Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Posted July 26, 2017 06:28:05

Despite Australia "punching above its weight" in artificial intelligence (AI) research, the country is failing to embrace the technology in the business sector, according to an expert.

Within the next five to 10 years, Professor Toby Walsh envisions Australian businesses to be using autonomous cars, buses, trucks, and robot advisors.

"In research terms, I think we punch above our weight," the University of New South Wales and Data61 AI professor said.

However, he is concerned Australia is lagging behind other countries such as the United States and China when it comes to embracing this form of computer intelligence within our businesses.

"There's been quite a long history of research into AI in Australia, but I think we've been a bit less successful about translating that into business," he said.

According to a 2017 Infosys report on artificial intelligence, which examined organisations from seven different countries, Australia was found to be the country most likely to have no plans to implement AI within businesses.

Compared to China, where 100 per cent of respondents' organisations reported plans to deploy AI, Australia scored a mere 20 per cent.

On a busy street lined with cafes and bars in Canberra, a business, that initially began out of the idea of teaching robots to see, is creating waves around the globe in intelligent face and eye-tracking technology.

"At the moment, we're taking small steps into AI," Seeing Machines chief technology officer and founder Timothy Edwards said.

"It's a very big spectrum and I guess what we're doing is developing an expert system designed to detect drowsiness and distraction in car and truck drivers, and for that system to work better and better they are using AI techniques to try to refine its performance."

Using face-tracking technology, the business is able to improve both safety and consumer experiences within the cars, trains, aeroplanes, and trucks in the mining sector.

"It's definitely saving lives everyday lots of people are aware of it now and we're getting a lot of demand, and certainly in cars as well this is a big moment," he said.

However, taking the leap from studying systems engineering and computer science at the Australian National University, to then starting up a business in this field was not so easy, according to Mr Edwards.

"My own experience in trying to spin out a company from university has been met with the challenge of capital raising and [finding the] appropriate infrastructure in cities," he said.

"We struggled to access data centres, to have enough broadband network, and to really have access to the kinds of technology you can access if you're over in Silicon Valley.

"It's just harder and slower for us to sometimes build a piece of hardware or go and solve a problem, but if you're in Silicon Valley there's a company down the road that's already doing it, so it's a real ecosystem thing."

Mr Edwards said while their business had received a lot of government support, they still struggled to access the latest hardware in Australia.

"We find it hard to access the latest technology here in Australia, as well in terms of the latest bits of silicon," he said.

"You have to go to Shenzhen [in China] for all that stuff that's the heart of hardware technology."

Professor Walsh said if Australia was going to compete with other countries advancing in AI, there was a greater need for investment.

"Compared to some other countries, I don't think we have enough in the way of tax incentives to encourage research and development to allow business to make the suitable investments they need to get ahead," he said.

"But the way to stay ahead of the machines and to stay competitive is to have a highly educated workforce that's highly adaptable and can keep ahead of automation."

Australian Chamber of Commerce Economics and Industry director Adam Carr added incorporating AI within business did not need to have "negative overtones".

"It can be 'what does it mean for me and my children' in an exciting sense," he said.

"I think AI is something we really need to be on top of and I think the Government has a role in that.

"They need to be engaging with business, talking to academia and acting as a facilitator between the various sectors to make sure we're having the right conversations."

Topics: computers-and-technology, science-and-technology, robots-and-artificial-intelligence, australia, canberra-2600, act

Originally posted here:

Artificial intelligence: Australia falling behind as businesses fail to embrace AI, expert says - ABC Online

For AI2s Charades Challenge, visual systems had to recognize and classify a wide variety of daily activities in realistic videos. This is just a sampling of the videos. (AI2 Photos)

Some of the worlds top researchers in AI have proved their mettle by taking top honors in three challenges posed by the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

The institute, also known as AI2, was created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2014 to blaze new trails in the field of artificial intelligence. One of AI2sprevious challenges tested the ability of AI platforms to answer eighth-grade-level science questions.

The three latest challenges focused on visual understanding that is, the ability of a computer program to navigate real-world environments and situations using synthetic vision and machine learning.

These arent merely academic exercises: Visual understanding is a must-have for AI applications ranging from self-driving cars to automated security monitoring to sociable robots.

More than a dozen teams signed up for the competitions, and the algorithms were judged based on their accuracy. Here are the three challenges and the results:

Charades Activity Challenge: Computer vision algorithms looked at videos of people performing everyday activities for example, drinking coffee, putting on shoes while sitting in a chair, or snuggling with a blanked on a couch while watching something on a laptop. One of the algorithms objectives were to classify all activity categories for a given video, even if two activities were happening at the same time. Another objective was to identify the time frames for all activities in a video.

Team Kinetics from Google DeepMind won the challenge on both counts. In a statement, AI2 said the challenge significantly raised state-of-the-art accuracy for human activity recognition.

THOR Challenge: The teams computer vision systems had to navigate through 30 nearly photorealistic virtual scenes of living rooms and kitchens to find a specified target object, such as a fork or an apple, based solely on visual input.

THORs top finisher was a team from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

Textbook Question Answering Challenge: Computer algorithms were given a data set of textual and graphic information from a middle-school science curriculum, and then were asked to answer more than 26,000 questions about the content.

AI2 said the competition was exceptionally close, but the algorithm created by Monica Haurilet and Ziad Al-Halah from Germanys Karlsruhe Institute of Technology came out on top for text questions. Yi Tay and Anthony Luu from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore won the diagram-question challenge.

The challenge participants significantly improved state-of-the-art performance on TQAs text questions, while at the same time confirming the difficulty machine learning methods have answering questions posed with a diagram, AI2 said.

Representatives from the winning teams will join other AI researchers at a workshop planned for Wednesday during the 2017 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Honolulu.

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AI2 lists top artificial intelligence systems in its Visual Understanding Challenge - GeekWire

Count Microsoft among the companies preparing to build specialized chips for artificial intelligence (AI): The next version of the companys HoloLens augmented reality headset will come with a chip capable of complex AI computation, revealed Microsoft Research VP Harryn Shum at a computer vision conference Sunday. This will make it possible to improve hand tracking on the device, as well as run object recognition and other computer vision tasks.

Cloud-based server farms are getting very good at using artificial intelligence for advanced image recognition, something that Google and Facebook use to recognize persons and even objects in images uploaded to their services. But for HoloLens to work without delays, tasks like these have to be solved locally which is why the company is putting AI straight into the headset itself.

Were in the business of making untethered mixed reality devices, explained HoloLens director of science Marc Pollefeys in a blog post. We put the battery on your head, in addition to the compute, the sensors, and the display.

The current version of HoloLens already features a custom processor, dubbed the Holographic Processing Unit, that makes use of all of the devices sensor data of features like head tracking. The next version of this chip will incorporate an artificial intelligence co-processor, Shum said.

Microsoft isnt the only company building custom chips for AI and similar tasks. Apple has long been building its own chips for the iPhone and the iPad, and is increasingly optimizing them for on-device image recognition tasks. And Google recently hired one of Apples key chip architects to build custom chips for its own phones, which will likely incorporate machine learning as well.

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Microsoft's Next HoloLens Headset Will Come With Built-in Artificial Intelligence - Variety

Mashable

AI is nothing compared to these 5 existential threats to humanity Mashable I understand that you're very worried about what artificial intelligence could mean for our future. In fact, just the other week you said that it's the "greatest risk we face as a civilization," an idea that has been echoed by high-profile futurists ...

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AI is nothing compared to these 5 existential threats to humanity - Mashable

Artificial Intelligence has infused its majestic wonders in the business world spread through many industries and niches. From predictive technology and fully automated self-regulating processes, to the way companies manage data and market their products; Artificial Intelligence is as real as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And, its here to stay!

Its 2017. The question is how can companies effectively exploit the absolute potential of the tools available at their disposal, while growing their business and still maintaining a personal connection with the customer base?

Recently, Google has become one of several global powerhouses that are financially backing a new $150 million AI research institute in Toronto, Canada. This also includes $20,000 a year in funding as pledged by The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the investment fund of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

One of the most interesting areas for AI applicability is Human Resources in the Retail and Hospitality industries, where reducing hiring biases and enforcing complete transparency for acquiring talented individuals is crucial.

Knockri, an innovative young tech start-up from Toronto, Canada is one such example of a company taking AI-based HR solutions by the horns.

The ultimate goal is to be able to help every recruiting team in the world, who require strong front-line customer service talent. Our AI system for HR uses audio and videoanalysis, assessing personality attributes to gauge how fit an applicant would be for a position based on employer feedback, industryknowledge and scientificallybacked data, says Jahanzaib Ansari, the companys CEO.

The software system does not eliminate the person to person interview; it only acts as a highly intelligent screening tool, allowing employers to get the best applicant to the interview a lot quicker. Since its founding in 2016, the start-up is already disrupting the retail and hospitality industry by saving employers an immense amount of time and money in the screening and short-listing process of hiring by using the power of AI.

The company is further enhancing their system alongside IBM Watsons cutting edge Artificial Intelligence technology, based out of IBMsInnovation Space in Toronto.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to have an enormous impact on the Human Resources industry.

Here are 5 ways that stand out:

1. Personalization: Personalizing the process of learning at the corporate level and recording critical employee data relating to a broad spectrum of behaviours and learning patterns.

2. Improved Recruitment: HR is a highly human-centric realm. Since human beings are complicated creatures, its very hard to acquire basic analysis-focused data on individuals during the hiring process. This is where AI helps in predictive analytics using natural language, thus speeding up the recruitment process by empowering businesses to weed out undesirable candidates faster, while committing far fewer mistakes.

3. Workflow Automation: AI is poised to be a game-changer when it comes to workflow problems. Automating processes like interview scheduling, employee performance reviews, employee on-boarding, and even the answering of basic HR questions - all fall under this category.

4. Better prediction models: Prediction models are vital in improving efficiency, productivity and overall cost effectiveness for any organization. This is where AI works its magic by analyzing turnover rates, internal employee engagement levels and communications or any other unforeseen problems that could take months or years to be visibly surface. Artificial Intelligence will always be one step ahead of companies themselves.

5. Reducing Hiring Biases: The quality of data that a companys AI is being trained on is really important. One of AIs fundamental goals should naturally be to help companies build a stronger & more diverse workforce.This means that the data being used to train the AI should be as unbiased as possible, so it can really help businesses increase their employment equity in an honest way.

With a lot of retail brick and mortars shutting down, a huge focus has been put on the in-store customer experience.

It is critical that employers get the best applicant for a position 10x quicker by using technologies and software that work as an enabler; making daily operations alot more efficient via the power of AI, instead of replacing the traditional recruiter altogether.

So whats the take-away here?

HR professionals need to embrace big data, so they can be prepared to adapt the profound technological advancements in AI that are set to revolutionise the recruitment industry forever!

With the fast paced and ever evolving world of business going through tremendous technological changes, it is imperative that companies around the globe - particularly those in the HR, Retail and Hospitality industries - understand, employ and effectively apply the power of Artificial Intelligence.

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The Power of Artificial Intelligence - A Glimpse at HR's Future - HuffPost

An important shift from a mobile first world to an AI first world

Google CEO, Sundar Pichai

The active investments of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in the artificial intelligence market, the growth rate of which over the next decade will be four times higher than that of the digital advertising market, increase the long-term investment attractiveness of the company.

To begin, let's take a look at the current growth forecasts for the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market in the coming decade.

Here is information provided by Statista:

For a better clarity, Ive slightly modified these data and projected the trend until the year 2030. Here is what Ive got: over the next 15 years, this market will be growing at the CAGR of 40%, and in the next 10 years, it will be increasing by an average of 50% each year:

Tractica forecast (a market intelligence firm that focuses on human interaction with technology) is a bit more modest, but it still suggests that the annual worldwide AI revenue will grow from $643.7 million in 2016 to $36.8 billion by 2025, demonstrating a CAGR of 49.88%:

So, the growth in the next decade at an average annual rate of 50% - is really a lot?

It depends on what to compare with, but given that I'm performing this analysis through the prism of perspectives for Alphabet, it probably makes sense to compare AI with digital advertising market, which is accountable for 87% of Googles revenue.

As we can see, according to eMarketers data and assuming the trend will persist, in the coming decade this market will be growing at an average annual rate of 12.3%, i.e. four times slower than the AI market:

Also, Alphabet is one of the market leaders in cloud computing, therefore, I propose to compare the growth rate of this market with AI as well.

According to the Wikibon enterprise cloud spending will be growing at a CAGR of 19% between 2016 and 2026:

Approximately, the same forecast for the next five years was given by IDC:

So, in the horizon of the coming decade, the rates of growth of the AI market will be at least twice higher than those of the cloud computing market and four times higher than those of the digital advertising market. The most obvious conclusion from this: In order to ensure a double-digit annual growth rate in the next ten years, Alphabet needs to actively invest in the AI market. The good news for the owners of Alphabet shares is that the company is already actively doing it.

Starting with 2012, Alphabet acquired 11 startups specializing in AI, which exceeds the number of similar acquisitions by Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook (FB) combined:

However, it should be remembered that the quantity does not always turn into quality. Nevertheless, if you judge about the success of Alphabet in the field of AI by the level of artificial intelligence of Google Voice Assistant, it becomes clear that the company is currently in a position of a leader.

According to the March study conducted by Stone Temple, that compared the quality of the responses of intelligent assistants developed by Alphabet (Google Assistant), Microsoft (Cortana), Apple (AAPL) (Siri) and Amazon (AMZN) (Alexa), Google Assistant gave answers to the biggest number of questions, and also made the smallest number of mistakes:

It has been observed that not the fastest runner wins a long distance race, but the one who starts earlier. The AI market is an incredibly long "distance," but, apparently, Alphabet has started this "race" first and is already a leader.

Moreover, Alphabet, being the most popular global search engine with an enormous amount of data, has all chances to remain on a leading position in the artificial intelligence market in the long term, and it will be the companys growth driver for the next decade.

P.S. I have recently published my version of Alphabet's valuation through the DCF analysis, and I came to the conclusion that, given the most conservative prediction parameters and the revenue growth at a CAGR of 12.5% in the next ten years, the fair price of the companys shares will be at least 30% above the current level. Considering the figures provided in this article, I will probably have to review the DCF model, increasing the revenue growth forecasts. Of course, this will enhance the growth potential of the company's share price.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Link:

Artificial Intelligence: The New Impulse For Alphabet - Seeking Alpha

Highflying chip stock Nvidia (NVDA) received a bullish report on Monday from investment bank Canaccord Genuity forits booming data-center processor business.

XAutoplay: On | OffCanaccord analyst Matthew Ramsay reiterated his buy rating on Nvidia and raised his price target on the stock to 180 from 155.

Nvidia shares fell1.2% to close at 166.15 on the stock market today. It droppedan additional 1.4% in after-hours trading Monday. Nvidia hit an all-time high of 169.30 on Friday.

Nvidia has diversified from graphics processors for PCs and gaming consoles into high-end computing processors for data centers, artificial intelligence, machine learning and self-driving cars.

"Our overall bullish thesis on GPU (graphics processing unit) computing continues to accelerate (particularly data center) and we believe Nvidia's emergence as a platform computing company (of which gaming is just one important piece) is now cemented," Ramsay said in a note to clients.

IBD'S TAKE: Nvidia is one of eight chip industry companies on the IBD 50 list of top-performing growth stocks. It is currently ranked No. 6.

Nvidia should be able to hold its own against increased competition in the data-center market from Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Ramsay said.

"We remain very impressed how quickly Nvidia has segmented the product roadmap to provide more application-specific silicon to both the quickly evolving data-center and automotive markets," he said.

On Saturday,at the annual Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Honolulu, Nvidia Chief ExecutiveJensen Huang unveil the company's latest GPU, the Nvidia Tesla V100, based on its Volta architecture.

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Highflying Artificial Intelligence Chip Play Seen Flying Even Higher - Investor's Business Daily

Kansas City Star

Brainpower is so yesterday leave it to AI Kansas City Star Smart people are starting to worry about the brainpower of machines. A recent report from Harvard said the emergence of artificial intelligence as a weapon poses as much game-changing potential as the airplane and the nuclear bomb. They worry it could ...

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Brainpower is so yesterday leave it to AI - Kansas City Star

While online shopping has taken great strides in recent years, the brick-and-mortar retail hasnt managed to keep pace.

Artificial intelligence now permeates every aspect of ecommerce platforms, especially where customer interactions are involved. Smart product suggestions, AI-powered search, cognitive customer service agents are just some of the innovations that have helped make online shopping more personalized and enjoyable for the customerand more profitable for the retailer of course.

Meanwhile, AI advances in brick-and-mortar retail have mostly remained in inventory management and back store operations. The few innovations that have happened in the customer-facing aspects of in-person retail have little or no AI involved, and have failed to make tangible positive impact in the shopping experience and gain wide adoption.

Fortunately, this is something that is fast changing as technological developments enable retailers to gather in-store data and deploy AI-powered solutions. Artificial intelligence can help fix old problems in retail tech as well as introduce new possibilities that were previously inconceivable. Here are some of the trends that are worth watching.

A few years ago, in-store beacons were supposed to be the biggest thing that happened to brick-and-mortar retail, but didnt live up to its hype. Part of the problem with beacons is that they introduce new complexities without solving the real problems customers are facing. Beacons require customers to install an app that does little more than pop up annoying promotions that in no way rivals the personalized suggestions of online shopping platforms.

Now, retailers are experimenting with a new generation of apps powered by machine learning algorithms, whose value go beyond displaying prices and coupons. IBM Watson, a leader in cognitive computing and natural language processing, has partnered with several large retailers to help them better understand and serve the needs of their customers.

An example is Macys On Call, a mobile web application that uses the Watsons cognitive computing power and location-based software to help shoppers get information while theyre navigating the companys stores. The application is able to parse and understand natural language queries about such things as the location of products, departments and services in a particular store, and it responds in a relevant way. As is with all machine learningbased platforms, every customer interaction makes On Call smarter.

Sears Automotive is using the same technology for its Digital Tire Journey in-store web app, which helps shoppers navigate their way through the stores wide assortment of tires using a conversational interface and find whats best for their needs.

While providing value to customers, these apps are enabling retailers to gather a wealth of customter-related data that can in turn be used to fuel other AI-powered solutions.

Retailers annually lose a collective $45 billion to shrinkage, due to non-scans and other errors occurring at the point of sale. This is an especially serious problem at self-checkouts, the technology that was supposed reduce friction and streamline the customer experience but ended up opening a Pandoras box of new problems.

A handful of companies are working toward addressing this problem in real time through artificial intelligence. Everseen, a software company founded in Cork, Ireland, uses computer vision and AI algorithms to analyze video feeds from retailers staffed registers and self-checkout feeds and automatically detect when a product is left unscanned. Whenever Everseen detects unusual activity, it sends a notification to store management via smartwatch, tablet or other mobile device. This will help prevent theft, but it will also help provide assistance at self-checkouts, which are the source of much customer frustration. The companys current AI technology is in use by five of the worlds 10 largest retailers.

StopLift is another company that offers a similar technology. StopLift uses computer vision and video analytics to detect a number of common scams and errors at checkouts. The system compares the items it detects on video to actual POS data to track items that have not been scanned.

Both solutions become better over time as they gather more data and tune themselves to the specifics of each store.

Many believe that in the future, retail will be fully automated by AI, eliminating long lines and obviating the need for checkouts altogether. This means customers can enter a store, grab the items they need and exitwithout getting arrested for shoplifting.

Though the concept is far from mature, a number of companies are making headways in this direction. Last year, Amazon announced Go, a checkout-free retail store that is still in the experimental stages. Go uses computer vision, machine learning algorithms and IoT sensors to understand customers interactions across the store. The technology automatically updates the shopping cart in an associated mobile app whenever a customer picks up or returns an item from a store shelf.

Amazons plan to open its store to the public in 2017 has hit some hurdles. But the complexities have done nothing to deter the online retail giants resolve in creating the store of the future, and its $13.7 billion acquisition of the Whole Foods might have something to do with it.

Neither has Amazons difficulties prevented other companies from making similar moves, including Walmart, the largest retailer in the U.S., which is taking serious strides to incorporate AI in its retail stores.

Everseen, which has been working on a similar concept since 2012, plans to introduce its own checkout-free technology soon. Called 0Line, the solution will provide retailers with an AI-powered network of video cameras, sensors and biometric data to recognize customers. All of this will interact with inventory, POS and a mobile-based payment solution that will enable instant transactions. By the time customers leave the store, their accounts will have been charged and an itemized virtual receipt will be made available to them.

Thanks to a number of developments, AIs reach is fast expanding into every domain of the physical world. These examples show that brick-and-mortar retail is bound for some major transformations. In a few years the in-store shopping experience may look much different from what were used to, maybe even smarter than its online counterpart.

This post is part of our contributor series. The views expressed are the author's own and not necessarily shared by TNW.

Read next: From Uber to Postmates: A tipping guide for the sharing economy

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How artificial intelligence is defining the future of brick-and-mortar shopping - TNW

China aims to make the artificial intelligence industry a new, important driver of economic expansion by 2020, according to a development plan issued by the State Council.

Policymakers want to be global leaders, with the AI industry generating more than 400 billion yuan ($59 billion) of output per year by 2025, according to an announcement from the Cabinet late Thursday. Key development areas include AI software and hardware, intelligent robotics and vehicles, virtual reality and augmented reality, it said.

Artificial intelligence has become the new focus of international competition, the report said. We must take the initiative to firmly grasp the next stage of AI development to create a new competitive advantage, open the development of new industries and improve the protection of national security.

The plan highlights Chinas ambition to become a world power backed by its technology business giants, research centers and military, which are investing heavily in AI. Globally, the technology will contribute as much as $15.7 trillion to output by 2030, according to a PwC report last month. Thats more than the current combined output of China and India.

The positive economic ripples could be pretty substantial, said Kevin Lau, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong. The simple fact that China is embracing AI and having explicit targets for its development over the next decade is certainly positive for the continued upgrading of the manufacturing sector and overall economic transformation.

Chinese AI-related stocks advanced Friday. CSG Smart Science & Technology Co. climbed as much as 9.3 percent in Shenzhen before closing 3.1 percent higher, while intelligent management software developer Mesnac Co. surged 9.8 percent after hitting the 10 percent daily limit in earlier trading.

AI will have a significant influence on society and the international community, according to an opinion piece by East China University of Political Science and Law professor Gao Qiqi published Wednesday in the Peoples Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party.

PwC found that the worlds second-biggest economy stands to gain more than any other from AI because of the high proportion of output derived from manufacturing.

Another report from Accenture and Frontier Economics last month estimated that AI could increase Chinas annual growth rate by 1.6 percentage point to 7.9 percent by 2035 in terms of gross value added, a close proxy for GDP, adding more than $7 trillion.

The State Council directive also called for Chinas businesses, universities and armed forces to work more closely in developing the technology.

We will further implement the strategy of integrating military and civilian developments, it said. Scientific research institutes, universities, enterprises and military units should communicate and coordinate.

More AI professionals and scientists should be trained, the State Council said. It also called for promoting interdisciplinary research to connect AI with other subjects such as cognitive science, psychology, mathematics and economics.

Excerpt from:

China artificial intelligence bid seeks $59 billion industry - The Denver Post