Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Advantech and the Artificial Intelligence of Things – Automation World

On the opening day of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform provider Advantechs online conference, company representatives and other industry experts gathered to discuss new developments on the horizon for IIoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and industrial networking. In particular, many sessions focused on the hurdles that still remain if IIoT and associated Industry 4.0 technologies are to see ubiquitous adoption in the future.

The Advantech Connect conference continues online through May 6.

Perhaps the greatest take-away from the first day of the event was that, while the real bedrock of value provided by IIoT is to be found in the data it generates, nothing can be attained from it unless that data is effectively gathered, communicated, and analyzed. As such, several speakers spotlighted burgeoning technologies such as 5G wireless connectivity, intelligent sensors, and AI as the most consequential industry trends going forward. Through the improvements these technologies enable in data gathering, transmission, and analytics, Advantech envisions industry moving beyond IIoT and toward an Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) that allows cloud-delivered applications to make real-time, autonomous decisions at the device level. Within this framework, cloud-based AI trained on large amounts of data can provide industry operators a means of more easily extracting value from their IIoT infrastructure in exchange for furnishing AIoT platforms with the datasets necessary to continue expanding their capabilities.

Allan Yang, chief technology officer at Advantech, stressed the need for a platform approach if AIoT is to be realized in a timely and cost-effective manner. AIoT is cross-disciplinary. It requires edge computing, cloud platforms, data know-how, and domain expertise in many specific areas. No one company can do this alone successfully. However, we have seen many companies that are still trying to build their essential technology modules in-house, rather than adopting a platform approach, he said. This takes a lot of time and involves a lot of trial and error. We strongly encourage all companies, regardless of their size, to evaluate the possibility of collaborating or engaging in a partnership to speed up adoption.

The Future of IIoT

The Advantech event also explored why IIoT adoption rates have not yet met projected expectations, with Dirk Finstel, deputy managing director at Advantech Europe, noting that although 50 billion IIoT devices were expected to be in operation by 2020, only 8.5 billion have been deployed in reality. According to Finstel, much of this can be attributed to shortcomings in the associated infrastructure needed to make large-scale IIoT a reality. He believes that the high speed and bandwidth capacity of 5G networking will improve the feasibility of many IIoT technologies that rely on cloud computing in the near future.

Advances in edge computing are also expected to play a larger role in IIoT deployments by easing the burden of sending large quantities of data in and of out of plants via cloud computing applications, said Jerry OGorman, associate vice president at Advantech North America. Not only does OGorman see edge computing reducing costs and accelerating adoption, but by extending cloud-native software to the edge, latency can be reduced and less bandwidth will be required for data transmission. In fact, he estimated that by extending cloud-native software to the edge, up to 75% of data generated may never need to be sent to the cloud.

He also noted how Software as a Service (SaaS) models are likely to grow in prominence as 5G allows complex applications to be rapidly delivered to the edge. OGorman perceives that this could greatly reduce costs for end-users, making increasingly sophisticated AIoT applications easily accessible even to small-and-medium sized enterprises.

Business considerations

Though AI promises to offer impressive new functionalities, end-users shouldnt expect it to solve all issues surrounding IIoT deployment and integration, said William Webb, author of The Internet of Things Myth, during his presentation at the Advantech event.

Theres a number of promising new developments in this field, but they need to be treated with caution and used in the right way. AI only works when youve got the data in the first place, and that means it can only enhance an IIoT system thats already there and working well, Webb said. Until youve got an IIoT system in place delivering all of the data, you cant really use AI to make sense of that data.

According to Webb, approaching IIoT projects with an eye toward harmoniously adjusting overall business processes may be the best way to ensure success. In numerous early IIoT technology deployments, it was not uncommon for operators to put new systems in place without fully realizing the degree to which they would need to alter their overall operations to efficiently act on insights derived from their data, Webb noted. For example, even when equipment had been outfitted with IIoT technology to allow failures to be predicted in advance, this information could only be used to yield productivity gains once new processes were designed to efficiently allocate labor to maintenance on machines that needed it and redirect it to other valuable activities when they didnt. So, while predictive maintenance is more efficient in theory, without proper systems support, fixed and regular maintenance schedules are more simplistic and easier to keep to in practice.

Of course, operators are shaking out these kinks, and predictive maintenance is now one of the most common applications for IIoT technology. Still, Webb stressed that it is challenges like these that highlight the importance of viewing IIoT projects not only as technological installations, but initiatives that also require cultural, workforce, and business-oriented changes within an organization.

Access registration for future Advantech Connect sessions here.

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Advantech and the Artificial Intelligence of Things - Automation World

Artificial Intelligence Is Guiding Human Return to the Moon – autoevolution

One such project is the Artemis lunar exploration program. Later this year, the first flight in a longer series is set to depart for the Moon with no crew on board to test performance, life support, and communication capabilities.

Then, in 2023, astronauts will head for the Earth satellite, without landing there, followed in 2024 by the Artemis III mission that will actually put human boots on the ground after decades of absence.

Crucial to the success of the missions is the Orion capsule. Cooked up in the Lockheed Martin laboratories, Orion is the actual spaceship that will ensure astronauts arrive at their destination alive and well, and then back to Earth.

During Orions development, Lockheed Martin used tons of advanced technologies, including something called System Invariant Analysis Technology. SIAT for short, it is an artificial intelligence developed by NEC Corporation.

SIAT was used during the testing of the Orion capsule to analyze the unprecedented amount of data produced during these proceedings. What does unprecedented mean? Well, consider the fact SIAT had to comb through data coming from 150,000 sensors, and ended up establishing over 22 billion logical relationships for analysis.

SIAT is generally used as a tool to analyze the behavior of systems and detect inconsistencies. Once these are found, solutions to them are being designed by the AI.

Seeing the success of the technology with Orion, Lockheed Martin announced at the beginning of the month it signed a deal with NEC that would allow SIAT to be used further for the advancement of the Artemis program, but didn't specify what exactly that means.

"The power of AI is leveraged across our entire enterprise, and with a trusted partner like NEC, we gain the resources to expand its abilities at scale across our internal operations," said in a statement Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space.

"By proactively analyzing telemetry data we are able to deliver our systems even faster and streamline the work that our employees do every day."

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Artificial Intelligence Is Guiding Human Return to the Moon - autoevolution

Facebook is training Artificial Intelligence to help it recognize objects using 1 billion Instagram images, which does not need human-labeled images…

Instagram is a platform where people share and post over a billion photos on a daily basis which include sceneries, mountains, pugs, Ferraris, brunches, and babies. Most people use this app for sharing photos because these photos are the memories of all of us. Instagram has become the number 1 image database all over the world over the last decade. Now the owner company of Instagram is trying to teach machines what are the importance of photos in our life and what photos show us, how these present the memories, and how what is inside the photos. Therefore, Facebook researchers are training a self-supervised algorithm using over a billion images on Instagram provided that this algorithm will not need human-labeled images to recognize what is inside the image.

Because the accurate image recognition algorithm needs human to tag photos as containing an animal in it like a dog, horse, cow, etc., only then this algorithm works and recognize the resemblances between different images in which human has specified, having the same subject. The scientist of Facebook Yann LeCun has been given this duty to change A.I reliance on labels for many years. This computer vision program is nicknamed SEER which gave an accuracy result of 84.2% result when it was put into test by ImageNet which is a big visual database made for use in visual object recognition software research. Facebook tested it to check whether it recognize clearly what object is shown in the image. Facebook said that it has trained SEER to identify the different objects in an image by analyzing random, not labeled images of Instagram.

Further, this A.I will be trained in such a way in the near future that it will recognize directly from the information that is given, whether it is given in the form of text, photos, or any other sort of information, without depending on human-labeled images. The good performance of SEER shows that it can surpass the computer vision tasks in the real world, still, this is a research project.

During the research, they include better automatic generated text for elaborating the images to people who are visually impaired, and to make automatic categories of items that are sold on the Facebook marketplace, and keep the harmful images blocked on the Facebook platform, the company said in a blog post.

But many users may not like one thing that their images are used to train A.I, but they need not worry about because their images are used only for research and innovation purpose, because it is included in the policy of Instagram and Facebook that they can use the data for research purpose.

Read next:Facebook is rolling out a feature in over 90 regions which will allow users to turn off political content from appearing onto their feeds

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Facebook is training Artificial Intelligence to help it recognize objects using 1 billion Instagram images, which does not need human-labeled images...

How virtual events powered by artificial intelligence is here to stay – The Financial Express

The global virtual events market stood at USD 77.98 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.2% to USD 404 billion, from 2020 to 2027

By Apurva Chamaria and Piyush Gupta

2020 kept the spotlight on business continuity in a big way, with technology proving to be the key driver for businesses, governments, and people to stay connected and working.

While online events and webinars continued to rise in the popularity charts with increased adoption for collaboration tools such as Zoom, Skype, Cisco Webex, and MS Teams, 2020 brought the focus on virtual event platforms to organise, plan and conduct virtual meetings, trade shows, conferences and exhibitions. And why not! Considering the value additions a virtual event platform provides over a traditional physical event including cost savings, measurable ROI and deep audience insights while elevating the overall attendee experience with multitude of engagement interventions and immersive 3D virtual environments.

Virtual events powered by Artificial Intelligence

According to Grand View Research, the global virtual events market stood at USD 77.98 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.2% to USD 404 billion, from 2020 to 2027. In a pandemic-riddled world, several industries including IT, Retail, Healthcare, Automotive, Education, BFSI to name a few, are actively transitioning to virtual events. From internal trainings, press releases, product launches, trade shows, or even a client conference, virtual events are becoming the norm rather than an exception.

While the beginning of 2020 threw the events industry into a tizzy, the fag end of 2020 proved that virtual events are not only here to stay, but grow and morph into mean and lean delivering machines. With more than 93% of event marketers planning to invest in virtual platforms according to the Post-Covid Event Outlook Report, virtual event platforms it seems, will hold sway, moving forward.

With the adoption for Artificial Intelligence for virtual events, where AI powered bots drive virtual companionship for audiences, the efficacy of these platforms to anchor customer engagement, deliver personalised experience, build positive disposition for brands and drive demand generation has become even more promising. For instance, using Machine Learning technology, bots can observe and learn behaviour patterns of engagement and act as your personal virtual concierge. Imagine this: in a virtual event, anywhere between 50-500 documents get uploaded, which are used by attendees to browse through and read at their convenience. Trying to sift and filter these documents is tedious and time-consuming. But bots can provide suggestions by learning about your interests and even auto-suggest people you could network with. From converting voice to text and making session notes to directly email them to you, virtual event bots have become an inseparable part of platforms that aim to deliver greater personalisation, increase audience engagement and improve audience retention.

The future of virtual events

Pre-Covid, around 40% of the marketing spends were on on-ground physical events. But with a very challenging global environment for business, the on-ground event spends will see a decrease of up to 20-25% and will move to virtual events. Businesses believe that events will continue to be critical for business growth, and in fact 80% of marketers believe that business leaders also support the move to virtual platforms and technology adoption is no longer a barrier.

As technology continues to power virtual event platforms, rich data analytics adds a layer to the entire experience of the virtual event and are proving to be a valuable extended marketing arm for businesses. Delivering improved Return on Investment (RoI) or generating leads which in turn could lead to higher sales, data is being used to provide key actionable insights. Event industry reports suggest that virtual events are seen as an increasingly viable alternative for C-level executives as it saves time on travel and is more convenient.

The other advantage of virtual events platforms is accessibility. With device compatible platforms, events can be accessed and experienced from virtually anywhere. Training programs, product launches, conferences, seminars can all be attended while traveling, from an airport, from a caf or the convenience of ones home. This opens up a whole host of possibilities for virtual event marketers. Alliances, product placements and sponsorships can create innovative experiences and engagement that could be personalised and create business opportunities for customers. For instance, delivering wine and cheese at home prior to an event for online delivery technology service providers can create a significant positive impact on the attendee, making the whole experience exciting and memorable and open doors to potential business collaborations.

Industry sectors such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals have adopted virtual event platforms for medical conferences and seminars that are used extensively for knowledge sharing, networking, trainings and discussions. BFSI has also seen the advantages of virtual event platforms are adopting this with a vengeance. Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and intelligent AI-driven bots extract maximum mileage from virtual events, with analytics adding a rich layer to virtual events which are no longer boring, detached and distant. Communicating with large audiences, using them as levers for career growth such as online job fairs, or for knowledge enhancement with global online trainings, industries recognize the benefits and are willing to invest in virtual platforms. Virtual events are seen to be streamlined, focused, targeted, and can be tailored to deliver experiences par excellence.

Virtual event marketers are no longer pure event co-ordinators, planners or hosts. They need to combine marketing, consulting with deployment expertise to deliver on a seamless, interactive and rich virtual experience. Some exclusive experiential virtual event platforms for instance, are able to integrate APIs with existing marketing automation platforms such as Marketo or Eloqua and can tag every lead with a score resulting in targeted campaigns that could generate higher sales.

This potent combination of marketing, consulting and implementation and can deliver experience, interactivity and engagement with a flourish and add data analytics as a garnish, is a potent combination. Companies that can aid businesses by moving their on-ground experience to virtual event seamlessly and cost-effectively are a viable alternative to the in-person, on-ground events. Have they come of age? Its time to experience an event virtually and then give a definitive answer.

The authors are senior vice president, Tech Mahindra, and president, Kestone respectively

Read Also: What travel, tourism, hospitality marketers should know right now

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How virtual events powered by artificial intelligence is here to stay - The Financial Express

The use of artificial intelligence in life sciences and the protection of the IP rights – Lexology

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the life-sciences industry by making discoveries from massive biological data using machine learning, integrating clinical records and genomic data of different kinds, discovering new medicine or drug targets, identifying new classes of cell types, carrying out diagnostics, or customizing clinical procedures in precision medicine.

Artificial Intelligence involves a number of different technologies, primarily machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing, and computer vision. There is a considerable degree of connection among them, but the core technology is machine learning. So, bearing in mind that this technology could fall in the exception of patentability under some legislation, it is necessary to consider new regulations to protect the IP rights. Thus, several aspects should be considered when protecting this technology and choosing how to protect it.

Fields of applications in life sciences

Before continuing, it is important to briefly explain what is Artificial Intelligence. It is defined as computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

Artificial Intelligence originates from computer science and covers a wide range of approaches intended to enhance the ability of machines to make data-driven decisions and accurate predictions of events. In many scientific fields, AI is being increasingly considered and integrated, especially in the context of Big Data. Given their complexity and highly interdisciplinary nature, life sciences provide ample opportunities for AI to impact R&D efforts in a variety of ways.

There are numerous areas where the life-science industry uses AI effectively today. Some of them are the following:

Scientists are integrating research data, lab data, and clinical data, in combination with new information sources (e.g., social media and wearables) across the drug development spectrum, creating a holistic picture of the drug development candidate. Improving ways to acquire and mine data in real time allows scientists to use AI and machine learning to make better decisions faster, which will accelerate the product development and scale-up process.

Artificial Intelligence can design clinical trials, estimating the ideal sample size, and implementing them remotely on participants across a wider geographical area. This, in turn, reduces the cost and increases the odds of obtaining relevant and accurate data.

Robotic surgery is a new field that is garnering a considerable amount of interest. Nowadays, surgeries can be performed in previously inaccessible places. Once trained, a robot will be competent enough to perform each operation consistently and accurately. The consistency and accuracy of the surgery will be irrespective of the duration of the surgery. It is touted to be superior when compared to human performance, which will predictably decline with time.

The current diagnostics processes rely on either invasive techniques or information gathered from radiological images. These include data from CT scans, X-rays, or MRI machines. AI-based radiology tools will enable clinicians to gain a more precise and detailed understanding of how a disease progresses by performing virtual biopsies.

Unavailability or dearth of trained professionals such as radiologists or ultrasound technicians can considerably limit access to life-saving care. This is commonly observed in emergent and developing parts of the world. The AI-powered tool Telemedicine, which equips patients to tackle and prevent certain health concerns, has become popular in such regions. The health care start-up WeDoctor can independently conduct eleven diagnostic tests and upload data for consultation in an automated fashion.

Clinical Internet of Things refers to the ability of patients to wear mobile devices and sensors that will capture and provide a stream of quality, nearly real-time data to researchers. AI is the technology those researchers will use to analyze the data and look for information, insights, or patterns. It has been defined as machines being able to perform smart tasks that are characteristic of human intelligence. Machine learning is a term that refers to the ability of AI algorithms to learn and develop without being explicitly programmed.

Life sciences companies are likely to begin experimenting further with AI in their workflows in the coming years, but they face challenges in AI adoption due to strict regulations.

The regulatory challenge

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) involves new computing technologies, and vast amounts of training data that pose new regulatory challenges such as:

Thus, international and national legislations must be adapted or must be created to regulate the safe use and protection of the AI-related IP rights.

Protection of Artificial Intelligence Innovations in Life Sciences

A substantial investment in building and deploying machine learning (ML) technologythe most active area of AI technology being developed todaywarrants carefully considering how to protect the resulting intellectual property rights, but there are challenges in doing so. Several aspects should be considered when protecting this technology and choosing how it is to be protected, which would be with a patent o with trade secret protection.

Trade Secret Protection

Protecting by Trade Secret, there is no time limit on trade secret protection so long as the subject matter is kept secret, and there are no eligibility, novelty, or obviousness bars to clear. There is, however, no recourse for independent discovery by a competitor. Important factors to consider when weighing trade secret and patent protection include:

1. Detectability. If detecting when a competitor uses an invention is hard, then the value of patenting that invention is diminished because it will be difficult to know that the patent is being infringed. This may be the case with innovative training algorithms for ML systemsit is perhaps possible to detect that the ML system is being used, but hard to detect how it was trained. This might suggest the trade secret route for such technology.

2. Reverse Engineering. If it is easy to reverse engineer the invention or hard to keep it secret (e.g., due to desire to publish or visibility of the invention in the product), then the patent route may be preferable.

Trade secrets offer a degree of protection in circumstances where patenting is not the best approach.

Keeping part of an invention secret is an option if:

time is needed to generate more experimental data to ensure optimal scope of protection;

the invention could not be described in a reproducible way without disclosing training data that should remain secret;

patent case law is not favorable in terms of patent eligibility;

infringement is hard to detect;

the lifecycle of the invention is short; and

the filing behavior of the competition is not active.

Trade secret protection can be very cost-effective since there are no official fees to pay. However, there are management and administrative costs to businesses since comprehensive policies and procedures are needed to track and secure trade secrets.

Trade secrets offer a degree of protection in circumstances where patenting is not the best approach.

If the technology needs to be known by several entities, such as software contractors, customers, and a large number of employees, then it may not be practical to be kept secret and trade secret protection is not suitable.

Protection by Patent

These inventions must comply also with the requirements of novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability to be patented. If claims relate to a method involving the use of technical means, for instance a computer or a device, the subject matter in its entirety is of a technical nature and is patentable as an invention. The question, then, is whether the invention satisfies other requirements of patentability, in particular novelty and inventive step.

The evaluation of the inventive step, widely considered the more problematic requirement, assesses whether the mathematical method contributes to producing a technical effect that serves a technical purpose. For example, an X-ray apparatus providing a genotype estimate based on an analysis of DNA samples or an automated system providing a medical diagnosis by processing physiological measurements.

Some examples of potentially patentable aspects of an ML system are:

Filing of AI Patent applications

The number of AI-based patent filings has increased rapidly in recent years, particularly in the United States and Asia. Even in Europe, patent filings grew at an annualized rate of over 50% from 2014 to 2017.

Machine learning is the dominant AI technique disclosed in patents. Nevertheless, according to the field of application the main fields are the following:

Patent families for application field categories and sub-categories

Overall number of patent applications by Patent Office

The greatest number of patent applications are filed in the patent offices of U.S. and China, followed by Japan, while WIPO and the EPO are also often used.

CONCLUSIONS

AI is expected to revolutionize processes across a wide range of fields. It is foreseen that AI will also affect intellectual property rights, in particular patent rights and their management. This is likely to be a two-way process: on the one hand, AI developments will affect and be incorporated into IP rights management; on the other hand, IP policies and practices will interact with the strategy of managing innovation in AI.

In addition, as AI develops, some of the questions that are currently discussed only hypothetically may become real issues. These include the inventorship of AI, patent- and more generally IP-rights infringement by AI. Such questions may call for related regulation or a certain interpretation of existing regulations to cover possible gaps and answer related questions.

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The use of artificial intelligence in life sciences and the protection of the IP rights - Lexology

Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence are Driving the Global LIMS Market – Yahoo Finance

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Long before Credit Suisse Group AG was forced to wind down a $10 billion group of funds it ran with financier Lex Greensill, there were plenty of red flags.Executives at the bank knew early on that a large portion of the assets in the funds were tied to Sanjeev Gupta, a Greensill client whose borrowings were at the center of a 2018 scandal at rival asset manager GAM Holding AG. They were also aware that a lot of the insurance coverage the funds relied on depended on a single insurer, according to a report. Credit Suisse even conducted a probe last year of its funds that detected potential conflicts of interest, yet failed to prevent their collapse months later.On Friday, the bank finally pulled the plug and said it would liquidate the strategy, a group of supply chain finance funds for which Greensill had provided the assets and which had been held up as a success story. The funds, which have about $3.7 billion in cash and equivalents, will start returning most of that next week, leaving about two-thirds of investor money tied up in securities whose value may be uncertain.The decision caps a dramatic week that started when Credit Suisse froze the funds after a major insurer for its securities refused to provide coverage on new notes. The move sent shock waves across the globe, prompted Greensill Capital to seek a buyer for its operations, and forced rival GAM Holding AG to shutter a similar strategy. For Credit Suisse and its new Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gottstein, its arguably the most damaging reputational hit after an already difficult first year in charge.While the financial toll on the bank may be limited, fund investors are left with about $7 billion locked up in a product that was presented as a relatively safe but higher-yielding alternative to money markets.The Greensill-linked funds were one of the fastest-growing strategies at Credit Suisses asset management unit, attracting money from yield-starved investors in a region that had for years had to contend with negative interest rates. The bank started the first of the funds in 2017, but they really took off in 2019, the year rival asset manager GAM finished winding down a group of bond funds that had invested a large chunk of their money in securities tied to Greensill and one of his early clients, Guptas GFG Alliance.The Credit Suisse funds, too, were heavily exposed to Gupta early on. As the bank ramped up the strategy, the flagship supply-chain finance fund had about a third of its $1.1 billion in assets in notes linked to Guptas GFG Alliance companies or his customers as of April 2018, according to a filing.Credit Suisse executives were aware but denied at the time that it was an outsized risk, according to people familiar with the matter. They argued that most of the loans were to customers of Gupta and not directly to GFG companies, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.Over time, the proportion of loans linked to GFG and customers appeared to decrease, while new counterparties popped up in fund disclosures that packaged loans to multiple borrowers -- making it harder to determine who the ultimate counterparty is. Many of the vehicles were named after roads and landmarks around Lex Greensills hometown in Australia.The executives in charge of the fund also knew that much of the insurance coverage they relied on to make the funds look safe was dependent on just a single insurer, according to the Wall Street Journal. They considered requiring the funds to secure coverage from a broader set of insurers, with no single firm providing more than 20% of the coverage, but never put the policy in place, the newspaper said.A spokesman for Credit Suisse declined to comment.Greensill, meanwhile, was looking for new ways to fuel the growth of his trade finance empires after the collapse of the GAM funds removed a major buyer of his assets. In 2019, SoftBank Group Corp. stepped in, injecting almost $1.5 billion through its Vision Fund to become Greensills largest backer. It also made a big investment in the Credit Suisse supply chain finance funds, putting in hundreds of millions of dollars, though the exact timing isnt clear.Over the course of 2019, the flagship fund more than doubled in size, but soon questions arose about the intricate relationship between Greensill and SoftBank that fueled the growth. The funds had an unusual structure in that they used a warehousing agreement to buy the assets from Greensill Capital, with no Credit Suisse fund manager doing extensive due diligence on them. Within the broad framework set by the funds, the seller of the assets -- Greensill -- basically decided what the funds would buy.Credit Suisse started an internal probe that found, among other things, that the funds had extended large amounts of financings to other companies backed by SoftBanks Vision Fund, creating the impression that SoftBank was using them and its sway over Greensill to prop up its other investments. SoftBank pulled its fund investment -- some $700 million -- and Credit Suisse overhauled the fund guidelines to limit exposure to a single borrower.Neither Gottstein nor Eric Varvel, the head of the asset management unit, or Lara Warner, the head of risk and compliance, appeared to see a need for deeper changes. The bank reiterated it had confidence in the control structure at the asset management unit.Credit Suisses review didnt mention at the time that Greensill had also extended financing to another of his backers, General Atlantic. The private equity firm had invested $250 million in Greensill Capital in 2018. The following year, Greensill made a $350 million loan to General Atlantic, using money from the Credit Suisse funds, according to the Wall Street Journal. The loan is currently being refinanced, said a person familiar with the matter.A spokeswoman for General Atlantic declined to comment.Shortly after the Credit Suisse probe concluded, more red flags popped up. In Germany, regulator BaFin was looking into a small Bremen-based lender that Greensill had bought and propped up with money from the SoftBank injection. Greensill was using the bank effectively to warehouse assets he sourced, but BaFin was worried that too many of the those assets were linked to Guptas GFG -- a risk that the Credit Suisses managers, for their part, had brushed off earlier.SoftBank, meanwhile, was quietly starting to write off its investment in a stunning reversal from a bet it had made only a year earlier. By the end of last year, it had substantially written down the stake, and its considering dropping the valuation close to zero, people familiar with the matter said earlier this month.Credit Suisse, however, was highlighting the success of the funds to investors. Varvel, the head of asset management, listed them in a Dec. 15 presentation as an example of the innovative and higher-margin fixed-income offerings that the bank was planning to focus on.By that time, Greensill already knew that a little-known Australian insurer called Bond and Credit Company had decided not to renew policies covering $4.6 billion in corporate loans his firm had sourced. The policies were due to lapse on March 1, prompting a last-ditch effort from the supply-chain firm to take the insurer to court in Australia. That day, a judge in Sydney struck down Greensills injunction, triggering the series of events that have since reverberated around the world.Credit Suisse didnt know until very recently that the insurance was about to lapse, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.In an update to investors Tuesday, Credit Suisse said that several factors cumulatively led to the decision to freeze the funds, and that it was looking for ways to return cash holdings. But in a twist that may complicate the liquidation of the remainder, it also said that Greensills German Bank was one of the insured parties and plays a role in the claims process, and that bank was just shuttered by BaFin.Many of the assets in the funds have protection to make them more appealing to investors seeking an alternative to money market funds. Yet the second-biggest of them, the High Income Fund, doesnt use insurance. Its also the fund with the least liquidity, with less than 20% of the net assets in cash.Credit Suisse has said it wasnt aware of any evidence suggesting financial irregularities with the papers issued by Greensill or by the underlying companies. The bank still hasnt commented on how many of the assets in the funds are tied to Guptas GFG Alliance.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence are Driving the Global LIMS Market - Yahoo Finance

2021 Outlook on the Worldwide LIMS Industry – Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence are Driving Growth – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Business…

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence are Driving the Global LIMS Market" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Laboratory information management systems are a type of application that is designed to enhance laboratory quality and performance by keeping track of data relating to samples, tests, workflows, and equipment.

Cloud LIMS and data integration analysis are driving demand for LIMS across the world. Pharmaceuticals and life sciences applications account for about 60%-70% of the market.

Oil and gas, chemicals and petrochemicals, food and beverage, and pharmaceuticals manufacturing and R&D will constantly drive demand for LIMS. While some companies focus on specific industries, the major participants cater to multiple industries.

In North America, the United States accounts for the majority market share. In Europe, the key participants are located in the United Kingdom. India is a strong market in Asia-Pacific because pharmaceutical production and export are high in the country. RoW is driven by the economic development of Latin American and African countries.

This Frost & Sullivan study analyzes the global LIMS market from 2016 to 2026 (base year is 2019). The market is segmented into on-premise LIMS and Web-based LIMS (further segmented into thin-client LIMS and cloud-based LIMS). Some of the industry verticals under study are pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, life sciences, and diagnostics; government, academic, and environmental research; and industrial.

The study examines market growth drivers and restraints and offers a revenue forecast analysis as well (total market, by vertical, by product). The key competitors in the market are Labware, LabVantage Solutions, and Abbott Informatics. The study concludes with growth opportunities that discuss cloud-based LIMS and digitalization in the healthcare space; recommendations are provided, and market participants can leverage these for future success.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

2. Growth Opportunity Analysis, LIMS Market

3. Growth Opportunity Analysis, On-premise LIMS

4. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Web-based LIMS

5. Growth Opportunity Universe, LIMS Market

6. Next Steps

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ogx380

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2021 Outlook on the Worldwide LIMS Industry - Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence are Driving Growth - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business...

Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions Announces Executive Team Expansion – Business Wire

HENDERSON, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions, Inc., (OTCPK:AITX), today announced that Garett Parsons has appointed Steven Reinharz as CEO, CFO and Secretary of AITX. Reinharz is the founder and President of AITXs subsidiaries and the majority and controlling owner of AITX.

I am incredibly proud of AITX and the work that Steve has done to propel the business to where it is today, said Garett Parsons. AITX couldn't be in better hands, and I look forward to providing Steve further guidance as we continue to advance with the best technology, team and customers.

According to AITX, Parsons will continue with AITX as a member of the Board of Directors and a consultant under a three-year agreement.

Garett has been an incredible resource as weve worked together to evolve AITX and solidify our high growth path, said Steve Reinharz, AITX CEO, and President of all subsidiaries. "Im pleased with the work weve done together, the format under which we will continue our business association, and I fully support him on any future endeavors he may pursue outside of AITX.

Reinharz also announced that Mark Folmer has been elevated to Chief Operating Officer of Robotic Assistance Devices, Inc. (RAD), a wholly owned subsidiary of AITX and the main contributing entity. Folmer had previously held the role within the company of Vice President, Security & Industry. Folmer will oversee all of RADs manufacturing, operations, sales and administrative groups while Reinharz will continue to manage R&D and be significantly involved in sales efforts. Im thrilled that Steve has entrusted me with this new role. Under his leadership, RAD has established itself with an incredible team and extraordinary technologies. Im excited to help accelerate RADs expansion and fulfill the mission of becoming a dominant player in this industry, said Folmer.

AITX is hereby announcing that it has begun an external search for candidates to fill the position of Chief Financial Officer for AITX and all subsidiaries. The future CFO will take the lead in evaluating the possibility of stock market uplisting options including to NASDAQ and support financing options. Furthermore this role will accelerate AITXs implementation of a new ERP, support AITXs full-SEC reporting requirements, and lead the due diligence team for future acquisitions explored by AITX. Ideally, we will find candidates with experience with innovative tech companies and major stock markets, Reinharz commented.

We are strengthening our position in being the dominant player in the new industry we are creating. I'm delighted at the caliber, strength and enthusiasm of our leadership team, and all new staff members. I especially acknowledge the resilience of the team members whove been with us since the beginning and have had a hand in grooming our culture and our commitment to quality, Reinharz concluded.

Robotic Assistance Devices (RAD) is a high-tech start-up that delivers robotics and artificial intelligence-based solutions that empower organizations to gain new insight, solve complex security challenges, and fuel new business ideas at reduced costs. RAD developed its advanced security robot technology from the ground up including circuit board design, and base code development. This allows RAD to have complete control over all of design elements, performance, quality and the users experience of all security robots whether SCOT, ROSA, Wally, Wally HSO, AVA, or ROAMEO. Read about how RAD is reinventing the security services industry by downloading the Autonomous Remote Services Industry Manifesto.

CAUTIONARY DISCLOSURE ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements in this news release other than statements of historical fact are "forward-looking statements" that are based on current expectations and assumptions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements, including, but not limited to, the following: the ability of Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions to provide for its obligations, to provide working capital needs from operating revenues, to obtain additional financing needed for any future acquisitions, to meet competitive challenges and technological changes, to meet business and financial goals including projections and forecasts, and other risks. Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement(s) and/or to confirm the statement(s) to actual results or changes in Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions expectations.

About Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions (AITX)

AITX is an innovator in the delivery of artificial intelligence-based solutions that empower organizations to gain new insight, solve complex challenges and fuel new business ideas. Through its next-generation robotic product offerings, AITXs RAD and RAD-M companies help organizations streamline operations, increase ROI and strengthen business. AITX technology improves the simplicity and economics of patrolling and guard services, and allows experienced personnel to focus on more strategic tasks. Customers augment the capabilities of existing staffs and gain higher levels of situational awareness, all at drastically reduced cost. AITX solutions are well suited for use in multiple industries such as enterprises, government, transportation, critical infrastructure, education and healthcare. To learn more, visit http://www.aitx.ai and http://www.roboticassistancedevices.com, or follow Steve Reinharz on Twitter @SteveReinharz.

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Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions Announces Executive Team Expansion - Business Wire

Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own – The New Yorker

In the early nineteen-eighties, when Kazuo Ishiguro was starting out as a novelist, a brief craze called Martian poetry hit our literary planet. It was launched by Craig Raines poem A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979). The poem systematically deploys the technique of estrangement or defamiliarizationwhat the Russian formalist critics called ostranenieas our bemused Martian wrestles into his comprehension a series of puzzling human habits and gadgets: Model T is a room with the lock inside/a key is turned to free the world/for movement. Or, later in the poem: In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,/that snores when you pick it up. For a few years, alongside the usual helpings of Hughes, Heaney, and Larkin, British schoolchildren learned to launder these witty counterfeits: Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings/And some are treasured for their markings/they cause the eyes to melt/or the body to shriek without pain./I have never seen one fly, but/ Sometimes they perch on the hand. Teachers liked Raines poem, and perhaps the whole Berlitz-like apparatus of Martianism, because it made estrangement as straightforward as translation. What is the haunted apparatus? A telephone, miss. Well done. What are Caxtons? Books, sir. Splendid.

Estrangement is powerful when it puts the known world in doubt, when it makes the real truly strange; but most powerful when it is someones estrangement, bringing into focus the partiality of a human being (a child, a lunatic, an immigrant, an migr). Raines poem, turning estrangement into a system, has the effect of making the Martians incomprehension a familiar business, once weve got the hang of it. And since Martians dont actually exist, their misprision is less interesting than the human variety. The Martians job, after all, is to misread the human world. Human partiality is more suggestiveintermittent, irrational, anxious. One can crave a more proximate estrangement: how about, rather than an alien sending a postcard home, a resident alien, or a butler, or even a cloned human being doing so?

But its one thing to achieve that effect in a poem, which can happily float image upon image, and another to do so in a novel that commits itself to a tethered point of view. It would be hard not to personalize estrangement when writing fiction. The eminent Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky was interested in Tolstoys use of the technique, noting that it consists in the novelists refusal to let his characters name things or events properly, describing them as if for the first time. In War and Peace, for instance, Natasha goes to the opera, which she dislikes and cant understand. Tolstoys description captures Natashas perspective, and the opera is seen in the wrong wayas large people singing for no reason and spreading out their arms absurdly in front of painted boards.

The twentieth centurys most ecstatic defamiliarizer was Vladimir Nabokov, who had a weakness for visual gags of the Martian sorta half-rolled and sopping black umbrella seen as a duck in deep mourning, an Adams apple moving like the bulging shape of an arrased eavesdropper, and so on. But in his most affecting novel, Pnin (1957), estrangement is the condition and the sentence of the novels hapless hero, the Russian migr professor Timofey Pnin. In Tolstoyan fashion, Pnin is seeing America as if for the first time, and often gets it wrong: A curious basketlike net, somewhat like a glorified billiard pocketlacking, however, a bottomwas suspended for some reason above the garage door. Later, we learn that Pnin must have mistaken a Shriners hall or a veterans hall for the Turkish consulate, because of the crowds of fez wearers he has seen entering the building.

In the English literary scene, both Craig Raine and Martin Amis have been, in their devotion to Nabokov, flamboyant Martians. Such writing is thought to prove its quality in the delighted originality of its rich figures of speech; what Amis has called vow-of-poverty prose has no place at the high table of estrangement. Clich and kitsch are abhorred as deadening enemies. (Nabokov regularly dismissed writers such as Camus and Mann for failing to reach what he considered this proper mark.) Kazuo Ishiguro, a consummate vow-of-poverty writer, would seem to be far from that table. Most of his recent novels are narrated in accents of punishing blandness; all of them make plentiful use of clich, banality, evasion, pompous circumlocution. His new novel, Klara and the Sun (Knopf), contains this hilarious dullness: Josie and I had been having many friendly arguments about how one part of the house connected to another. She wouldnt accept, for instance, that the vacuum cleaner closet was directly beneath the large bathroom. Aha, we say to ourselves, were back in Ishiguros tragicomic and absurdist world, where the question of a schoolkids new pencil case (Never Let Me Go), or how a butler devises exactly the right staff plan (The Remains of the Day), or just waiting for a non-arriving bus (The Unconsoled) can stun the prose for pages.

But Klara and the Sun confirms ones suspicion that the contemporary novels truest inheritor of Nabokovian estrangementnot to mention its best and deepest Martianis Ishiguro, hiding in plain sight all these years, lightly covered by his literary veils of torpor and subterfuge. Ishiguro, like Nabokov, enjoys using unreliable narrators to filterwhich is to say, estrangethe world unreliably. (In all his work, only his previous novel, The Buried Giant, had recourse to the comparative stability of third-person narration, and was probably the weaker for it.) Often, these narrators function like people who have emigrated from the known world, like the clone Kathy, in Never Let Me Go, or like immigrants to their own world. When Stevens the butler, in The Remains of the Day, journeys to Cornwall to meet his former colleague Miss Kenton, it becomes apparent that he has never ventured out of his small English county near Oxford.

These speakers are often concealing or repressing something unpleasantboth Stevens and Masuji Ono, thenarrator of An Artist of the Floating World, are evading their complicity with fascist politics. They misread the world because reading it properly is too painful. The blandness of Ishiguros narrators is the very rhetoric of their estrangement; blandness is the evasive truce that repression has made with the truth. And we, in turn, are first lulled, then provoked, and then estranged by this sedated equilibrium. Never Let Me Go begins, My name is Kathy H. Im thirty-one years old, and Ive been a carer now for over eleven years. That ordinary voice seems at first so familiar, but quickly comes to seem significantly odd, and then wildly different from our own.

You can argue that, at least since Kafka, estrangement of various kinds has been the richest literary resource in fictionin Kafkaesque fantasy or horror, in science fiction and dystopian writing, in unreliable narration, in the literature of flneurial travel as practiced by a writer like W. G. Sebald, and in the literature of exile and immigration. Ishiguro has mastered all these genres, sometimes combining them in a single book, always on his own singular terms. Sebald, for instance, was rightly praised for the strange things he did with his antiquarian first-person prose, as his narrators wander through an eerily defamiliarized English and European landscape. But Ishiguro got there before him, and the prose of The Remains of the Day (1989) may well have influenced the Anglo-German author of The Rings of Saturn (1995). Here, Stevens describes the experience of driving away from familiar territory, as he sets out from Darlington Hall:

But then eventually the surroundings grew unrecognizable and I knew I had gone beyond all previous boundaries. I have heard people describe the moment, when setting sail in a ship, when one finally loses sight of the land. I imagine the experience of unease mixed with exhilaration often described in connection with this moment is very similar to what I felt in the Ford as the surroundings grew strange around me.... The feeling swept over me that I had truly left Darlington Hall behind, and I must confess I did feel a slight sense of alarma sense aggravated by the feeling that I was perhaps not on the correct road at all, but speeding off in totally the wrong direction into a wilderness.

This might well be one of Sebalds troubled intellectuals, his mind full of literature and death, tramping around a suddenly uncanny Europea wilderness. Stevens is, in fact, just driving to the blameless cathedral town of Salisbury.

Klara, the narrator of Ishiguros new novel, is a kind of robot version of Stevens, and a kind of cousin of Kathy H. Shes a carer, a servant, a helpmeet, a toy. Klara and the Sun opens like something out of Toy Story or the childrens classic Corduroy (in which a slightly ragged Teddy bear, waiting patiently in a department store, is first turned down by Mother, and finally plucked by her delighted young daughter). Klara is an Artificial Friend, or AF, and is waiting with anticipation to be chosen from a store that seems to be in an American city, sometime in the nearish future. As far as one can tell, the AFs, which are solar-powered and A.I.-endowed, are a combination of doll and robot. They can talk, walk, see, and learn. They have hair and wear clothes. They appear to be especially prized as companions for children and teen-agers. A girl named Josie, whom Klara estimates, in her pedantic A.I. way, to be fourteen and a half, sees our narrator in the shopwindow, and excitedly chooses Klara as her AF.

Two kinds of estrangement operate in Ishiguros novel. Theres the relatively straightforward defamiliarization of science fiction. Ishiguro only lightly shades in his dystopian world, probably because he isnt especially committed to the systematic faux realism required by full-blown science fiction. Still, we must navigate around a fictional universe that seems much like our own, yet where people endlessly stare at, or press, their handheld oblongs, where adults are somehow stratified by their clothes (The mother was an office worker, and from her shoes and suit we could tell she was high-ranking), and where roadworkers are called overhaul men. In this colorless, ruthless place, children are fatalistically sorted into losers and winners; the latter, who are known as lifted, whose parents decided to go ahead with them, are destined for lite colleges and bright futures. Josies best friend, Rick, wasnt lifted, and it will now be a struggle for him to get a place at Atlas Brookings (their intake of unlifteds is less than two percent). The parents of Josies privileged peers wonder why Ricks parents decided not to go ahead with him. Did they just lose their nerve? It seems significant that the lifted Josie has an AF for companionship and solace, while the poorer, unlifted Rick does not.

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Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own - The New Yorker

Who will lead the world in artificial intelligence? – C4ISRNet – C4ISRNet

A new report emphasizes why it is urgent that the Department of Defense and Congress work together to modernize the way defense programs and budgets develop, integrate and deploy the latest technologies in support of American national security. Released by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a federal body created to review and recommend ways to use artificial intelligence for national security purposes, the report recommends the use of AI to update Americas defense plans, predict future threats, deter adversaries and win wars.

Because AI will be incorporated into virtually all future technology, it is easy to recognize that national security threats and opportunities posed by AI should be a catalyst for necessary changes to defense requirements and resourcing processes. In an AI-enabled world, the Defense Department will be unable to modernize the way it recruits talent, trains the force, develops and integrates technology, and funds all of these elements without internal culture shifts and help from Congress.

Unless the requirements, budgeting and acquisition processes are aligned to permit faster and more targeted execution, the U.S. will fail to stay ahead of potential adversaries. This blunt recommendation to the Defense Department under the heading Accelerate Adoption of Existing Digital Technologies makes clear the urgency for cultural and structural updates to the way the department currently does business.

Commission members, who came principally from the academic and business communities, further noted in the report that:

To be able to afford the implementation of this last recommendation, the department would have to change its acquisition and resourcing approaches to get more and faster bang for its buck. The commission recognized this by proposing a pilot program to test mission-focused budgeting and appropriations. Ideally this would lead to the establishment of a single appropriation and budget structure for software and digital technologies by FY 2023.

In comparison to Chinas ability to move quickly with resourcing decisions, another new report released last week about competing in time notes that the inflexibility of the Defense Department budget process, which dates back to 1961, makes it more difficult to rapidly move money to innovations that appear promising. In a good, small step in the right direction, Congress supported the software pilot requested by Defense in its 2021 budget to begin addressing this problem.

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Now is the time to harness federal buying power and leverage the potential momentum of this wide-ranging report to break the mold, and (as described in the report) come to the aid of visionary technologists and warfighters [who] largely remain stymied by antiquated technology, cumbersome processes, and incentive structures that are designed for outdated or competing aims.

The Defense Department can do many things for itself through the use of existing laws and rules governing how it buys things. It can also encourage and train its workforce to take risks, try new things and abandon them if they dont work rather than wasting money to follow through on programs that will be out of date before being deployed. The department should foster a culture of a creative what if we approach to problem-solving and iteratively identify how things connect and can be used differently. Integration and sustainment should not be acquisition afterthoughts.

Congress can help by alleviating some of the risks with recommended pilot programs to signal support for a more agile approach to both acquisition and oversight. Policymakers and the defense workforce should be able to balance creativity, speed, transparency and stewardship.

As the commissioners concluded, Many countries have national AI strategies. But only the United States and China have the resources, commercial might, talent pool, and innovation ecosystem to lead the world in AI.

Elaine McCusker, a former acting under secretary of defense (comptroller), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where Emily Coletta is a researcher.

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Who will lead the world in artificial intelligence? - C4ISRNet - C4ISRNet