Daily Archives: July 14, 2022

King Abdullah Financial District KAFD (KAFD)

After spending two and a half years in Asia, I finally started traveling the world and giving talks in person. My latest trip was to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or KSA for short. The primary reason for my trip had very little to do with longevity and focused primarily on the new applications of artificial intelligence in chemistry. However, quite serendipitously, it coincided with the recent media hype surrounding the launch of Hevolution Foundation, a $20 Billion Saudi initiative aiming to spend over $1 Billion annually to extend healthy human life for everyone on the planet. The leadership of Hevolution will be presenting at the 9th annual Aging Research & Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference I am co-organizing with the University of Copenhagen. After meeting the team, I decided to write a series of articles exploring the countrys plans to lead the world in several critical technologies including the area I dedicated my life to - productive longevity.

A screenshot of the Board of Directors of the Hevolution Foundation chaired by HRH Crown Prince ... [+] Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud

Usually, mention of Saudi Arabia calls to mind sand dunes, difficulty getting a visa, oil money, religious police, and suppression of womens rights. These stereotypes have been reinforced through a steady stream of negative news in the Western media. But little attention is paid to the countrys technological advances. The Absher app, for instance, allows residents to seamlessly interact with all government systems and compete with the technological marvels of China. My trip to KSA actually started in Palo Alto, where I met the head of a technology investment powerhouse. He showed how the app can be used to buy and sell property, renew vehicle licenses (no more visits to DMV), and monitor ones financial affairs. Using Absher, I was able to obtain a visa to KSA in a matter of just a few clicks. (Yes, getting into KSA is almost as easy as getting into the UAE, with no paperwork or needless bureaucracy).

And from what I saw in Riyadh and Dammam, Saudi Arabia is getting better every day. For example, the building that looks like a spaceship behind me is the KAFD Grand Mosque. And the building behind it hosts Hevolution Foundation which I am planning to cover in a separate article.

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, the KAFD Grand Mosque is the Juma'ah (Friday) mosque, and an architectural ... [+] centerpiece of the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Under the rule of Saudi Arabias de-facto leader, His Royal Highness (HRH) Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, or MBS as he is affectionately known by many of his people, this middle eastern country is transforming itself into one of the worlds next big hubs for science and technology. If this pace continues uninterrupted, I believe that within the next 10 years, Saudi Arabia will be better recognized as a place that leads global efforts for advanced artificial intelligence and cutting-edge innovation than as a land of conflicts.

The King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in June, 2022

It is true that Saudi Arabia has an oil-based economy with strong government controls over major economic and social activities. It possesses about 16% of the worlds proven petroleum reserves, and oil is the cornerstone of its development. However, under MBS vision, Saudi Arabia plans to reduce its dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors such as healthcare, recreation, tourism, and education. This vision is soon to become a reality under the Saudi Vision 2030, a strategic framework and a brainchild of MBS.

Vision 2030 is built upon three pillars: a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation. The first theme is vital to achieving the Vision and a strong foundation for economic prosperity. This includes urbanism, culture and entertainment, sports, and UNESCO heritage sites. The second theme calls for a thriving economy with opportunities for all, by building an education system aligned with market needs. This includes the development of investment tools to unlock the various economic sectors, diversification of the economy, and creation of job opportunities. The third theme is built on an effective, transparent, accountable, enabling, and high-performing government. When combined, these three pillars provide the perfect landscape for entrepreneurs, small enterprises, and large corporations alike.

In order to see the full picture of how and why Saudi Arabia is driving its full resources to achieve these goals, we need to take a quick look at the origination of Vision 2030.

Saudi Arabia was mainly a subsistence economy during the start of the 20th century. It wasnt until 1933 that the Saudi government signed an oil concession agreement with Standard Oil Company, which led to the development of oil fields in the country managed by Aramco a joint venture company formed by Texaco and Chevron. By 1949, Saudis oil production reached 500,000 barrels per day, and rose to 1 million in 1954. In 1960, OPEC was created, with Saudi Arabia as one of the founding members. During the oil crisis in 1973, the price of oil increased to nearly $12 per barrel from $3, leading to a rapid growth of the Saudi economy. One estimate suggests that the economy grew from $15 billion in 1973 to $184 billion by 1981.

Fueled by enormous revenues from oil exports, plus an abundance of capital, vast development projects sprung up that turned the country into a modern state. Long-term economic development, such as a series of five-year plans, established most of Saudis infrastructure. This leads us into the 21st century, where Saudi Arabia is one of the most developed and modern countries of the world. Today, Saudi Arabias economy is worth over $700 billion.

After the IPO, Saudi Arabian Oil Copmany, Aramco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization exceeding $2.3 Trillion dollars which surpassed Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. It is more valuable than Amazon and Facebook combined, and, considering the global hyperinflation and geopolitical tensions in the less developed oil-producing countries, the value of the company and its prominence is expected to increase.

In response to the Vision 2030 strategy, Aramco set up Prosperity7 Ventures a global venture fund to invest in the disruptive technologies that may lead to the creation of the next-genreation giants and bring prosperity on a vast scale.

R&D facility, Aramco, Dammam

During my trip to the KSA I briefly visited Aramcos headquarters in Dammam. In the past I visited the R&D facilities of several large petrochemical companies in Europe and in the US. And all of them had two things in common: extremely high levels of security and ostentatiously expensive facilities. Aramcos HQ had nothing to do with this stereotype. I took a regular Uber from the hotel to get to the main R&D facility. All of the buildings on the premises including the headquarters have very little or excess - people here are clearly more interested in business and hard work than in showing off. The visitors experience is seamless and paperless. Many key projects are supervised by women and the level of cultural and gender diversity makes you feel like back in Canada.

The key engineering and innovation staff is trained mostly at the top Western universities with Harvard, Stanford, MIT, University of California, Oxford, Cambridge and other top institutions, and have active collaborations with the local and global academic institutions. From the entrance to the conference room, the company makes it very clear that it is focused on environmental sustainability.

On the way to Aramco, you can see many architectural marvels like the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture.

King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, Dharhan, Saudi Arabia

Every government around the world aims to organize itself with agility, continuously restructuring and aligning their systems to national priorities. When MBS took leadership of restructuring the Saudi economy, he kept in mind the ever-evolving global challenges. Thus, when he introduced the Vision in 2016, it detailed a strategic orientation for the next 15 years. This style of governance and framework helped to speed strategy development and decision-making, as well as enhance performance of all Saudi economic and social sectors.

The Vision 2030 framework is not only limited to diversifying the economy of Saudi Arabia. It is actually designed to make Saudi Arabia one of the most competitive countries in terms of scientific innovation. That is why it matters a lot to scientists. The Vision involves a lot of programs for innovation in the health sector especially. In fact, the Saudi government has earmarked $20 billion for the advancement of artificial intelligence alone. The health sector is one of the main beneficiaries of advanced technologies since healthcare has grown increasingly complex to physicians, patients, and governments. The rising costs of healthcare services, and rising expectations of healthcare quality, demands a transformational shift in this field. To ensure that healthcare reaches its full potential, it needs to be modernized by incorporating information technology, health informatics, and AI.

The SDAIA was created in 2019 with a core mandate to support and drive the data and AI agenda within the Kingdom, and its vision is to position Saudi Arabia as a global leader in data-driven economics. The Authority announced in 2020 the National Strategy for Data and AI, or NSDAI, with a vision to put in place where the best of data and AI is made reality.

The three core entities within SDAIA are the National Data Management Office, the National Information Center, and the National Center for Artificial Intelligence. These three entities help deliver the promise of a data-driven and AI-supported government and economy.

The NDMO is designed to digitize national data as a national asset, while the NCAI is envisaged to co-create a portfolio of AI use cases along priority sectors (e.g. health), driving AI use cases development. The NIC provides the latest technology services and digital solutions for government agencies in the Kingdom. All three rely heavily on the role played by AI.

The SCAI enables the ecosystem to shape the future of AI through best-in-class partnerships, targeted investments, and strategic capabilities addressing market gaps globally. One of its solutions is AI-based document extraction platforms that automatically extract text and data from scanned documents. Another is an audio analytics platform that uses voice or speech recognition to receive and interpret dictation, or understand and carry outspoken commands. The SCAI also has natural language understanding platforms that focus on reading comprehension and semantic analysis. And this company is working on much, much more.

Under Saudi Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia is also keen to partner with leading global companies in the field of AI. The Kingdom recently signed a series of partnership agreements with international tech companies at the Global AI Summit held in Riyadh.

The NCAI signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei to enable strategic cooperation on the Kingdoms National AI Capability Development Program. Under the MoU, Huawei will train Saudi AI engineers and students, and also address Arabic language AI-related capabilities. NCAI and Huawei will also explore the creation of an AI Capability Platform to localize technology solutions.

Likewise, the SDAIA signed an MoU with the International Telecommunication Union, a specialized agency of the UN, to collaborate on initiatives to support efforts to optimize the benefits of AI technologies and applications for sustainable development. Under this agreement, Saudi Arabia will support ITU in developing projects, activities, and initiatives that will facilitate multi-stakeholder participation, international cooperation, and knowledge sharing.

SDAIA also signed an MoU with Alibaba Cloud to develop digital and AI services in such areas as safety and security, mobility, urban planning, energy, education and health. Through the partnership, Alibaba Clouds AI platform will enable intelligent management of Saudi Arabias cities, and provide other smart solutions for citizens.

Saudi Arabia and MBS recognize the significance of data and AI technology. The Kingdom may run out of oil one day and Vision 2030 is just one way to reduce its reliance on this non-renewable energy resource as a primary income source. More broadly, Vision 2030 is a modern-day example of how strong leadership, albeit faulty by Western standards, can transform a nation and the world. MBS is putting his countrys resources to good use. Although it is still in the earlier stages in terms of innovation and technological advances, Saudi Arabia could very soon transform its economy through effective use of AI. The various government agencies working to revolutionize AI, coupled with the dozens of partnerships with leading technology companies are only the beginning. As global oil prices fluctuate wildly, and the COVID pandemic becomes a thing of the past, one must wonder what the future of Vision 2030 will look like, and if it will actually be successful. Until that day comes (2030), it is evident that Saudi Arabia will only benefit from Vision 2030 and the scientific world will reap some of its rewards, too.

Link:

The New Saudi Arabia - Vision 2030 and AI - Forbes

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --FedLearn, the first-to-market, online training provider with content specialized and contextualized to meet mission requirements of federal government agenciesparticularly those in the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Communityand the government contractor organizations supporting them, today transitioned to an artificial intelligence-enabled platform that customizes learning experiences in real time.

FedLearn logo (PRNewsfoto/FedLearn)

The platform's predictive algorithms track learner behaviors to adapt and tailor content to reveal the most relevant materials to meet specific professional interests and areas for skill development.

In addition to this capability, FedLearn now offers:

Real-time learner assessment: Ability to predict to a 90%+ confidence level if a learner is absorbing content (or not). The AI also provides additional learner engagement and outcome metrics via a user-friendly dashboard.

Clearinghouse of defense and intelligence content: Access to a growing repository of hundreds of publicly available DoD and Intelligence Community materials (e.g., joint publications, reports, books, videos)

Personalized learner experience: Recommendations for additional content available on the platform to review based on individual learner areas of interest

Social learning: Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and increased learner engagement through social networking

Micro-learning: Division of content into "bite-sized" modules to provide learner access to the exact pieces or sections of interest (e.g., the specific two minutes of a 60-minute video)

"FedLearn is disrupting the traditional approach to learning and development in federal government and government contractor organizations," said J. Keith Dunbar, FedLearn founder and chief executive officer. "Learners can now control how, where, when and what they learnimproving engagement and retention of subject matter while reducing the time required to gain new knowledge or skills in support of mission success."

Story continues

The entire FedLearn course catalog of online, self-paced courses is available on the new learning experience platform. FedLearn will also continue to offer virtual, instructor-led learning opportunities on subjects of critical importance to the mission requirements and business goals of customers.

To learn more about FedLearn and its AI-enabled capabilities, visit fedlearn.com.

About FedLearn

FedLearn (fedlearn.com) is transforming learning for federal government and government contractor organizations. We offer the first artificial intelligence-enabled, online learning platform with specialized and contextualized content directly supporting government mission areas. Our solution combines the best of traditional classroom and elearning settings to offer a rich, dynamic and personalized learning experience with quantifiable outcomes. FedLearn is a certified service-disabled veteran-owned small business.

ContactMichelle R. SnyderChief Operating and Marketing OfficerFedLearnmsnyder@fedlearn.com703.253.6229

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FedLearn Launches AI-Powered Platform that Personalizes Learning Transforms Learning for Federal Government and Contractor Organizations - Yahoo...

Taipei

An artificial intelligence (AI) institute in Hefei, in Chinas Anhui province, says it has developed software that can gauge the loyalty of Communist Party members something that, if true, would be considered a breakthrough, but has sparked public outcry.

Analysts said China has improved its AI-powered surveillance, using big data, machine learning, facial recognition and AI to get into the brains and minds of its people, building what many call a draconian digital dictatorship.

Smart thought education?

The institute posted a video called The Smart Political Education Bar, on July 1 to boast about its mind-reading software, which it said would be used on party members to further solidify their determination to be grateful to the party, listen to the party and follow the party.

In the video, a subject was seen scrolling through online material that promotes party policy at a kiosk, where the institute said its AI software was monitoring his reaction to see how attentive he was to the partys thought education.

The post, however, was taken down shortly after sparking a public outcry among Chinese netizens.

Hung Ching-fu, a professor of political science at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, in southern Taiwan, said that the Communist Party has abused technological advances to serve its own political interests.

It has used cutting-edge technology to empower its party state. China has upgraded from early-day facial recognition to AI programs that try to get into brains and minds (more) than meet the eye. Its adoption of advanced AI will reinforce its total controls, Hung told VOA over the phone.

Hung added Chinas AI-fueled police state will weigh on its people, who are likely to self-censor or live in fear.

Digital repression

But he cast little confidence in what he called Chinas digital repression, which he said will likely put the Communist Party in the dictators dilemma a political term that describes a government leaders failure to win the hearts and minds of its people.

The taller you build your wall [of power], the further youre cut off from the people This constitutes what we call the dictators dilemma in politics. That is, despite their enormous powers, dictators keep out of touch with the people. I dont think any political systems that are against human nature will sustain, Hung added.

VOAs calls and emails to the Hefei-based institute for comment went unanswered.

The so-called mind-reading software is but the latest digital control China has implemented.

China reportedly has long deployed facial recognition in Xinjiang to keep tabs on ethnic Uyghurs while having enhanced its surveillance in recent years with one person, one file software to make it easier to track its people.

Late last year, authorities in Henan province reportedly launched a similar system to track what they see as suspicious journalists, foreign students and women. At the same time, prosecutors in Shanghai reportedly adopted AI prosecutors, who can file indictments on eight criminal offenses, including credit card fraud and charges of picking a quarrel and provoking trouble.

Chinese online newspaper The Paper reported that a Communist Party school in Sichuan had developed Smart Red Cloud as early as 2017, which was already able to monitor party member reaction to its political education and calculate their loyalty.

Victims of Chinas surveillance system

Several rights lawyers and activists told VOA on the condition of anonymity that they fell victim to Chinas digital surveillance system.

A rights activist from Wuhan, Hebei, said he was once taken away by police who were able to identify him after a roadside camera captured his face while he was on the street.

A Beijing-based rights lawyer complained that he was unable to post online messages or make an online registration as a result of Chinas tight censorship and digital tracking system.

Another rights lawyer revealed that Chinas police have been illegally collecting biometric data from the pupils of peoples eyes, fingerprints and urine samples of those in its custody to enhance what he called a precise but evil surveillance.

Chinas widespread application of AI technologies, however, is stimulating the sectors innovation, according to the findings of recent research by author Martin Beraja, an assistant professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and three other scholars at Harvard University and The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Their research concluded, while new technology bolsters autocratic power and autocratic demand stimulates innovation, this mutuality of advantage may even generate long-term, sustained AI innovation in China, creating what they call an AI-tocracy.

AI-tocracy

In the process of procuring that government contract, they [AI firms in China] get access to this data that allows them, of course, to innovate for the government application that has to do typically with public security or preventing crime, or the like. This has spilled over to their commercial innovation, because, potentially, they may use either the same government data or, if thats restricted, they may use the same algorithms that were trained with that data to develop commercial products that are used in the private sector, Beraja told VOA.

One such commercial software, for example, is used in supermarkets to track consumers as they move along the aisles, the professor added.

Beraja, however, expressed concerned over Chinas AI exports, which he found in his research are likely aiding other repressive governments.

One thing that we do observe is that the countries that are more autocratic or relatively weak democracies are indeed importing more facial recognition AI from China, more likely facial recognition AI from China than other technologies. And to me that says that there is a sense in which these technologies indeed are used for surveillance and repression, Beraja added.

Zola, a prominent blogger from China who is now a citizen of Taiwan, said that most netizens in China oppose the countrys digital suppression although their opposition is often muted.

He questioned the sustainability of Chinas AI-tocracy.

China may be exporting these technologies to other countries. But in the long run, such a governance model will lead a society to go to extremesrepeating the irrational policymaking pattern during the (Chinas) Cultural Revolution period. That will lead to its own collapse, Zola told VOA.

This article originated in VOAs Mandarin service.

See the article here:

China Boasts of 'Mind-reading' Artificial Intelligence that Supports 'AI-tocracy' - Voice of America - VOA News

Facebook says it wants to help fix misinformation running rampant across the internet a problem it may have helped create in the first place.

Facebook parent Meta announced a new AI-powered tool on Monday, called Sphere. It's intended to help detect and address misinformation, or "fake news", on the internet. Meta claims that it's "the first [AI] model capable of automatically scanning hundreds of thousands of citations at once to check whether they truly support the corresponding claims."

The announcement comes after years of criticism over Facebook's own role in allowing online misinformation to thrive and rapidly spread across the globe. Sphere's dataset includes 134 million public webpages, according to Meta's research team. It relies on that collective knowledge of the internet to rapidly scan hundreds of thousands of web citations, in search of factual errors.

It's perhaps fitting, then, that the AI model's first client is Wikipedia. According to Meta's announcement, the crowd-sourced internet encyclopedia is already using Sphere to scan its pages and flag sources that don't actually support the claims in the entry.

Meta also says that when Sphere spots a questionable source, it will also recommend a stronger one or a correction to help improve the entry's accuracy.

"Wikipedia is the default first stop in the hunt for research information, background material, or an answer to that nagging question about pop culture," Meta said in a statement, noting that Wikipedia hosts more than 6.5 million entries in the English language alone and adds roughly 17,000 new entries to its pages each month.

The company also released a video showing how Sphere works:

The arrangement with Wikipedia reportedly does not involve any financial compensation in either direction, Meta told TechCrunch. Meta gets to access a widescale training grounds for Sphere, and Wikipedia gains an AI tool that could potentially streamline its verification process and improve its factual accuracy.

Existing automated systems were already capable of identifying pieces of information that lacked any citation. But Meta's researchers say the complexity of singling out individual claims with questionable sources and determining if those sources actually support the claims in question "requires an AI system's depth of understanding and analysis."

In a statement, Shani Evenstein Sigalov a Tel Aviv University researcher and vice chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees called Sphere's work with Wikipedia "a powerful example of machine learning tools that can help scale the work of volunteers."

"Improving these processes will allow us to attract new editors to Wikipedia and provide better, more reliable information to billions of people around the world," Sigalov said.

Sphere marks Meta's latest effort to address online misinformation while potentially deflecting criticism over the company's own role in allowing that misinformation to persist.

Meta has faced consistently harsh criticism over the past several years from users and regulators over the spread of misinformation on the company's social media platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Former employees and leaked internal documents have added fuel to claims that the company has valued profits over battling misinformation, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been called in front of Congress to discuss the problem.

Last summer, President Joe Biden accused the social media giant of "killing people" by allowing Covid-19 vaccine misinformation on its platforms to spread. The company pushed back, claiming that Facebook and Instagram were providing "authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines" to billions of users.

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Meta has a new AI tool to fight misinformationand it's using Wikipedia to train itself - CNBC

OTTAWA, Ontario & PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Winner of the Best A.I. Product at the recent TA Awards, TC Market Buzz helps modern investors & traders tackle infobesity while improving brokerage platforms' return on news investment.. The cutting-edge technology employs proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) in particular natural language processing (NLP) trained by market analysts to crunch incredibly large amounts of content into simple actionable insights. Its disruptive iconic interface, designed for the mobile consumer, leverages beautifully simple visualizations to convey whats happening in the markets.

Key specs:

TC Market Buzz declutters the digital news experience making it easier to identify and act on trade opportunities for the large number of retail investors accessing their platform once a week or less. TC Market Buzz help investors Read less, know more thanks to concise analytics such as:

The recent addition of French and Chinese reading skills to Trading Centrals AI and NLP engine adds tens of thousands of articles from leading content sources to crunch in order to derive ever more powerful analytics. Market Buzz users are seamlessly provided with deeper insights into global stocks buzz score, sentiment score and trending topics.

"At Webull, we believe in delivering reliable, actionable research to our investors within an interface they enjoy using", says CEO Anthony Denier. "Trading Central's news and sentiment APIs provided the flexibility we needed to integrate layered insights and education throughout our platform."

Providing traders with actionable insight is incredibly important to us," says Olly Stevens, Product Director at StoneX Retail. Our clients want to know about the hottest conversations in the market and fact-check those stories from the most reputable sources. Combining Refinitiv news products with Trading Central news & sentiment analytics provide a unique vantage point into the performance of an instrument."

"We're passionate about providing high-quality, actionable insights across the full spectrum of investors, from those just getting started to the active trader," says Vincent Sangiovanni, Chief Executive Officer at Money.Net. "That's why we integrated Market Buzz, alongside Technical Insight and Strategy Builder within our Scout platform. The combination of Trading Central's award-winning research, robust AI and NLP capabilities, provides our investors a holistic view of a security, while their flexible, intuitive interfaces helped us deliver insight in a seamless fashion."

Trading Central has been supporting investment decisions through the world's most admired brokerage and wealth tech brands since 1999. Learn about our award-winning, embeddable research solutions: http://www.tradingcentral.com

Link:

Actionable news insights surfaced by Trading Central Artificial Intelligence - Business Wire

Telangana government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture (DiCRA) as the latest addition to the Digital Public Goods Registry, a move aimed at equipping farmers with information on impact of climate change.

Using remote sensing and pattern detection algorithms, DiCRA is able to identify farms resilient to climate change and those highly vulnerable. It harnesses open-source technologies to facilitate analysis and insights sharing on climate resilience, based on empirical inputs crowdsourced from hundreds of data scientists and citizen scientists on best performing farms. The platform, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), is geared towards strengthening food systems and food security, Industries and IT Minister K.T.Rama Raos office said in a release.

The DiCRA platform will put vital data and analytics in the hands of farmers, enabling them to mitigate the effects of climate change on their crops and livestock thus boosting resilience of their livelihoods and wider food security, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said.

With UNDP Accelerator Labs and partner organisations, we are proud to facilitate this first-of-its-kind digital commons to drive climate action not only for Telangana but for the entire world, the Minister said.

Describing DiCRA becoming a part of Digital Public Goods Registry as an important milestone in Telanganas commitment to open data policy, service delivery to farmers and anticipatory governance to combat the global challenge of food security, he said in partnership with the vibrant innovation ecosystem in the State it provides intelligence on climate resilience at the farm-level.

Within a period of three months, DiCRA gained more than 500 citizens and scientists from local digital ecosystems to support climate action in 112,077 square km of land in the State. DiCRA provides open access to both data as well as analytics derived through open software, allowing it to be replicated across the world.

The impact of climate change on agriculture is multifold, affecting crop yield, nutritional quality and livestock productivity. UNDP Resident Representative in India Shoko Noda said digital technologies hold immense potential in building resilience as we fight climate change. With DiCRA, we are happy to combine new-age data-driven technology for informed decision making to boost agricultural productivity. We look forward to scaling the use of the platform across India.

More here:

Farmers to get AI inputs on climate change - The Hindu

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is partnering with the Pulitzer Center to offer pro bono legal support to the Centers first cohort of Artificial Intelligence Accountability Fellows.

The ten journalists representing four continents are pursuing stories of local and global scope that touch on themes crucial to equity and human rights, such as AI in hiring, surveillance, social welfare, policing, migration, and border control.

Reporters Committee attorneys will work with the journalists to vet stories before they are published to reduce legal risk, and to provide other pro bono legal assistance related to newsgathering and First Amendment issues.

Were thrilled to partner with the Pulitzer Center on its new initiative supporting journalists reporting on the impact of artificial intelligence and surveillance in their communities, said Katie Townsend, deputy executive director and legal director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Our attorneys are looking forward to providing the AI fellows with much-needed legal support to help them pursue and publish this important work with greater confidence.

Reporting on the impact of AI technologies, especially in marginalized and vulnerable communities, is urgent and foundational to democracy, said Marina Walker Guevara, the Pulitzer Centers executive editor. We are grateful that the AI Fellows will have the support of the Reporters Committees world-class and dedicated attorneys as they pursue their stories.

The Pulitzer Center empowers a global community of journalists and media outlets to deepen engagement with critical underreported issues, bridge divides, and spur change. It supports more than 200 journalism projects annually that are published in local, regional and global outlets. The Centers K-12 and university programs connect journalists and stories with students and teachers, fostering critical thinking and media literacy in classrooms.

Through the AI Accountability Network, the Pulitzer Center seeks to address the knowledge imbalance on artificial intelligence that exists in the journalism industry, especially at the local level, and to build the capacity of journalists to report on this fast-evolving and underreported topic with skill, nuance, and impact.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on RCFPs work by signing up for their monthly newsletter and following them on Twitter or Instagram.

For media inquiries, contact the Reporters Committee at media@rcfp.org, or Sarah Swan at the Pulitzer Center, sswan@pulitzercenter.org.

Excerpt from:

RCFP partnership with Pulitzer Center will support journalists reporting on AI, surveillance - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

SHEFFIELD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mindtech Global, developer of the worlds leading platform for the creation of synthetic data for training AI, has today launched its first guide on how to use synthetic data to resolve visual AIs training problems.

From retail to law enforcement, and from healthcare to driverless cars, data scientists the world over are developing powerful visual AI applications that are bringing the benefits of deep machine learning networks to a whole swathe of industries.

However, trouble is stalking visual AIs brave, new world. A clutch of problematic, real-world data acquisition issues collectively amounting to whats being called a data roadblock are holding up the advancement of visual AI.

The answer to these data roadblocking issues, however, is a relatively simple one: visual AI developers need to augment what real-world data they can acquire with as much synthetic data as they can generate.

Using Chameleon, Mindtechs synthetic data creation platform, users set up a scene of buildings and environments, and then import all the assets relevant to their application which could be anything: people, bicycles, cars or crowds in which people mill in multiple directions (with collision detection). They then set up activities, events and what if scenarios that will generate images to be captured by one or more virtual cameras in a series of simulation runs the images that will ultimately form the basis of the data used to train a users AI.

Benefits of creating training data this way include it arrives perfectly annotated, privacy-compliant, and ready to use by machine learning engineers and/or data scientists with no need for 3D graphics expertise on the part of the user.

Chris Longstaff, VP Product Management, Mindtech Global said,

AI models are infamous for fragility throwing up bizarre, unexpected results due to the fact that they sometimes generalize from incomplete datasets, or a fault with the model design. For that reason, a synthetic data platform must be capable as Chameleon is of reproducing a dataset it once generated at a later time, should anyone need to forensically check why an ML model in development needs troubleshooting.

That key error checking capability ensures those tasked with training AI models can have as much faith in synthetic data as they currently do in real-world data perhaps even more.

You can read the full guide on how synthetic data resolves visual AIs training problems here: https://bit.ly/3Pp0RY1

Ends.

Mindtech Global http://www.mindtech.global

Mindtech Global is the developer of the worlds leading end-to-end synthetic data creation platform for the training of AI vision systems. The companys Chameleon platform is a step change in the way AI vision systems are trained, helping computers understand and predict human interactions in applications ranging across retail, smart home, healthcare and smart city.

Mindtech is headquartered in the UK, with operations across the US and Far East and is funded by investors including Mercia, Deeptech Labs, In-Q-Tel and Appen.

Link:

Mindtech Launches New Series on Synthetic Data - The Go-To Guide for Anyone Training AI to See and Understand Our World - Business Wire

Michelle Wu, cofounder and CEO and KK (Qiang Kou ) tech cofounder at Nyquist Data, an AI powered ... [+] cloud-based platform providing business, clinical, and regulatory intelligence and analytics for medical devices and pharmaceuticals companies

How long does it take to get FDA approval for a heart-failure drug?

It sounds like a simple question, but without the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered MedTech cloud-based platform, it could take months and millions of dollars to find out. The market size for AI in healthcare is projected to reach $187.95 billion by 2030, according to Precedence Research.

When Michelle Wu was first asked this question, global clinical and regulatory healthcare information was publicly available, but it was scattered around the world in different databases and languages. Worse yet, keywords were misspelled or there were handwritten notes included in the databases, making what should be searchable unsearchable.

Using AI, big data, and machine learning, Wu launched Nyquist to provide business, clinical, and regulatory intelligence and analytics on medical devices and pharmaceuticals across major markets, such as the U.S., Japan, the E.U., and Chinawithin seconds.

When Wu was the global strategy manager at Novartis, the CEO asked her about the length of time it takes the FDA to approve a new heart medication. "It's the #1 cause of death in the U.S.," she said. Heart disease costs the U.S. about $363 billion annually, according to the CDC.

Over the next three months, Wu read tons of FDA approvals that were 5,000 pages long in which maybe there were one or two relevant paragraphs. She also spoke with many experts. Then Wu compiled the data into Excel spreadsheets so that she could answer that simple question.

"This is insane," exclaimed Wu. Vital healthcare information that could be mined to provide insights into how to develop life-saving medical innovations faster and at a lower cost was available but in arcane, black-box computer systems. "There has to be a better way," Wu thought.

This project was a light-bulb moment for her. The financial industry had Bloomberg to analyze content and data to help investors uncover opportunities and minimize risk, and pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies needed something similar.

Wu left Novartis to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) to work on the idea. She also worked at a couple of startups before starting Nyquist.

In 2020, Wu and her cofounder KK (Qiang Kou), raised $523,000 in pre-seed funding from former Google, Amazon, big pharma, and MedTech executives and launched Nyquist. The startup aggregated medical data worldwide and then connected the dots, making the information valuable to analysts, R&D departments, and commercial teams in pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

By using Nyquist platform, pharma and medical device companies can speed up the process of medical innovations in the U.S., Japan, and the E.U. reaching China, India, Africa, and other emerging markets and vice versa. Companies in emerging markets are developing many cheaper and effective healthcare innovations. The world needs to know about these. The process of getting approval from one country to another can take 2 to 7 years.

Over the course of two years, Nyquist has developed the largest AI data platform for medical devices. "We have about 30 customers from seven countries," said Wu.

Working collaboratively with prospects and customers like Medtronic, Nyquist has discovered new uses for its platform. During a pitch call with Medtronic, an executive asked if the platform could be used to research supply-chain factories. Within a few moments, Medtronic had a list. There was silence and Wu thought the video had frozen. Then she heard mumbling and paper rustling from the Medtronic side of the call. Shortly after the call, Nyquist had a new customer.

When raising Nyquist's seed round, Wu experienced the typical naysayers. Old white men who told her no one would pay more than $50 for publicly available information.

Then she was introduced to Ilana Stern of Peterson Ventures, who quickly saw how arcane, manual, messy, costly, and lengthy the current process was. "They're helping medical device companies, and eventually pharma companies accelerate and increase the success of clinical trials and bringing products to market," said Stern. "What's most important is the lives impacted in getting innovation to market more quickly."

"It's the way they're harnessing natural-language processing, AI, and machine learning to ingest and organize data to surface insights is incredibly powerful," said Stern. "With the click of a button, you can look at the equivalent of FDA data in Japan, China [and many more countries]."

Stern was also impressed that Wu raised half a million dollars in pre-seed funding, considered a small amount of money. Yet, she built out a platform used by customers, including Medtronic, and Becton, Dickinson and Company, also known as BD.

The startup raised $6 million in March of 2022. Peterson Ventures led the round with participation from GSR Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, and Village Global. "We will soon launch our pharma platform," said Wu. Nyquist will also expand its global MedTech platform to include 108 clinical sites worldwide.

Another challenge is constantly aggregating all the global insight and data. One way they have overcome this challenge is that the team is geographically diverse, coming from Asia, Switzerland, Germany, and the U.S. But it is also diverse in gender and sexual orientation. "More than 50% of our employees are women and we have a lot of queer moms." Diversity improves performance and outcomes.

In addition, "We just graduated from Google Accelerator," said Wu. "It's like learning to paint from Leonardo da Vinci. They bring the creme de la creme of AI experts [for participants to learn from]."

Still, this young company is doing more. "There are a lot of clinical trials and medical device companies that have suffered during the Russian-Ukrainian war," said Wu. "We are helping a couple of medical device companies in Eastern Europe pro-bono move their clinical trials and manufacturers outside the war zone."

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AI Startup Speeds Healthcare Innovations To Save Lives - Forbes

The European Council of Optometry and Optics (ECOO) is calling for optometrists to express an interest in an EU project investigating artificial intelligence (AI) and retinal imaging.

The I(eye)-Screen project seeks to partner AI experts with ophthalmologists and optometrists who use optical coherence tomography (OCT) to screen for age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The project identified AMD as the most common cause of legal blindness in people over the age of 50, with 110 million individuals at risk. Signs of the disease can be identified by OCT before visual symptoms occur.

The initiative, which involves all EU countries as well as Great Britain, Norway and Switzerland, will see participating optometrists performing OCT imaging with adults above 55 years old with functional vision. Images will be analysed for early or intermediate age-related macular degeneration by an AI group.

If AMD is identified, the patient will be referred to a partnering ophthalmologist who will perform a clinical follow up four times a year over the course of three years, to identify progression.

If the project is approved, it is expected that a budget will be granted to cover the screening and referral of images.

The optometrist will screen approximately 200 to 250 individuals over one year, and refer around 25 individuals to the partnering ophthalmologist.

Following the study, researchers seek to make a reliable AI-based tool available for the optical community, along with a legal framework as a base for collaboration.

ECOO has outlined that all optometrists using a Topcon Maestro OCT are encouraged to apply. Applications can be made through an online form.

Julie-Anne Little, AOP chairman, said of the initiative: Involvement in studies such as these are important opportunities to ensure that optometry has a voice in how AI tools and machine learning may be employed in eye care in the future.

Little added: Primary care optometrists need to be central to how such tools can deliver effective integrated eye care for patients.

Optometrists who are already in contact with an ophthalmologist using a Spectralis OCT, and would like to work with them, can indicate this on the application form. Optometrists without a contact will be matched through the initiative.

The deadline for expressions of interest is 30 July, with earlier applications standing a higher chance of success.

Inviting optometrists to express an interest in the study, ECOO agreed that the project is a key opportunity for the profession to have a voice in the use of AI tools, to input in any guidance on the topic and to define how shared care is taken forward.

ECOO, which represents national associations from 21 countries across Europe, is part of a consortium of stakeholders collaborating on the EU funding application for the project.

An EU research grant for Personalised screening and risk assessment next door for life-long healthy vision based on automated AI-tools has already been successfully submitted, receiving the highest score and moving to the final round of the funding application.

The proposal has been based on the fact that 200 million individuals worldwide are affected by AMD, and 1.9 billion people are at risk, ECOO said.

The project will first gather retrospective data sets to train an advanced AI-based algorithm for early and intermediate AMD identification and detection of risk progression.

A prospective clinical study would then take place, collaborating with optometrists to validate the performance of the AI algorithm using OCT devices. This would be followed by a proof-of-concept of feasibility, where independent optometrist sites across Europe will screen individuals in a real-world setting to collect data for validation.

The final stage of the project would be an EU-conforming ethical and legal framework providing health care measures, preparing regulatory approval, and establishing AI-based prevention strategies.

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ECOO seeking optometrists to take part in AI screening project - AOP website