Daily Archives: April 6, 2022

One such individual is Karen Salirrosas, a specialist endocrinology doctor at the Ricardo Palma University in Peru and founder of Smart Doctor. The company serves as a bridge between healthcare professionals and patients, with a telemedicine service that removes physical and geographical barriers to making and receiving diagnoses. "Technology is helping us to get closer to people, both in terms of communication and when it comes to monitoring their health indicators, with the help of connected devices", says Salirrosas.

As a result of the pandemic, which has fostered a rise in digital consultations, telemedicine platforms are booming, as the people behind AcceXible and Smart Doctor can confirm. Salirrosas explains that "remote consultations allow people in rural settings to access specialists, who are often only based in big cities".

The availability of data will become increasingly relevant in order to feed algorithms, but the need to safeguard sensitive information about patients must be taken into account. With that in mind, Spain's Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, presented within the framework of the European Next Generation funds, considers the creation of a medical 'data lake'. This data repository would bring together information for mass analysis to assist with identifying conditions and improving diagnoses and treatments.

Incorporating the data into shared systems and processing them will be paramount. "We're going to have a unique moment in which there will be a large health data repository, with interoperable cloud-based systems", states Quibim's ngel Alberich-Bayarri. In this expert's opinion, sharing data may help advance medicine. Sharing anonymous medical evidence in online software and giving professionals access to that will allow doctors and researchers around the world to make great progress, he says.

In this manner, perhaps leading countries in organ donation, such as Spain, can reinvent themselves to become leaders in data donation. With the opening up of information, collaboration between experts from mathematicians to computer scientists and doctors, and momentum from technology, the health sector can already envisage a better future for all patients.

Follow this link:

Early diagnoses, virtual consultations and more accurate clinical trials: technology is revitalising the health sector - Banco Bilbao Vizcaya...

Executive summary

Africa, enabled by rapid technological change and demographic shifts, is primed for a major socioeconomic and structural revolution. This report analyzes the major trends driving this change, along with the opportunities and challenges stemming from it. Africa has the fastest-growing population in the world. In fact, one in four global citizens will be African by 2050. This growing population is projected to become increasingly concentrated in urban areas as Africa continues to experience a rise in the influence of and opportunities in its major cities. This young, growing workforce will be complemented by a rapidly expanding middle class with trillions of dollars in buying power in the coming decades. This report argues that, if harnessed successfully, these trends represent a significant opportunity for African countries and the U.S. to shape a transformation on the continent that ensures prosperity and equitable growth for all.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the major trends shaping the business environment in Africa, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Following financial liberalization in the 1990s, Africa has seen remarkable economic growth and reductions in poverty. However, Africa has not taken the traditional road to development. Rather, Africas services sector, with industries without smokestacks, already is exhibiting remarkably fast growth, outstripping manufacturing in its importance in driving growth on the continent. While COVID-19 has caused precipitous drops in trade and exacerbated poverty, its effects will be short term, and Africa still has tremendous growing business potential that offers rewarding opportunities to global and local businesses alike.

Chapter 2 then discusses the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in Africa, illustrating how the 4IR presents Africa with the opportunity to bridge gaps in physical and digital infrastructure, but also raises new challenges associated with stability and cybersecurity. Chapter 2 reveals that Africa is already adopting 4IR technology and explores how such technologies have the potential to increase safety and efficiency in the primary and secondary sectors of the economy and accelerate the growth of Africas tertiary sector. At the same time, this chapter finds that African governments do not have to limit themselves to promoting manufacturing or service sector growth; rather, mutually supporting policies capitalizing on the 4IR can be implemented to augment development in both sectors. The 4IR presents opportunities for governments to improve service delivery with new tools thanks to the rise in e-governance; however, it also presents significant risks, especially given Africas comparatively weak cybersecurity.

Chapter 3 illustrates how Africa is becoming increasingly interconnected, both regionally and globally. Regional free trade agreements are facilitating Africas efforts to transition from dependence on commodities to high-skilled, technologically intensive goods and services and manufactured goods. Also, non-Western countries have significantly increased their trade with and involvement in Africa, while China has become Africas largest trading partner and creditor. New partners like India and the Arab States are more aggressively engaging Africa economically. By contrast, the U.S. has taken a step back in its economic relationship with Africa, with loans, aid, trade, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows all falling in recent years.

Considering these trends, this report argues that it is vital that the U.S. take action to improve its position on the increasingly influential and globally immersed African continent. In particular, the U.S. should target investment and aid to areas that allow the U.S. to leverage the increasing regional trade on the continent and promote U.S.-Africa business integration. Likewise, the U.S. and other international partners should support Africa on its path to growth under the 4IR in order to ensure regional stability and mutual security. Finally, the U.S. can increase lending, using it as well for a further flex of power for mutual profit. Ultimately, this report concludes that Africas rise in global influence cannot be ignored. Policymakers, businesses, and international players, especially the U.S., need to take action now to ensure the coming decades result in a strategic, coordinated effort to bring about socioeconomic and structural reforms on the African continent that will benefit African, American, and global citizens alike.

Key trends shaping Africas transformation and growth: This report finds that the key trends shaping Africas future include the continents rapidly growing population, increasingly young work force, more empowered consumer class, and increased urbanization. Likewise, Africa is becoming increasingly interconnected, whether it be through increased mobile phone penetration on the continent, greater access to electricity, or faster broadband speeds. The 4IR and its associated technologies also represent a key driver of transformation on the continent.

Africa has not taken a traditional path to development: Rather than following the typical development path of transitioning from agriculture to manufacturing, Africa has skipped directly to developing its tertiary sectors, especially in banking/finance, ICT services, and tourism. Likewise, Africa has urbanized at a much lower per capita income relative to other regions of the world, resulting in high inequality and poverty levels, and a larger informal sector. At the same time, Africa also is the only region whose rural population is still growing alongside its urban one.

Developing Africas secondary and tertiary sectors is not an either/or choice: African governments do not have to choose between promoting its manufacturing or services sectors. Rather, these sectors can be served by complementary policies, since they share a common business environment, depend on exports, and benefit from agglomeration economies. If African governments adopt policies that are targeted at these three areas, they can create synergies and promote the development of both the secondary and tertiary sectors in the process. More specifically, support for industries without smokestackssectors traditionally considered services but which share a number of characteristics with industry that make them primed for growth and job creationcan sustain Africas current growth trajectory.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution brings both massive opportunities and notable risks: The rise of the 4IR on the African continent presents a massive opportunity for growth and socioeconomic transformation, if managed correctly.Overall, 4IR technologies can allow Africa to bridge existing gaps in its infrastructure and leapfrog to new development stages without accumulating inefficiencies. The 4IR can increase efficiency and safety in Africas primary and secondary sectors, and further support the growth of industries without smokestacks 4IR innovations building on digitalization, including mobile money, can increase financial inclusion and formalize Africas massive informal sector. However, if mismanaged, the 4IR brings with it significant risks for rising inequality stemming from a shift to high-skilled labor and an increased risk of cybercrime, especially considering the Africas current cybersecurity weaknesses.

Regional integration can lead to more resilient economies: An increase in regional integration through free trade agreements, especially through the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), can drive economic diversification and resilience to shocks, as intra-African trade features more diverse goods, including higher rates of manufactured and technologically intensive goods and services. In this way, regional integration will enable African economies to shift away from their traditional dependence on commodities, which continue to dominate its trade in international markets and leave it vulnerable to shocks.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are a temporary setback: While COVID-19 had a negative impact on the continent, Africa is already recovering and poised for a strong future. COVID-19 was accompanied by a precipitous drop in global trade and has exacerbated poverty in the region. However, prior to the pandemic, Africa had seen several decades of strong growth in per capita GDP and trade, a reduction in poverty, and an improved business environment. Increased access to finance and a fall in corruption have contributed to better business prospects. Extreme poverty is still predicted to decline, with the absolute number of citizens living in extreme poverty anticipated to fall by 27 million by 2030. Trade also is expected to rebound given increased regional integration and a fully implemented AfCFTA.

Africa has large, untapped resources: Key resources in Africa are still not being utilized to their full potential.For example, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of uncultivated fertile land in the world. Moreover, large areas of its land are not being utilized relative to the productive capabilities of that land, both for services and manufacturing. Likewise, Africas workforce also is a largely untapped resource, as gaps in education systems leave workers without the needed skills to compete in the modern economy. African farmers also face challenges related to the quality of seeds, the availability of agricultural machinery, and irrigation systems. In general, inefficiencies and gaps in existing infrastructure, whether it be education systems, electricity grids, internet access, roads, or other areas, are hindering Africas ability to capitalize fully on its potential.

The U.S. has fallen behind other countries in Africa and must take action now to address this issue: U.S. trade, FDI, aid, and lending with Africa all have fallen in recent years, while international players have increased their involvement and influence on the continent. In contrast, non-Western nations like China (now the regions largest trade partner and lender), India, Japan, and the Middle East have deepened their influence in Africa. Notably, the U.S.s decline in relations with Africa even eschews that of Western nations, since European countries like the Netherlands have increased their FDI and trade with the region, and the UK post-Brexit has also committed to increase its involvement on the continent. Considering Africas growing role in the global economy, the U.S. needs to take action to address its declining competitiveness on the continent both for diplomatic and economic reasons. The U.S. should strengthen ties on the continent through increased diplomatic visits, target investments based on opportunities offered by the AfCFTA, increase aid that will facilitate U.S.-Africa business partnerships while creating benefits for all stakeholders.

Download the full report

See original here:

Effective engagement with Africa: Capitalizing on shifts in business, technology, and global partnerships - Brookings Institution

WaveTunnelTM Technology Delivers an Intelligent, Indoor, Broadband Backhaul Solution for the Enterprise with the Performance of Fiber, but Without Costly and Cumbersome Cabling.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Airvine's WaveTunnel technology has begun to ship to selected enterprise accounts worldwide. Those deployments have generated great excitement and we are planning on general availability in Q3. This technology will completely revolutionize enterprise indoor networking by delivering the broadband backhaul speeds required by technologies like Wi-Fi 6/6E, but without any of the limitations of having to pull wire.

Early deployments are with enterprise clients in the multi-dwelling unit (MDU), manufacturing, warehousing, and hospitality sectors. These clients have a strong need for a high-performance backhaul solution that is quick and easy to install, and can easily accommodate rapid moves, adds, and changes. The do-it-yourself nature of a WaveTunnel installation is also a compelling feature.

"We are very excited to begin shipments of our ground-breaking WaveTunnel technology. There has been great enthusiasm on the part of our pilot customers who are eager to get this technology into their production networks. The pilot phase has been massively oversubscribed."Vivek Ragavan, CEO, Airvine

"New enterprise wireless deployments of Wi-Fi 6/6E require high-performance backhaul. Yet existing cabling may be insufficient - either poor quality, or in the wrong places. Indoor private 4G and 5G deployments face similar challenges in thefuture as well. Wireless backhaul solutions such as Airvine's have the potential to be a disruptor in these scenarios." Dean Bubley, Director at Disruptive Analysis

"Airvine's solution is very impressive, and it will be a game-changer. The days of disrupting the enterprise with technicians stringing wire through drop ceilings and heating ducts is over. The future is about quick and effortless installs of broadband wireless backhaul technology. This is the latest in an industry trend toward Replace The Wire Technology" Claus Hetting, CEO Wi-Fi NOW Events

Airvine is developing an entirely new class of wireless technology that utilizes unlicensed spectrum in the 60 GHz band (57 to 71 GHz in the U.S.) to backhaul indoor enterprise data traffic. It's the perfect fit for enterprise customers that:

The Magic of Airvine technology can be found in the following:

For more on Airvine technology please visit us at http://www.airvine.com

About Airvine

Airvine is a fast-growing Silicon Valley innovator of intelligent broadband wireless backhaul solutions for the enterprise. The company has developed the industry's first indoor 60 GHz wireless system that exceeds the speed and rivals the reliability of structured wiring solutions at afraction of the deployment time and cost. Patented RF innovations extend the range and gain of wireless signals, penetrating walls and steering around obstacles that impede transmission.

SOURCE Airvine

Originally posted here:

Airvine Announces Limited Availability of Its Industry-leading WaveTunnel Technology - PR Newswire

Firm unites and expands offerings to provide clients with added value and accelerate growth in the technology consulting space

PITTSBURGH, April 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael Baker International, a global leader in engineering, planning and consulting services, today introduced the firm's Consulting and Technology Solutions (CTS) vertical. The CTS vertical is focused on technology differentiation and innovation to support Michael Baker's growth initiatives, identifying and incubating technologies and maximizing opportunities with consulting and technology-based solutions.

Michael Baker International

"As we Reimagine Michael Baker to become a full-service engineering and consulting firm, we are strengthening our position to leverage our technology capabilities for our clients and the projects they entrust to us," said Dan Kieny, President, Consulting and Technology Solutions at Michael Baker International. "Our cutting-edge technology solutions and services enable us to create more value for our clients and quickly and efficiently deliver complex projects. The formation of the CTS vertical allows our firm to differentiate our technology offerings and bundle our services so that we can proactively introduce and offer our technology solutions to the benefit of our clients across the country. "

The new group combines the firm's technology offerings, including:

Geospatial Information Technology (GIT) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Michael Baker provides innovative and sustainable GIT solutions to public and private sector clients through the firm's detailed understanding of business requirements, strategic planning, focused methodologies, quality control and collaborative partnerships. The team of GIS professionals, software developers and visualization specialists collaborate daily to deliver projects from the local to federal level related to broadband, transportation and water infrastructure, among others.

DATAMARK: DATAMARK, the public safety GIS team of Michael Baker, is the authority on GIS data for public safety. Its data-forward, full-service but configurable solutions provide the highest levels of public safety GIS data completeness and accuracy needed to support the requirements for any NG9-1-1 system.

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Pavement Technologies: Michael Baker's LiDAR solutions use remote sensing technology to collect exacting information on roadways, airports, bridges, utilities and rail/transit systems to support planning, engineering design and smart vehicle technology. Additionally, Michael Baker provides a full range of pavement engineering and management services using technology-based approaches for complete pavement data collection, assessment, design and implementation of pavement management systems.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS): As one of the first in the engineering industry to receive certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate several types of fixed-wing and vertical take-off and landing UAS, Michael Baker continues to pioneer UAS in inspection and survey work. The firm's UAS pilots are licensed engineers and surveyors who create orthophotos and 3D models to support engineering projects and offers services including emergency response, law enforcement, aerial inspection and mapping and agriculture and wildlife, among others.

Story continues

"Our CTS Vertical delivers the innovative, technology-enabled solutions to complex infrastructure challenges that our clients seek, " said Derek Vogelsang, Senior Vice President of Consulting and Technology Solutions at Michael Baker International. "We are pleased to offer expertise within a variety of services, including our work in National Broadband. Our team partners with governmental organizations in planning for and helping manage the rollout of broadband services and programs for unserved and underserved constituencies. We also offer indoor mapping under our National Data Collection and Analysis Services. This technology supports work in Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) and facilities management for our clients in emergency response and space management, as well as Building Information Management (BIM), engineering design and construction support."

Led by Dan Kieny, President, Consulting and Technology, the CTS team is comprised of nearly 200 technology experts. Under Derek Vogelsang, Senior Vice President of Consulting and Technology Solutions, the firm established new national technology pillars to drive growth by helping to identify, pursue and win projects across the country. The team is comprised of:

Grant Ervin, GISP, National Geospatial Services Director

Jeremy Jurick, GISP, National Broadband Services Director

Alicia McConnell, P.E., sUAS, National Aerial Technologies Director

Kranti Bandi, CMS, PMP, SOA, Application Development Director

Aaron Morris, GISP, CTS Operations Director

Polly Boardman PMP, CTS PMO Director

About Michael Baker International

Michael Baker International is a leading provider of engineering and consulting services with Practices that encompass all facets of infrastructure, including design, civil engineering, planning, architecture, environmental, construction and program management. For more than 80 years, the company has been a trusted partner to commercial clients, all branches of the military and federal, state and municipal governments, providing comprehensive services and solutions. Embracing emerging technologies and the latest innovations like intelligent transportation and design-build project delivery, Michael Baker is an industry leader that delivers expertise and quality. The firm's more than 3,000 employees across nearly 100 locations are committed to Making a Difference for clients and communities through a culture of innovation, collaboration and technological advancement while Reimagining Michael Baker to become a full-service engineering and consulting firm over the next five years. To learn more, visit https://mbakerintl.com/.

Contact: Julia Covellijulia.covelli@mbakerintl.com (866) 293-4609

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/michael-baker-international-introduces-consulting-and-technology-solutions-vertical-301519361.html

SOURCE Michael Baker International

See the original post here:

Michael Baker International Introduces Consulting and Technology Solutions Vertical - Yahoo Finance

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Judges, defense lawyers, police and prosecutors have been fighting over the Fourth Amendment for 230years, and its not hard to figure out why. So many of the words in the text are vague. Houses, papers, and effects, for example, means more today than they did when James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. So, too, does the clause things to be seized. What things? Seized how and by whom? Only unreasonable searches and seizures were barred, remember, leaving it up to future courts to argue over what is and what is not a reasonable exercise of police power.

Madison and company knew that some of the ambiguities contained in the Bill of Rights were necessary to achieve the political compromise necessary to ensure ratification of a document that changed the way the U.S. government interacts with citizens. The drafters also knew that by these ambiguities, they were passing on tough definitional questions to future judges and legislators to figure out. The same thing happens today, by the way, when Congress enacts ambiguous legislation and then complains that federal judges arent interpreting it properly. The late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scaliaused to complain about thatall the time.

The justices over the centuries have developed a series of standards theyve used to determine when a search is a search under the Fourth Amendment and then whether such a search is reasonable. And because technology has ceaselessly evolved over the generations police once searched for written letters and diaries, now they also search for emails and text messages Fourth Amendment standards have evolved as well. The law is always catching up to technology, and the speed with which it catches up usually is determined by the Supreme Court or Congress.

For some answers about these standards, I turned toOrin Kerr, author and professor at UC Berkeley School of Law.Kerris known for his scholarship on criminal procedure in general and the Fourth Amendment and computer crimes in particular, and hesfrequently at the centerof legal and political debates at the intersection of technology and privacy rights.

COHEN:There is often great frustration over the willy-nilly way judges seem to interpret and enforce Fourth Amendment protections. You wrote a really interestingHarvard Law Reviewarticlein 2011in which you described an equilibrium adjustment theory of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court adjusts the scope of Fourth Amendment protection in response to new facts in order to restore the status quo level of protection, you wrote. When changing technology or social practice expands government power, the Supreme Court tightens Fourth Amendment protection; when it threatens government power, the Supreme Court loosens constitutional protection.

A decade later, how has your theory held up? Have the Supreme Court and lower courts done more to harmonize what some see as cognitive dissonance at the heart of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, or has the law grown muddier?

KERR:I think my theory has held up well. Two of the biggest Fourth Amendment cases in the last decade areRiley v. CaliforniaandCarpenter v. United States,and thats exactly what the Supreme Court did in those two cases. InRiley, the Supreme Court held that the search-incident-to-arrest exception doesnt apply to cell phones. The government can always search physical property on a person at the time of arrest, the Court has long held, but underRileythe government needs a warrant to search a cell phone then. That new rule was needed, the Court said, because applying the old rule to new technology no longer made sense: Applying that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom.

Similarly, inCarpenter, the Court held that the Fourth Amendment protects historical cell-site location records. This was needed despite the older cases pointing to the opposite result, the Court reasoned, to assure preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted." New technology of cell phones gave the government access to a new surveillance method, and the Court had to change the old legal rule to ensure that the government didnt have too much power.

Of course, some would still find the law muddled. Some might say thatRileyandCarpentermade the law more muddled than before. But I would say the law is just really fact specific. How the Fourth Amendment applies depends on the facts, and you have to read a lot of cases to understand what the rules are.

COHEN:Riley v. Californiawas decided in 2014when Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer were on the Court. They are all gone or about to be gone now.Carpenter v. United Stateswas decided in 2018and the majority opinion in that case included two justices (Ginsburg and Breyer) who are gone or who will soon be gone from the court. Whats your sense of how the three Trump-nominated justices will push or pull Fourth Amendment law in one direction or another? For that matter, whats your sense of what a Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would bring to the debate over the Fourth Amendment? Have you had a chance to compare her views with those of Justice Breyer, the man she would replace?

KERR:The overall effect of these newer justices is mixed, and it probably depends on the specific doctrine. But I can try to offer an overall take just by running through the new justices. First, Justice Brett Kavanaugh tended to be on the governments side in Fourth Amendment cases back when he was on the DC Circuit, but then he was the fifth vote (together with Chief John Roberts, Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor) for the plaintiff in last terms significant Fourth Amendment case, Torres v. Madrid. Second, Justice Neil Gorsuch has a significant libertarian streak, which you can see in his separate opinion inCarpenter, but he can also end up on the governments side in divided cases (as he did inTorres).

Its too early to tell how Justice Amy Coney Barrett will be in the Fourth Amendment area. Finally, I expect Ketanji Brown Jackson will favor considerably more expansive Fourth Amendment rights than did Breyer, who was a swing vote in Fourth Amendment cases. Jackson is likely to be pretty different. Shes a former public defender, and I would guess she will join Sotomayor (and perhaps go beyond her) in being most likely to disagree with the government in Fourth Amendment cases.

In terms of what these new justices will mean for Fourth Amendment litigation generally, I expect many more Fourth Amendment cases will be briefed to the justices using originalist arguments. Briefs tend to be written to the swing vote, the justice who is needed to secure a majority and therefore a victory. We dont quite know who the center votes will be in Fourth Amendment cases, but Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Roberts are all possibilities. I suspect well see a lot of originalist arguments being made in Fourth Amendment cases to try to persuade those justices.

COHEN:You wrote a detailed analysis about a first-of-its-kind ruling on geofence warrants and their application to Fourth Amendment law. Geofencing involves the use of GPS technology to create a geographic boundary that allows police, relying on Google for example, to track a cell phone users location. The case is out of Virginia, U.S. v. Chatrie, in which a federal judge suppressed the results of a police search warrant because the warrant gathered geofencing data from a wide swath of people who could not possibly have any relationship to a nearby robbery officers were investigating. The complicated decision raises questions not just about what privacy expectations people have in the age of location-tracking on cell phones but whether new technology justifies a new way to approach Fourth Amendment jurisprudence more broadly.

You were skeptical of the judges analysis, and you suggest that such searches may not even be subject to Fourth Amendment protections in the first place, but I was struck by what you wrote toward the end of your piece: One wonders if the possibility that technology can enable the execution of warrants in a more privacy protective way than traditional warrants is leading [U.S. District Judge M. Hannah] Lauck to in effect seek a new Fourth Amendment standard that requires warrants to be executed in the most privacy protective way the new technology allows.

Can technology at last push Fourth Amendment law to a tipping point where federal judges start looking for new standards to guide their decisions? I suspect youll say that no matter what, these cases will necessarily be fact-specific, but is there a point where the governments use of new surveillance technology forces changes in the legal standards to which those facts will be applied? And if so, do you have a sense of which justices on the court would be most willing to entertain such a change?

KERR:I think there are two different questions. First, can technology so expand government power that the Supreme Court will adjust Fourth Amendment rules to limit government power? My answer to that is yes, and that is the basic idea of equilibrium-adjustment that we have been discussing. In the blog post, though, I was addressing a different question: If technology permits the government to access information but also creates the prospect of newer and better privacy protections than have existed before, should the Fourth Amendment require those new greater privacy protections?

Thats part of whats interesting about geofencing warrants, I think. Google can try to get the government to execute those warrants in a more privacy protective way than warrants have been executed previously. Traditionally, search warrants are executed in a brutal fashion: The government breaks in, rifles through everything, and sees everything. Its a severe privacy violation. In contrast, Google can (and wants) to carefully screen information from the government, limiting what the government can see and limiting the identifying information about whose account it is seeing. The question is, if technology creates new ways to protect privacy, should the law impose that requirement?

As to what the Supreme Court might say to that, the signals are mixed. On one hand, in a case likeMissouri v. McNeely, the Court suggested that the ready availability of telephone warrants these days might make the warrant requirement broader. As warrants become easier to get, the thinking runs, it becomes less burdensome to impose a warrant requirement. Thats not exactly the same. But its a little bit similar, I think. On the other hand, the Court has repeatedly rejected any kind of least intrusive means search requirement under the Fourth Amendment. And that cuts the other way.

COHEN: I want to go back to theTorrescase for a second because it addresses, or tries to address, the Fourth Amendments approach to police use-of-force cases, a topic near and dear to my heart.Torreshad to do withwhether a suspect was seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when an officer tries but fails to subdue that suspect. And the Supreme Court ruled that the attempt alone to seize a suspect in that case officers firing at a woman fleeing in her car triggered a Fourth Amendment analysis. Were living in an era where there are more lawsuits alleging excessive force by police officers, and certainly more taxpayer-funded legal settlements paid by police officials, and Im wondering whether you are seeing the effects of these cases in Fourth Amendment law. In other words, how is police reform shaping Fourth Amendment law?

KERR:Its hard to tell, as we cant answer the counterfactual of what the law would look like otherwise. But Im skeptical that police reforms are shaping Fourth Amendment law. George Floyd was killed in May 2020. Since then, the Supreme Court has agreed to hearzeronew Fourth Amendment cases. Thats remarkable. In a typical term, the Supreme Court hears three or four Fourth Amendment cases. This term, for the first time I can recall, it isnt deciding any Fourth Amendment cases at all. The Court has also turned away a series of petitions asking it to overturnqualified immunity, the judge-made legal doctrine used to shield police officers, corrections officials, and others from liability for their misconduct. Justice Thomas has written dissents from denials of certiorari on this, as he wants the Court to reconsider qualified immunity. But the rest of the Court has been silent. Its hard to know, but renewed interest in police reforms might be making the justices less likely to step in themselves. They may be waiting for the elected branches to act. But this is all just speculation. Unfortunately, we dont know.

COHEN:Lets end by looking ahead. We know that there will be technological advances in the next decade that will affect Fourth Amendment law. There always are. Does anything in particular stand out to you as something to watch in the years ahead? Do you see the law and technology careening toward some flashpoint?

KERR:I dont think there will be flashpoints, but Im expecting continued evolution. The lower courts are disagreeing on a lot of Fourth Amendment issues involving technology, and that will likely prompt Supreme Court review in the next few years on those issues. The Supreme Courtwill probably decide how the Fourth Amendment applies to long-term pole camera surveillance, if it allows warrantless border searches of computers, how theprivate search reconstruction doctrine(which allows the police to view the results of warrantless online searches by private parties) applies to internet providers; what the limits of computer warrants are, and, in the Fifth Amendment area, when the government can force people to unlock their phones. As always, stay tuned!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This discussion is one of several in a Brennan Center series on the Bill of Rights. The interview with David Carroll about the Sixth Amendment ishere, and the interview with Carol Steiker on the Eighth Amendment ishere.

See more here:

Could Better Technology Lead to Stronger 4th Amendment Privacy Protections? - brennancenter.org

Autonomous Trucking Company Working to Commercialize Self-Driving Trucks Within the Decade

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Torc Robotics, an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck, is opening a technology and software development center in Stuttgart, Germany. Torc is a leader in SAE Level 4 self-driving vehicle software for heavy-duty vehicles. Torc Europe GmbH will tap into the available talent pool in one of Germany's prime automotive development regions. The Stuttgart team will support the ongoing development of SAE Level 4 virtual driver for deployment in autonomous trucks in the United States.

Torc Europe GmbH will tap into the available talent pool in one of Germany's prime automotive development regions.

"Torc is working closely with Daimler Truck to optimize the entire product stack including the virtual driver, sensing and computer hardware, and the redundant chassis to be the first company to launch a scalable and profitable self-driving product," said Torc Founder and CEO Michael Fleming. "Torc's Stuttgart technology and software development center will leverage the deep automotive and trucking technical and product expertise to make this a reality."

Torc Europe GmbH is an independent entity and a 100% subsidiary of Torc Robotics, Inc. The office is in Untertrkheim, in close proximity to an existing Daimler Truck R&D facility and near the Daimler Truck headquarters. The 18,000 square-foot technology center has an additional 12,000 square feet that will be used as a workshop.

"Stuttgart is known as an area with a wealth of automotive and autonomous vehicle expertise. We hope to leverage this significant talent pool to meet our commercialization goals and support our mission of increased safety and efficiency," said Torc Vice President of Engineering Mike Avitabile. "Collaboration thrives because of the partnership with Daimler Truck, a leader in the trucking industry. Combining Daimler Truck's experience with Torc's expertise in automated vehicle software and automated truck systems will help accelerate bringing our product to market."

Torc and Daimler Truck are collaboratively pursuing a common goal of developing and bringing autonomous trucks for long-haul trucking (SAE Level 4) to the roads within the decade. This pure-play approach is directed at solving what Fleming calls "one of the most complex engineering feats of our generation." The challenge is to reinvent the truck to accommodate a safe, scalable Level 4 product, while integrating with the complex, interconnected freight network to support sustained innovation and efficiency.

In 2019, Daimler Truck invested a majority share in Torc, the first autonomous vehicle (AV) company to enter an integrated partnership with a truck original equipment manufacturer. Torc and Daimler Truck, with its North American entity, are ramping up development and testing in the United States, which requires support in areas such as simulation, machine learning, and infrastructure.

In addition to the facility in Stuttgart, Torc recently opened a 20,000-square-foot facility in Austin, Texas. In 2021, the company added a 28,000-square-foot office space for its workforce in Blacksburg's Corporate Research Center. A fully operational test facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, opened in 2020. The Albuquerque location allows daily, multi-shift runs of Torc's autonomous test trucks on highways in New Mexico and Texas.

The company is growing and is hiring software engineers, data scientists, and architects in the areas of systems, safety, validation, and product development. To learn more about employment opportunities at Torc Robotics, visit theCareers page.

Additional Background

About Torc Robotics

Torc Robotics, headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia, is an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, a global leader and pioneer in trucking. Founded in 2005 at the birth of the self-driving vehicle revolution, Torc has 17 years of experience in pioneering safety-critical, self-driving applications. Torc offers a complete self-driving vehicle software and integration solution and is currently focusing on commercializing self-driving trucks. "Trucking is the backbone of the United States economy, delivering food and products to every community in the country," said Torc CEO and Founder Michael Fleming. "Daimler Truck has led innovation in trucking for more than a century, from the first truck, to driver assist technology. Torc is working with Daimler Truck to commercialize self-driving trucks to make our roads safer and better, fulfilling our mission of saving lives."

For high resolution photos:

Daimler Truck's Freightliner Cascadia test truck in front of the Torc Europe Stuttgart office.

A Torc team in action

Media contact: Laura Lawton | [emailprotected] |(408) 505-5820

SOURCE Torc Robotics

Follow this link:

Torc Robotics opens technology and development center in Stuttgart - PR Newswire

Restaurants today are in short supply of staple ingredients including chicken, beef and dairy. What they can find is often priced tremendously higher than they can afford. And while they dont want to pass on higher prices to customers, they often have no choice.

Beef and veal prices have risen 20 percent over the past year, while pork has increased 14 percent. Even eggs, a relatively inexpensive staple, are up 11.6 percent. Restaurants and consumers alike are feeling the price pinch. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts food-away-from-home costs to increase 5.56.5 percent this year.

While the challenges continue to roll in for restaurants, technology can help them adapt and create digital resilience for continued success.

Circumventing the unavailability of certain food items

The impacts of the pandemic have highlighted the need for solid, sustainable restaurant-supplier relationships. When lead times on food deliveries over the past two years skyrocketed and suppliers turned restaurants away because of shortages in their supply chain, a strong relationship became a hot commodity.

French fries, frankly, are a huge [item] for us, so we picked a big national company [as a supplier] and a product we like, and we made sure to lock in a good price for ourselves because we use so much of it, Alex Brounstein, owner of Atlanta-based burger chain Grindhouse Killer Burgers, recently shared. We don't really lock in prices for things, but we try to do it for beef and French fries because that's all we can really do it for.

National ingredient shortages coupled with an absence of truck drivers in the market continue contributing to significant delivery delays and a lack of certain foods on store shelves and in restaurants. Not only are supplier relations critical during this time, but restaurants had to face yet another challenge: gettingcreative with their menus.

Given various commodity items were and continue to be in short supply since the pandemic began, chefs had to rethink their recipes and consider how they could do more with less. For example, darker meat chicken thighs are the new wings on many restaurant menus amid a shortage of chicken wings.

Embracing technology as key to future success

In light of the ingredient shortage, technologyincluding automation and machine learningwill be key in helping restaurants manage costs more efficiently and effectively.

Inventory management technology built with machine learning can automate inventory tracking to ensure the right ingredients are delivered at the right time to meet demand, and auto-ordering helps maintain appropriate stock levels for accurate sales forecasting. Maintaining optimal inventory can facilitate better decision-making, business planning and food waste management.

Technology can also provide insights to help determine what menu items are working versus which ones arent. By making data-driven decisions about menu optimization, operators can manage their costs and margins and increase flexibility when items run short or prices spike. For example, if beef is either too expensive or hard to come by, Grindhouse can offer a special on turkey or veggie burgers.

Enabling change through improved platforms and processes

Between the pandemic that led to ingredient shortagesand sky-high inflationrestaurants have been forced to change and rely on technology for help. They can create flexible menus that scale up or down, brainstorm ingredient or dish alternatives and maintain clear, ongoing communication with employees, suppliers and customers.

Consider pivoting menus with substitutions or alternatives to accommodate the shortages and satisfy customer demand. Focus on future-proofing restaurants so they are as prepared as possible for ingredient shortages.

And dont forget how technology can help managers and operators better understand how their restaurant is faring with analytics and metrics around everything it takes to run a restaurantfrom soup to nuts.

Dirk Izzo serves as president and GM of NCR Hospitality. He is a seasoned leader with experience in building and marketing innovative cloud-based solutions to help clients optimize their business performance. In his current role, Izzo is responsible for developing simple and innovative solutions that run the restaurant from end to end. NCR is the technology provider of choice for restaurants around the world and Izzo is focused on delivering the next-generation software, hardware and services that delivers on what customers want, when they want it.

Read this article:

When Short on Ingredients, Lean Into Restaurant Technology to Help - QSR magazine

SAN FRANCISCO At OpenAI, one of the worlds most ambitious artificial intelligence labs, researchers are building technology that lets you create digital images simply by describing what you want to see.

They call it DALL-E in a nod to both WALL-E, the 2008 animated movie about an autonomous robot, and Salvador Dal, the surrealist painter.

OpenAI, backed by a billion dollars in funding from Microsoft, is not yet sharing the technology with the general public. But on a recent afternoon, Alex Nichol, one of the researchers behind the system, demonstrated how it works.

When he asked for a teapot in the shape of an avocado, typing those words into a largely empty computer screen, the system created 10 distinct images of a dark green avocado teapot, some with pits and some without. DALL-E is good at avocados, Mr. Nichol said.

When he typed cats playing chess, it put two fluffy kittens on either side of a checkered game board, 32 chess pieces lined up between them. When he summoned a teddy bear playing a trumpet underwater, one image showed tiny air bubbles rising from the end of the bears trumpet toward the surface of the water.

DALL-E can also edit photos. When Mr. Nichol erased the teddy bears trumpet and asked for a guitar instead, a guitar appeared between the furry arms.

A team of seven researchers spent two years developing the technology, which OpenAI plans to eventually offer as a tool for people like graphic artists, providing new shortcuts and new ideas as they create and edit digital images. Computer programmers already use Copilot, a tool based on similar technology from OpenAI, to generate snippets of software code.

But for many experts, DALL-E is worrisome. As this kind of technology continues to improve, they say, it could help spread disinformation across the internet, feeding the kind of online campaigns that may have helped sway the 2016 presidential election.

You could use it for good things, but certainly you could use it for all sorts of other crazy, worrying applications, and that includes deep fakes, like misleading photos and videos, said Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor of computer science at Arizona State University.

A half decade ago, the worlds leading A.I. labs built systems that could identify objects in digital images and even generate images on their own, including flowers, dogs, cars and faces. A few years later, they built systems that could do much the same with written language, summarizing articles, answering questions, generating tweets and even writing blog posts.

Now, researchers are combining those technologies to create new forms of A.I. DALL-E is a notable step forward because it juggles both language and images and, in some cases, grasps the relationship between the two.

We can now use multiple, intersecting streams of information to create better and better technology, said Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, an artificial intelligence lab in Seattle.

The technology is not perfect. When Mr. Nichol asked DALL-E to put the Eiffel Tower on the moon, it did not quite grasp the idea. It put the moon in the sky above the tower. When he asked for a living room filled with sand, it produced a scene that looked more like a construction site than a living room.

But when Mr. Nichol tweaked his requests a little, adding or subtracting a few words here or there, it provided what he wanted. When he asked for a piano in a living room filled with sand, the image looked more like a beach in a living room.

DALL-E is what artificial intelligence researchers call a neural network, which is a mathematical system loosely modeled on the network of neurons in the brain. That is the same technology that recognizes the commands spoken into smartphones and identifies the presence of pedestrians as self-driving cars navigate city streets.

A neural network learns skills by analyzing large amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of avocado photos, for example, it can learn to recognize an avocado. DALL-E looks for patterns as it analyzes millions of digital images as well as text captions that describe what each image depicts. In this way, it learns to recognize the links between the images and the words.

When someone describes an image for DALL-E, it generates a set of key features that this image might include. One feature might be the line at the edge of a trumpet. Another might be the curve at the top of a teddy bears ear.

Then, a second neural network, called a diffusion model, creates the image and generates the pixels needed to realize these features. The latest version of DALL-E, unveiled on Wednesday with a new research paper describing the system, generates high-resolution images that in many cases look like photos.

Though DALL-E often fails to understand what someone has described and sometimes mangles the image it produces, OpenAI continues to improve the technology. Researchers can often refine the skills of a neural network by feeding it even larger amounts of data.

They can also build more powerful systems by applying the same concepts to new types of data. The Allen Institute recently created a system that can analyze audio as well as imagery and text. After analyzing millions of YouTube videos, including audio tracks and captions, it learned to identify particular moments in TV shows or movies, like a barking dog or a shutting door.

Experts believe researchers will continue to hone such systems. Ultimately, those systems could help companies improve search engines, digital assistants and other common technologies as well as automate new tasks for graphic artists, programmers and other professionals.

But there are caveats to that potential. The A.I. systems can show bias against women and people of color, in part because they learn their skills from enormous pools of online text, images and other data that show bias. They could be used to generate pornography, hate speech and other offensive material. And many experts believe the technology will eventually make it so easy to create disinformation, people will have to be skeptical of nearly everything they see online.

We can forge text. We can put text into someones voice. And we can forge images and videos, Dr. Etzioni said. There is already disinformation online, but the worry is that this scale disinformation to new levels.

OpenAI is keeping a tight leash on DALL-E. It would not let outsiders use the system on their own. It puts a watermark in the corner of each image it generates. And though the lab plans on opening the system to testers this week, the group will be small.

The system also includes filters that prevent users from generating what it deems inappropriate images. When asked for a pig with the head of a sheep, it declined to produce an image. The combination of the words pig and head most likely tripped OpenAIs anti-bullying filters, according to the lab.

This is not a product, said Mira Murati, OpenAIs head of research. The idea is understand capabilities and limitations and give us the opportunity to build in mitigation.

OpenAI can control the systems behavior in some ways. But others across the globe may soon create similar technology that puts the same powers in the hands of almost anyone. Working from a research paper describing an early version of DALL-E, Boris Dayma, an independent researcher in Houston, has already built and released a simpler version of the technology.

People need to know that the images they see may not be real, he said.

Excerpt from:

Meet DALL-E, the A.I. That Draws Anything at Your Command - The New York Times