Category Archives: Evolution

Over the years, financial practices have developed to keep pace with the rapid improvement in technologies. One of the best examples is the crypto trading market, which transacts digital assets using a digital trading system.

Particularly, the unregulated and decentralised nature of the Bitcoin marketplace has turned out to be a goldmine for aspiring traders who are trying to make significant profits.

Auto-trading apps have made cryptocurrency trading easier than ever before. Even if you only trade contracts for difference or CFDs, you can generate a substantial income from it.

Bitcoin Evolution is a software application that incorporates cutting-edge technology and complex algorithms that have made crypto trading easier by simplifying the process. Besides, you can also check out the bitcoin revolution review to learn more about this apps earning potential.

A market-leading trading app like Bitcoin Evolution has been a popular choice for investors because of its simplicity, outstanding reputation, and high accuracy. The platforms accuracy rate is higher than that of most other applications available today. Using the softwares automatic trading mode, users may identify and profit from variations in the price of cryptocurrencies.

Advantages for Traders

A quality trading app has a number of interesting options. Simple, quick transactions and withdrawals are made possible because of the apps user-friendly interface. Within days or weeks of signing up, the programme allows users to generate big money.

Besides, the app has a few more advantages:

A User-Friendly Interface

When it comes to user experience, a trading app provides a great one. It is difficult for consumers to navigate and conduct critical functions on most other programmes in the dynamic crypto market because of their complicated design. This is why traders feel helpless when navigating important areas using these types of apps. Top-tier trading apps like Bitcoin Evolution have been designed with ease of use in mind, especially for first-time traders.

Traders excitement for crypto trading is often dampened by complicated trading apps. A trading apps principal goal is to make the work of even novice traders easy instead of causing them to be confused.

For example, in the Bitcoin Evolution app, users can simply move through various sections and execute a wide range of tasks with only a few clicks. To use the programme, there is no need for you to have the technical knowledge or comprehend complex code.

Provides Accurate Trading Alerts

To increase their chances of making money, traders typically buy many crypto tokens instead of trading on just one. With this in mind, the developers of trading apps have integrated a bot that scans the financial market and tracks price movements of cryptocurrencies to help traders make the most money possible.

Alerts from various crypto assets are detected by trading apps. All cryptocurrencies are extensively analysed, their prospective price variations are examined, and the ones that are expected to rise the most are selected. To maximise your chances of making more money, you might choose trading on certain websites considering the apps signals.

Extensive Market Analysis

Often even the most experienced cryptocurrency traders might lose money due to hurried trading. New traders should stay away from such high-risk trading practices. In the bitcoin market, overambitious trading may prove to be costly. Automated trading is a good alternative for novice investors who want to reduce their risk and increase their chances of earning significant profits.

A leading trading software application analyses a large volume of data in a matter of minutes to predict which crypto prices will increase and decrease. Trades may be made gradually while avoiding losses thanks to this function, which reduces the need for manual trading.

Data and Funds Security

A trading app applies a robust and high level of security to safeguard investors data and funds. SSL Encryption is used to protect traders confidential data and earnings from hackers.

Investors Can Trade on Various Crypto Tokens

Cryptocurrencies that are authorised to be traded on trading programmes are determined by current rules. Apps like Bitcoin Evolution may be used to buy and sell a wide range of digital currencies.

The software can help you become financially independent by generating regular income. By signing up and depositing 250/250, you can start live trading right away.

So, if you want to increase your profits, now is the time to sign up for the Bitcoin Evolution app. In the profitable crypto industry, many traders are achieving their financial goals, and now its time for you to make the most of it.

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The Evolution of Bitcoin has Opened New Doors to Earning Opportunities - The London Economic

Lets start up with the current stock price of fuboTV Inc. (FUBO), which is $24.92 to be very precise. The Stock rose vividly during the last session to $25.24 after opening rate of $25.10 while the lowest price it went was recorded $24.06 before closing at $24.54.Recently in News on November 11, 2021, fuboTV to Participate in November 2021 Virtual Investor Conferences. fuboTV Inc. (NYSE: FUBO), the leading sports-first live TV streaming platform, announced today that Co-founder and CEO David Gandler and CFO Simone Nardi will present and host one-on-one investor meetings at the following investor conferences this month:. You can read further details here

fuboTV Inc. had a pretty favorable run when it comes to the market performance. The 1-year high price for the companys stock is recorded $57.47 on 01/27/21, with the lowest value was $14.64 for the same time period, recorded on 05/11/21.

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Price records that include history of low and high prices in the period of 52 weeks can tell a lot about the stocks existing status and the future performance. Presently, fuboTV Inc. shares are logging -59.99% during the 52-week period from high price, and 70.22% higher than the lowest price point for the same timeframe. The stocks price range for the 52-week period managed to maintain the performance between $14.64 and $62.29.

The companys shares, operating in the sector of Communication Services managed to top a trading volume set approximately around 3817445 for the day, which was evidently lower, when compared to the average daily volumes of the shares.

When it comes to the year-to-date metrics, the fuboTV Inc. (FUBO) recorded performance in the market was -12.36%, having the revenues showcasing -10.89% on a quarterly basis in comparison with the same period year before. At the time of this writing, the total market value of the company is set at 3.61B, as it employees total of 220 workers.

During the last month, 0 analysts gave the fuboTV Inc. a BUY rating, 0 of the polled analysts branded the stock as an OVERWEIGHT, 0 analysts were recommending to HOLD this stock, 0 of them gave the stock UNDERWEIGHT rating, and 0 of the polled analysts provided SELL rating.

According to the data provided on Barchart.com, the moving average of the company in the 100-day period was set at 27.85, with a change in the price was noted -7.52. In a similar fashion, fuboTV Inc. posted a movement of -23.28% for the period of last 100 days, recording 6,779,374 in trading volumes.

Total Debt to Equity Ratio (D/E) can also provide valuable insight into the companys financial health and market status. The debt to equity ratio can be calculated by dividing the present total liabilities of a company by shareholders equity. Debt to Equity thus makes a valuable metrics that describes the debt, company is using in order to support assets, correlating with the value of shareholders equity The total Debt to Equity ratio for FUBO is recording 0.53 at the time of this writing. In addition, long term Debt to Equity ratio is set at 0.52.

Raw Stochastic average of fuboTV Inc. in the period of last 50 days is set at 16.64%. The result represents improvement in oppose to Raw Stochastic average for the period of the last 20 days, recording 6.52%. In the last 20 days, the companys Stochastic %K was 4.01% and its Stochastic %D was recorded 11.44%.

Now, considering the stocks previous presentation, multiple moving trends are noted. Year-to-date Price performance of the companys stock appears to be encouraging, given the fact the metric is recording -12.36%. Additionally, trading for the stock in the period of the last six months notably improved by 20.29%, alongside a boost of 59.14% for the period of the last 12 months. The shares increased approximately by -25.23% in the 7-day charts and went down by -11.54% in the period of the last 30 days. Common stock shares were lifted by -10.89% during last recorded quarter.

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fuboTV Inc. (FUBO) is primed for evolution with the beta value of 3.03 - The InvestChronicle

LEHI, Utah, Nov. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Podium, a communication and payments platform for local businesses, announced today it has raised $201 million in Series D funding, led by YC Continuity with participation from Durable Capital Partners, Arpex Capital, Accel, Album VC, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, Summit Partners, and Sorenson Capital. This latest round brings the company's valuation to over $3 billion.

"We see this as a watershed moment for local businesses all over the world, especially as the world opens up again and local businesses are tasked with meeting the changing preferences of consumers who have welcomed digital-first interactions through the pandemic," said Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium. "Our goal is to help communities get back on their feet and to help local businesses participate in a meaningful way in the digital evolution happening at the local level."

Podium is helping thousands of local businesses facilitate millions of interactions with consumers today, from text messaging, website chat, marketing campaigns, to payment transactions. Podium's mission is to help all local businesses thrive, and will continue to play an integral role in transitioning their analog operations to a digital one, so that they can get back to what they do best -- serve their customers.

"Podium brings world-class marketing and payments tools to the small and medium businesses that power our economy and employ the lion's share of workers. These businesses have traditionally been overlooked by technology companies," says Ali Rowghani, Managing Director of YC Continuity. "Podium's products level the playing field for SMBs and help them compete in a changing world."

Additional funding will support Podium's expansion to reach more local businesses all over the world as well as deeper investments to build out their payments, communications and marketing technology. This includes supporting everything a local business may need to collect payments, manage all their communications with consumers, and create more personalized and effective marketing campaigns that drive conversations and revenue.

About Podium Podium exists to help local businesses thrive, so they can focus on what matters most: their customers. Today, more than 100,000 local businesses are powered by Podium, helping to facilitate millions of customer interactions and payment transactions. From customer-generated reviews, to more seamless communication offerings and contactless payment tools, Podium is modernizing the way local businesses operate and grow their businesses. Podium is headquartered in Lehi, Utah, and was founded in 2014. To learn more, visit http://www.podium.com.

About YC Continuity YC Continuityis a growth fund that invests early in Y Combinator's most elite companies. In addition to Podium, their portfolio includes Stripe, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacart, Checkr, Brex, Zapier, Fivetran, Faire, GitLab, Gusto, Segment, and others.

SOURCE Podium

http://www.podium.com

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Podium Raises $201M in Series D Funding to Accelerate the Digital Evolution for Local Businesses - PRNewswire

MoneyGram International Inc. (MGI) is priced at $6.30 after the most recent trading session. At the very opening of the session, the stock price was $5.74 and reached a high price of $6.475, prior to closing the session it reached the value of $5.60. The stock touched a low price of $5.71.Recently in News on November 10, 2021, MoneyGram to Participate in Northcoast Research Virtual Fall Management Forum. MoneyGram International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MGI), the global leader in the evolution of digital P2P payments, today announced that Alex Holmes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Larry Angelilli, Chief Financial Officer, will participate in investor meetings at the Northcoast Research Virtual Fall Management Forum on Monday, November 15, 2021. To request a meeting, please contact your Northcoast Research representative. You can read further details here

MoneyGram International Inc. had a pretty favorable run when it comes to the market performance. The 1-year high price for the companys stock is recorded $12.36 on 07/21/21, with the lowest value was $5.06 for the same time period, recorded on 11/03/21.

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Price records that include history of low and high prices in the period of 52 weeks can tell a lot about the stocks existing status and the future performance. Presently, MoneyGram International Inc. shares are logging -49.03% during the 52-week period from high price, and 27.79% higher than the lowest price point for the same timeframe. The stocks price range for the 52-week period managed to maintain the performance between $4.93 and $12.36.

The companys shares, operating in the sector of Financial managed to top a trading volume set approximately around 7193825 for the day, which was evidently higher, when compared to the average daily volumes of the shares.

When it comes to the year-to-date metrics, the MoneyGram International Inc. (MGI) recorded performance in the market was 15.28%, having the revenues showcasing -30.46% on a quarterly basis in comparison with the same period year before. At the time of this writing, the total market value of the company is set at 513.51M, as it employees total of 2269 workers.

During the last month, 0 analysts gave the MoneyGram International Inc. a BUY rating, 0 of the polled analysts branded the stock as an OVERWEIGHT, 0 analysts were recommending to HOLD this stock, 0 of them gave the stock UNDERWEIGHT rating, and 0 of the polled analysts provided SELL rating.

According to the data provided on Barchart.com, the moving average of the company in the 100-day period was set at 8.72, with a change in the price was noted -4.21. In a similar fashion, MoneyGram International Inc. posted a movement of -40.06% for the period of last 100 days, recording 2,153,831 in trading volumes.

Raw Stochastic average of MoneyGram International Inc. in the period of last 50 days is set at 29.11%. The result represents downgrade in oppose to Raw Stochastic average for the period of the last 20 days, recording 44.45%. In the last 20 days, the companys Stochastic %K was 26.70% and its Stochastic %D was recorded 22.80%.

Lets take a glance in the erstwhile performances of MoneyGram International Inc., multiple moving trends are noted. Year-to-date Price performance of the companys stock appears to be pessimistic, given the fact the metric is recording 15.28%. Additionally, trading for the stock in the period of the last six months notably deteriorated by -16.45%, alongside a boost of 1.29% for the period of the last 12 months. The shares increased approximately by 20.00% in the 7-day charts and went up by -19.33% in the period of the last 30 days. Common stock shares were lifted by -30.46% during last recorded quarter.

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MoneyGram International Inc. (MGI) is primed for evolution with the beta value of 1.46 - The InvestChronicle

An underrated joy of modern life is that you dont have to watch live TV to see all of the uncomfortable situations people find themselves in on live TV. I dont even own a television, nor would I ever watch NBC Sports coverage of a NASCAR race, yet I still got the chance to see the October 2 clip of the reporter Kelli Stavast attempting to interview the race-car driver Brandon Brown after an unexpected victory while the crowd behind them chanted Fuck Joe Biden. And you can hear the chants from the crowd, Stavast narrated for the camera, before repeating what she seemed to think she was hearing: Lets go, Brandon. As I would say after texting this link to someone in the middle of the workday: LOL!

Then it became a hashtag and a whole thing, which you may have heard about. People who dont like Joe Biden picked up Lets go, Brandon and immediately ran the joke into the ground. People who do like Joe Biden started fighting it on social media, as if the phrase were the latest and greatest threat to democracy, and social media were the place where great threats to democracy should be fought. This is political discourse in the Twitter era: A hashtag becomes annoying to a group of people, so they try to repurpose it, or replace it with an artificially juiced hashtag of their own. If you happen to have seen a liberal on your timeline in the past few weeks tweeting #ThankYouBrandon to a president they are purporting to like and support, this is why. But as for all of it together, the bigger question is still unanswered: Why?

Republican politicians embraced Lets go, Brandon with verve, probably because it recalled the unhinged, grassroots meme energy that defined the Trump presidency. Representative Jeff Duncan of South Carolina found a Lets Go Brandon face mask to wear; Senator Ted Cruz of Texas did a couple of confusing tweets signaling his enjoyment of the phrase; Representative Bill Posey of Florida was the first to say it during a speech on the floor of Congress. Lauren Boebert, the representative from Colorado who is better known for having once endorsed the QAnon conspiracy theory, had Lets Go Brandon added to the back of a dress she wore to a party at Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in early November, imitating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs Tax the Rich Met Gala gown.

Meanwhile, the attention economy provides other incentives. TikTok and Twitter users uploaded clips of groups chanting Lets go, Brandon at various sporting events; someone hacked two random road signs in Northern Virginia to display the phrase; a handful of people incorporated it into their Halloween costume, and at least one guy put it on his truck. More than one TikTok user rearranged big, decorative letters at Hobby Lobby to spell out Lets go, Brandon, in pursuit of going a little viral. When Bryson Gray, a rapper who has been profiled by The New Yorker for being both a Trump supporter and a rapper, released a Lets Go Brandon song, it displaced Adele from the top of the iTunes sales chart. Predictably, the Trump campaign started selling Lets Go Brandon T-shirts too.

If this all sounds sort of juvenile to you: Yes. Which might be why liberalsscarred from the 2016 election, when they learned that juvenile memes and online pranks could be cause for concernreacted as if Lets go, Brandon were code for something more sinister than a pretty boring insult, and then chose to respond to Brandon (in a juvenile way) with more Brandon. In early November, MeidasTouch, an anti-Trump political action committee specializing in social media, started encouraging its followers to subvert the original #LetsGoBrandon hashtag by posting sincere thank-you notes to the president and tagging them #ThankYouBrandon. Lol we always ruin their moronic and childish slogans, the well-known #Resistance figure Scott Dworkin joked with his 1 million followers. This worked to the extent that #ThankYouBrandon became a trending hashtag in the U.S., though it also prompted a victory lap for the #LetsGoBrandon crowd, which had been presented with yet another opportunity to point out that the left is cringe and cant meme. Soon, MeidasTouch was selling #ThankYouBrandon T-shirts, hoodies, and coffee mugs.

In other words, Democrats are reclaiming the name Brandon from Republicans. But to what end? In spirit, Brandon vs. Brandon recalls the manic energy of the 2016 election cycle, when Trump voters reclaimed the insult deplorables as a badge of honor and then Hillary Clinton voters eagerly took up nasty woman, in a showdown of symmetrical, unbearable smugness. But todays hashtag tug-of-war has a little more in common with last summers push by K-Pop fans to flood the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtagitself a backlash to the original #BlackLivesMatter movementwith irrelevant content and videos of K-Pop stars. Those efforts were of dubious utility, and the K-Pop fans were criticized afterward for having turned #WhiteLivesMatter into a trending topic on Twitter and thereby expanding its reach.

Leticia Bode, a communication researcher at Georgetown University, has studied a related behavior, which she and her colleagues labeled hashjacking. For a paper published in 2014, they looked at how Tea Party conservatives deployed liberal hashtags like #p2for Progressives 2.0during the 2010 midterms in the hopes of encroaching on oppositions keywords to inject contrary perspectives into a discourse stream. (Others have since observed the right-wing hijacking of the popular hashtags #MeToo and #ShoutYourAbortion.) Yet even Bode has no idea whether these sorts of online pranks have any real effects. We dont have good data on whether it works, she told me.

The clearest precedent for Thank you, Brandon began in 2009 with Thanks, Obama, the catchphrase uttered most often by Tea Party personalities and boys I went to high school with. That phrase originated on Twitter in its earliest days of political relevance, and was affixed to snide tweets about Barack Obamas failures, both real and fabricated. By 2012, liberals had flipped around its meaning, such that Thanks, Obama, when attached to some trivial or mundane grievance, could be repurposed as a satire of conservative petulance. But Thanks, Obama would eventually become bipartisan, used online as an absurd, sarcastic rejoinder to pretty much anything. By 2015, Thanks, Obama had grown so old and toothless that Obama himself could riff on it in a BuzzFeed videoand it didnt even make him seem like an oversensitive loser. (Though it is pretty corny to watch now. Its very of its time.)

Already, of course, #ThankYouBrandon is being co-opted by sarcastic Republicans as a sequel to Thanks, Obama. (Walked right into that one!) If Democrats relaxed a little bit, they could turn this around. They could just do what they did last timerepeat the words of the original meme until they become mush. But if I were to predict an outcome here, its that Thank you, Brandon, which makes absolutely no sense, will soon disappear, while Lets go, Brandon, which is at least subversive and fun (to a point), will stick around. For any slogan to take off, it really needs to mean something for people, says the sociologist Jen Schradie, who wrote a 2019 book on digital activism, The Revolution That Wasnt.

Lets go, Brandon does mean something to the people who are chanting it: It means Fuck Joe Biden, which resonates with anybody who strongly dislikes the president, and it also means Nobody can prove that I am saying Fuck Joe Biden, which satisfies the human urge to stick out your tongue. Thank you, Brandon lacks the same power because, uh, Brandon is not the presidents name, and if I liked the president a lot, I wouldnt want to call him some random name that isnt his name.

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The Embarrassing Evolution of 'Let's Go, Brandon' - The Atlantic

With a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, a mad cackle rings out from a dark laboratory. Inside, a frail, large-lobed scientist hunches over his latest abomination. The archetype of the mad geniusa malevolent, weak-bodied creature with an oversized headdidnt come out of nowhere. It was set in place by early science fiction authorsmost notably H.G. Wells, in books like The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and War of the Worlds (189798). And, according to humanities scholar Anne Stiles, writers like Wells were taking inspiration from one form of evolutionary theory.

Stiles argues that the now-familiar trope of the mad scientisttraces its roots to the clinical association between genius and insanity that developed in the mid-nineteenth century. In the early 1800s, the Romantics saw the condition as a mystical phenomenon beyond the reach of scientific investigation. The Victorians took a more detached and critical approach. Rather than glorifying creative powers, Victorians pathologized genius and upheld the mediocre man as an evolutionary ideal, Stiles writes. All aberrations from the norm could be seen as pathological, including extreme intelligence.

For the source of many of these ideas, Stiles points to the Mind, the first English journal dedicated to psychology and philosophy, which often hosted popular discussions of genius and insanity. In these papers, scientists, philosophers, and physicians provided an evolutionary rationale for associating genius with things like madness, degeneracy, and infertility. In his essay The Insanity of Genius (1891), Scottish philosopher John Ferguson Nisbet defined genius as a kind of hereditary, degenerate brain condition symptomatic of nerve disorder which runs in the blood.' He declared that genius, insanity, idiocy, scrofula, rickets, gout, consumption, and the other members of the neuropathic family of disorders reveal want of equilibrium in the nervous system. Genius and gout: truly, two sides of the same coin.

In the pages of the Mind, scientists argued (using what Stiles calls surprisingly unscientific rationale) that mankind had evolved larger brains at the expense of muscular strength, reproductive capacity, and moral sensibility. Scientists worried about the potential to pass genius (and, by extension, insanity) on to future generations. Of course, many also conceded that extraordinary men were relatively unlikely to reproduce, with one scientist blaming shy, odd manners, often met with in young persons of genius, according to Stiles.

But what if these nerds did reproduce? Working from Lamarckian theories of evolution, these scientists hypothesized that the more humans relied on their brains, the weaker the rest of their bodies would become. One possible conclusion of rapid Lamarckian brain evolution, then, was a species of morally insane beings boasting enormous cerebrums and minuscule bodies, writes Stiles.

Stiles uses early stories by H.G. Wells as a case study for the cross-fertilization between literature and scientific ideas. In his writings, Wells imagines the distant evolutionary future of mankind. With the mad-scientist villain of The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells shares a vision of great thinkers as diseased victims of biological determinism, according to Stiles. Stiles also cites Wellss The First Men in the Moon (1901), in which the author depicts brains becoming steadily larger and more powerful as bodies grow smaller and more useless, emotions increasingly muted, and conscience all but silenced.

This nightmarish vision of massively overevolved brains makes appearances across Wellss body of work, taken to the extreme with his vision of malevolent, unfeeling extraterrestrials in War of the Worlds. Thankfully, most modern scientists no longer view this archetype as a terrifying potential future for humanity. Nowadays, the unfeeling mad scientist is much more likely to be found in movies and literature, not in the pages of academic journals.

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By: Anne Stiles

Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Apr., 2009), pp. 317-339

University of Pennsylvania Press

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The Evolution of the Mad Scientist - JSTOR Daily

This article is part of our reviews of AI research papers, a series of posts that explore the latest findings in artificial intelligence.

Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have blessed our planet with a wide variety of lifeforms, each intelligent in its own fashion. Each species has evolved to develop innate skills, learning capacities, and a physical form that ensure its survival in its environment.

But despite being inspired by nature and evolution, the field of artificial intelligence has largely focused on creating the elements of intelligence separately and fusing them together after development. While this approach has yielded great results, it has also limited the flexibility of AI agents in some of the basic skills found in even the simplest lifeforms.

In a new paper published in the scientific journal Nature, AI researchers at Stanford University present a new technique that can help take steps toward overcoming some of these limits. Titled Deep Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning, the new technique uses a complex virtual environment and reinforcement learning to create virtual agents that can evolve both in their physical structure and learning capacities. The findings can have important implications for the future of AI and robotics research.

Credit: Ben Dickson / TechTalks

In nature, body and brain evolve together. Across many generations, every animal species has gone through countless cycles of mutation to grow limbs, organs, and a nervous system to support the functions it needs in its environment. Mosquitos have thermal vision to spot body heat. Bats have wings to fly and an echolocation apparatus to navigate dark places. Sea turtles have flippers to swim and a magnetic field detector system to travel very long distances. Humans have an upright posture that frees their arms and lets them see the far horizon, hands and nimble fingers that can manipulate objects, and a brain that makes them the best social creatures and problem solvers on the planet.

Interestingly, all these species descended from the first lifeform that appeared on Earth several billion years ago. Based on the selection pressures caused by the environment, the descendants of those first living beings evolved in many different directions.

Studying the evolution of life and intelligence is interesting. But replicating it is extremely difficult. An AI system that would want to recreate intelligent life in the same way that evolution did would have to search a very large space of possible morphologies, which is extremely expensive computationally. It would need a lot of parallel and sequential trial-and-error cycles.

AI researchers use several shortcuts and predesigned features to overcome some of these challenges. For example, they fix the architecture or physical design of an AI or robotic system and focus on optimizing the learnable parameters. Another shortcut is the use of Lamarckian rather than Darwinian evolution, in which AI agents pass on their learned parameters to their descendants. Yet another approach is to train different AI subsystems separately (vision, locomotion, language, etc.) and then tack them on together in a final AI or robotic system. While these approaches speed up the process and reduce the costs of training and evolving AI agents, they also limit the flexibility and variety of results that can be achieved.

Credit: Ben Dickson / TechTalks

In their new work, the researchers at Stanford aim to bring AI research a step closer to the real evolutionary process while keeping the costs as low as possible. Our goal is to elucidate some principles governing relations between environmental complexity, evolved morphology, and the learnability of intelligent control, they write in their paper.

Their framework is called Deep Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning. In DERL each agent uses deep reinforcement learning to acquire the skills required to maximize its goals during its lifetime. DERL uses Darwinian evolution to search the morphological space for optimal solutions, which means that when a new generation of AI agents are spawned, they only inherit the physical and architectural traits of their parents (along with slight mutations). None of the learned parameters are passed on across generations.

DERL opens the door to performing large-scale in silico experiments to yield scientific insights into how learning and evolution cooperatively create sophisticated relationships between environmental complexity, morphological intelligence, and the learnability of control tasks, the researchers write.

For their framework, the researchers used MuJoCo, a virtual environment that provides highly accurate rigid-body physics simulation. Their design space is called UNIversal aniMAL (UNIMAL), in which the goal is to create morphologies that learn locomotion and object-manipulation tasks in a variety of terrains.

Each agent in the environment is composed of a genotype that defines its limbs and joints. The direct descendant of each agent inherits the parents genotype and goes through mutations that can create new limbs, remove existing limbs, or make small modifications to characteristics such as the degrees of freedom or the size of limbs.

Each agent is trained with reinforcement learning to maximize rewards in various environments. The most basic task is locomotion, in which the agent is rewarded for the distance it travels during an episode. Agents whose physical structure are better suited for traversing terrain learn faster to use their limbs for moving around.

To test the systems results, the researchers generated agents in three types of terrains: flat (FT), variable (VT), and variable terrains with modifiable objects (MVT). The flat terrain puts the least selection pressure on the agents morphology. The variable terrains, on the other hand, force the agents to develop a more versatile physical structure that can climb slopes and move around obstacles. The MVT variant has the added challenge of requiring the agents to manipulate objects to achieve their goals.

One of the interesting findings of the DERL is the diversity of the results. Other approaches to evolutionary AI tend to converge on one solution because new agents directly inherit the physique and learnings of their parents. But in DERL, only morphological data is passed on to descendants, the system ends up creating a diverse set of successful morphologies, including bipeds, tripeds, and quadrupeds with and without arms.

At the same time, the system shows traits of the Baldwin effect, which suggests that agents that learn faster are more likely to reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation. DERL shows that evolution selects for faster learners without any direct selection pressure for doing so, according to the Stanford paper.

Intriguingly, the existence of this morphological Baldwin effect could be exploited in future studies to create embodied agents with lower sample complexity and higher generalization capacity, the researchers write.

Finally, the DERL framework also validates the hypothesis that more complex environments will give rise to more intelligent agents. The researchers tested the evolved agents across eight different tasks, including patrolling, escaping, manipulating objects, and exploration. Their findings show that in general, agents that have evolved in variable terrains learn faster and perform better than AI agents that have only experienced flat terrain.

Their findings seem to be in line with another hypothesis by DeepMind researchers that a complex environment, a suitable reward structure, and reinforcement learning can eventually lead to the emergence of all kinds of intelligent behaviors.

The DERL environment only has a fraction of the complexities of the real world. Although DERL enables us to take a significant step forward in scaling the complexity of evolutionary environments, an important line of future work will involve designing more open-ended, physically realistic, and multi-agent evolutionary environments, the researchers write.

In the future, the researchers will expand the range of evaluation tasks to better assess how the agents can enhance their ability to learn human-relevant behaviors.

The work can have important implications for the future of AI and robotics and push researchers to use exploration methods that are much more similar to natural evolution.

We hope our work encourages further large-scale explorations of learning and evolution in other contexts to yield new scientific insights into the emergence of rapidly learnable intelligent behaviors, as well as new engineering advances in our ability to instantiate them in machines, the researchers write.

This article was originally published by Ben Dickson onTechTalks, a publication that examines trends in technology, how they affect the way we live and do business, and the problems they solve. But we also discuss the evil side of technology, the darker implications of new tech, and what we need to look out for. You can read the original articlehere.

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AI is now learning to evolve like earthly lifeforms - The Next Web

The world as we know it has changed significantly in the past couple of years, and so have managed services. While IT infrastructure and security continue to be more important than ever with large numbers of companies across the globe implementing remote and hybrid working policies, this situation has created the need for additional services that go beyond the standard managed services package. As the future of work continues to evolve, so too will the offering of experienced managed service providers (MSPs).

Prior to the global pandemic, MSPs were primarily focused on IT security and infrastructure. Companies would often outsource all or part of their IT in order to keep costs low and ensure that they had the crucial expertise and systems at hand without having to hire in-house specialists. Ensuring that their IT systems are secure and working at optimal capacity makes it possible to focus on other tasks that will help move the needle and big-picture goals. This is why MSPs are still very popular with businesses of all sizes. Despite large in-house IT teams, an estimated 90% of Fortune 1000 companies use MSPs for part of their IT management.

Managed services 2.0: people-centric approach

As stay-at-home mandates fell into place throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses were left scrambling to adjust their IT infrastructure to support remote and hybrid work environments. The focus of MSPs shifted to support this new infrastructural setup as well as the additional security concerns associated with a dispersed workforce. Once the infrastructural needs were settled, it became clear that companies were now facing other challenges, such as how to monitor productivity and better support their team members during these big changes. As a result, managed services began offering services with a more people-centric approach.

The move to remote or hybrid work was a big transition for most people. For example, managers had to quickly figure out how to manage a team from a distance and individual employees had to learn how to keep themselves motivated and productive without the accountability of being in the office. In response, some MSPs developed productivity and monitoring tools. These tools make it possible for managers to collect the data and insights needed to understand how their team is operating and performing without overstepping.

Remote work tends to lead to overworking as it blurs the line between work and home life. With this new technology, managers can have a better understanding of how much time their teammates are putting in and encourage a healthier work/life balance. Individual employees can also benefit from the productivity and monitoring tools some MSPs now offer. They are able to leverage these tools for tangible proof of their performance when it comes to negotiating promotions or receiving recognition. These tools can also be used to monitor their own performance, enabling them to identify potential areas for improvement.

Managed services to managed experiences

Heading into 2022, we expect to see a continuation of this shift. While its essential for companies to have secure and reliable IT setups, its the people behind the screens who are the beating heart of the company. Research from Gallup found that organizations with highly engaged employees see 21 percent greater profitability, and MSPs are making this outcome more achievable by providing wider managed experiences.

Going beyond managed services, managed experiences enable a remote or hybrid workforce with the IT tools and resources they need, provide comfort and security by ensuring there are no data breaches while your team is working from anywhere, make it easier to optimize by measuring and illuminating workplace performance. Through offering a complete managed experience, MSPs can provide your team with the space, comfort, and time to focus on the work that matters most for moving your company forward.

Photo credit: Artem Samokhvalov / Shutterstock

Dean Lentz is Netsurits Managing Director -- New York. Prior to joining Netsurit, Dean was a founding partner and the CEO of Cyber City, Inc. where he pioneered IT services for the SMB market in New York City. For over twenty years and with expertise in a wide range of technology solutions, he has guided world-renowned businesses using dated business solutions to making digital transformations and beyond to leveraging the power of the modern cloud. Deans core strength is his focus and understanding of his customers businesses. He has helped startups get off the ground as well as being a critical partner in transitioning matured companies into the M&A space.

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Evolution of managed services - BetaNews

Mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) have changed through the years thanks to technological advances, resulting in zero emission alternatives for compact and mid-size diesel aerial lifts and telehandlers.

In part, thanks to the development of lithium-ion battery technology in the automotive sector, it is now possible to replace a diesel or gas engine in an aerial lift with batteries, without any compromise in performance, says Matthew Elvin, CEO,Xtreme Manufacturing and Snorkel, Henderson, Nev.

Focusing on high-reach equipment, this is currently concentrated in the compact and mid-size aerial lift and telehandler, which is a sweet spot from a weight versus power ratio perspective, Elvin says.

Since November 2019, Snorkel has launched and commenced production of nine lithium-ion battery-powered models, which are available globally.

Elvin says lithium-ion batteries and the electric motor require zero maintenance, and if comparing to lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries do not require regular inspections or top-ups, adding that lithium-electric machines have low noise and retain full four-wheel drive capabilities.

This makes them ideal for both indoor and outdoor use, Elvin says. With zero emissions and powerful rough terrain performance, lithium-electric lifts can be rented to a wider range of customers for an increased range of applications, maximizing potential utilization.

Zach Gilmor, product manager,Genie, A Terex Brand, Redmond, Wash., says historically, the MEWP market was split between diesel and electric applications because there wasnt one machine that could do it all. He says with the development of high-performance electric and hybrid equipment, there has been a shift to greater acceptance of battery-powered equipment in a broader number of applications.

Simplicity is another major benefit of electric motors and battery power, Gilmor says. The versatility of electric equipment increases fleet utilization for rental companies by opening up rental opportunities in specialized applications, such as city centers or job sites with noise or emissions restrictions, while also being able to work in traditional applications previously reserved for diesel-powered equipment.

Jennifer Stiansen, director of marketing,JLG Industries, McConnellsburg, Pa., says battery-powered lifts have been around for a long time, but in recent years, battery technology has been rapidly advancing.

If you look at the construction industry today, as well as adjacent industries, youll see cues that represent a continued drive towards electrification, Stiansen says. The evolution of batteries plays a big role in this.

As an example of recent advances, the JLG DaVinci AE1932 lift, introduced in early 2021, is a fully electric scissor lift. The battery source selected for the DaVinci lift is a single, 24V lithium-ion battery with an expected 10-year battery life.

Elvin says Snorkel lithium-powered lifts can complete a minimum of a full eight-hour shift on a single charge, and in some cases, up to one week between charges, subject to usage.

And, as battery-powered equipment plays a greater role in aerial equipment, manufacturers likeSkyjack, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, prevent downtime via telematics that can provide rental companies with measurable benefits, according to Malcolm Early, Skyjacks vice president of marketing.

Skyjacks optional ELEVATE BMS (battery management system) targets the largest cost of ownership on electric scissor lifts, providing the operator with charging advice, and, Early says, providing the rental company with the ability to manage the cost of battery replacement using accurate data. On electric machines, the state of health, battery life percentage and last charge date are shown.

Jiarui Cao, an engineer forZoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co., Changsha, China, says electric MEWPs maintain environmental advantages. At the same time, Cao says the electric drive system is easily upgraded.

However, the construction machinery industry does not set general standards for battery charging function, Cao says. Since the rental market is complex and diverse, different charging conditions require different charging functions. The standard charging station is not flexible enough. Manufacturers are also actively looking for charging solutions. Battery safety is especially important because of the complex construction environment.

As for the future, Cao says diesel and gas engines are developing as well in the direction of green, efficiency and intelligence.

They will remain the mainstream among all types of engines for a relatively long time into the future, Cao says. Also, continuously large power output is the biggest advantage of the internal combustion engine. Hybrid technologies are also the research direction in the future.

Elvin believes that ultimately, as time allows, engines will be phased out. The timeline for this, he says, is dependent on the affordability and performance of the chosen replacement(s).

Hybrid technology has been embraced as an interim solution, however in the construction sector, it is not uncommon for hybrid machines to be predominantly operated on the diesel engine, ultimately negating the emissions benefits, Elvin says. For this reason, hybrid construction equipment, including aerial lifts, are not permitted in some low or zero emission zones and green cities.

Gilmor says as equipment gets larger and heavier, the onboard energy storage needs to increase.

At this time, we have to look at other options besides full electric to deliver the power needed to ensure the performance that modern job sites demand, Gilmor says. With electric, in those cases, the technology isnt quite there yet.

Gilmor says as for new technologies on the horizon, ideas have been floated around for the future such as hydrogen for both engines and fuel cells.

However, this is not yet developed enough for MEWP applications, he says.

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The ongoing evolution of electrification and battery-powered equipment - Rental Management Magazine

Elephants have them. Pigs have them. Narwhals and water deer have them. Tusks are among the most dramatic examples of mammal dentition: ever-growing, projecting teeth used for fighting, foraging, even flirting.

So why, across the broad sweep of geologic history, do such useful teeth only appear among mammals and no other surviving groups of animals? According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, it takes two key adaptations to teeth to make a tusk and the evolutionary pathway first appeared millions of years before the first true mammals.

Around 255 million years ago, a family of mammal relatives called dicynodonts tusked, turtle-beaked herbivores ranging in stature from gopher-size burrowers to six-ton behemoths wandered the forests of the supercontinent Pangea. A few lineages survived the devastating Permian extinction period, during which more than 90 percent of Earths species died out, before being replaced by herbivorous dinosaurs.

They were really successful animals, said Megan Whitney, a paleontologist at Harvard University and the lead author of the study. Theyre so abundant in South Africa that in some of these sites, you just get really sick of seeing them. Youll look out over a field and therell just be skulls of these animals everywhere.

To work out how these animals evolved their tusks, Dr. Whitney and her colleagues collected bone samples from 10 dicynodont species, among them the tiny, big-eyed Diictodon and the tank-like Lystrosaurus. They looked at how their canines attached to the jaw, whether they regularly regenerated lost teeth, like many reptiles do, and for indicators that their teeth grew continuously.

Many mammal families have evolved long, saber-toothed fangs or ever-growing incisors for gnawing. Several early dicynodonts also had a pair of long canine teeth poking from their beaks. But these teeth, like most animal teeth, are composed of a substance called dentine, capped by a hard, thin covering of enamel. Tusks have no enamel, Dr. Whitney said, and grow continuously even as the comparatively softer dentine gets worn away.

Examining the dicynodont skulls, the team found that a shift occurred midway through the groups evolution: the appearance of soft tissue attachments supporting the teeth, akin to the ligaments present in modern mammals. And like modern mammals, dicynodonts didnt continuously replace their teeth.

Both of these shifts laid the groundwork for the development of an ever-growing, well-supported tooth a tusk. Afterward, Dr. Whitney said, late dicynodonts developed tusks in at least two different lineages, and possibly more.

This evolutionary pathway is reminiscent of another group of tusked animals: elephants. Early elephant relatives had enlarged canines that were covered with enamel, Dr. Whitney said. Later members of the family reduced the enamel to a thin band on one side of the tooth, like a rodent incisor, allowing the tooth to grow continuously. Finally, they ditched the enamel entirely.

Youre providing the means for a tusk to evolve if you unlock the evolution of reduced tooth replacement and soft tissue attachments, Dr. Whitney said. Once you have a group that has both conditions, you can go a long time of animals playing with different tooth combinations, and you start to see these independent developments of tusks.

The reason that tusks are currently limited to modern mammals, then, lies in a specific arrangement of teeth that mammals inherited from the broader family of synapsids, the group that includes mammal forerunners like dicynodonts.

Even with those prerequisites, Dr. Whitney said, an adaptation like tusks isnt inevitable. But it is available, and multiple mammal groups elephants, whales, deer, pigs and walruses have found uses for them.

Mammals are kind of stuck with our teeth, unlike something like a shark, which has a conveyor belt of terror, Dr. Whitney said. So an ever-growing tooth is pretty brilliant if youre only replacing your tooth once.

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How Did Elephants and Walruses Get Their Tusks? Its a Long Story. - The New York Times