infant and using multivitamins or folic acid supplements. Among the nulligravid women, the most important predictors were female age, female BMI, male BMI, use of a fertility app, attempt time at study entry and perceived stress.
The authors conclude that the findings are especially relevant for couples planning a pregnancy and for clinicians caring for women coming off contraception to have a baby. However, they add that the models do need to be validated in external populations before they can become a counselling tool.
1. VerMilyea M, Hall J, Diakiw S, at al. Development of an artificial intelligence-based assessment model for prediction of embryo viability using static images captured by optical light microscopy during IVF. Human doi: 10.1093/humrep/deaa0132. Aparicio Ruiz B, Bori L, Paya E, et al. Applying artificial intelligence for ploidy prediction: The concentration of IL-6 in spent culture medium, blastocyst morphological grade and embryo morphokinetics as variables under consideration. Human Reprod 2021; doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deab127.0663. Yland J, Wang T, Zad Z, et al. Predictive models of pregnancy based on data from a preconception cohort study. Human Reprod 2022; 1-13; doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deab280
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