Companies are seeking innovative ways to improve collaboration and productivity as remote and hybrid work become more common. Google Workspace has invested in generative AI tools to reduce user workload, but Almanac.
Google Workspace has invested in generative AI tools to reduce user workload, but Almanac, a platform for structured collaboration, believes that getting humans to work better together can increase productivity.
Following a closed beta that included over 1,000 organizations, including Indeed and Cisco, the company is now releasing early access to its platform. Additionally, it provides insight into how businesses can improve collaboration through “The Modern Work Method,” based on interviews with over 5,000 business leaders.
Gamers have been clamoring for better non-player characters (NPCs) for years, and the arrival of conversational AI may finally provide the computing superpower to make it possible. Several companies are now using natural language processing AI for games and entertainment, customer service, training and education. Mindverse’s MindOS targets enterprise, while Inworld helps game designers create AI powered NPCs (non player characters), which they describe as “Mind as a Service” (MaaS).
I saw Inworld’s extraordinary AI at work while attending the Disney Accelerator demo last fall where Inworld powered a very, very chatty and diplomatic 3CPO robot.
AI-enabled NPCs will soon be ready for their close-up.
Accelerating Breakthroughs in Critical and Emerging Technologies — Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, Ph.D. — Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)
Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, Ph.D. is Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation, leading the newly established TIP Directorate (https://new.nsf.gov/tip/leadership).
The TIP Directorate is focused on harnessing the nation’s vast and diverse talent pool to advance critical and emerging technologies, addressing pressing societal and economic challenges, and accelerating the translation of research results from lab to market and society, ultimately improving U.S. competitiveness, growing the U.S. economy and training a diverse workforce for future, high-wage jobs.
Prior to becoming the Assistant Director for TIP, Dr. Gianchandani served as the senior advisor for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships, where he helped develop plans for the new TIP Directorate in collaboration with colleagues at NSF, other government agencies, industry, and academia.
During the previous six years, Dr. Gianchandani was the NSF deputy assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), twice serving as acting assistant director. His leadership and management of CISE included the formulation and implementation of the directorate’s $1 billion annual budget, strategic and human capital planning, and oversight of day-to-day operations for a team of over 130.
Organizations have to figure out the potential implications of tapping generative artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, while consumers should consider how they establish digital engagement.
Despite its popularity, ChatGPT has been criticized for generating unreliable and biased search results. A recent media report, for example, concluded that ‘ChatGPT Is Pretty Bad At Poetry, According To Poets.’ Yet that doesn’t mean that the literary ability of all AI should be discounted, applications created by INSEAD’s AI lab using exacting rules can potentially be more useful and reliable than ChatGPT.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is continuing to advance and has now defeated a human fighter pilot in a virtual combat simulation.
This result was achieved in the US Army’s AlphaDogfight competition, which aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of developing autonomous agents capable of defeating enemy aircraft in aerial combat.
Eight teams participated in a series of tests and in the final last Thursday, Heron Systems was declared the winner after two days of aerial combat using only nose-mounted guns.
Amazon opened a robotics fulfillment center in Windsor, Connecticut, where workers will process orders alongside bots.
The 3.8 million square-foot facility will have “thousands of robotic systems such as mobile robots and robotic handling systems that help employees deliver for customers everyday,” an Amazon spokesperson told Supply Chain Dive.
More than 2,000 employees will work at the facility, which primarily handles smaller shipments such as books, electronics and toys. The company began processing and delivering customer orders in November 2022, according to a press release.
Toyota’s latest electric LQ concept car satisfies the “huмan need to Ƅe engaged eмotionally” with an on-Ƅoard artificial intelligence agent naмed Yui.
The Toyota LQ is Ƅoth fully electric and equipped with an SAE leʋel four equiʋalent autoмated driʋing systeм, мeaning no huмan interʋention is needed to driʋe the ʋehicle.
Its мain feature howeʋer is the on-Ƅoard AI-powered, interactiʋe agent, called Yui, which proʋides a personalised мoƄility experience Ƅy learning and responding to the driʋer’s eмotional and physical state.
Helmeted and harnessed directly behind my pilot, I prepare for takeoff as the cockpit canopy shuts over us. It could be a scene from Top Gun: Maverick save for the fact that we’re not launching from an aircraft carrier but pulling out of pit lane at the Thermal Club’s track in a final prototype of the Czinger 21Chypercar.
The $2 million, carbon-fiber-bodied, tandem-seat Czinger 21C astounds with specs—1,250 hp, zero to 62 mph in 1.9 seconds, a claimed top speed of 253 mph—and recently blew away the McLaren P1’s production-car track record at Circuit of the Americas by six seconds. But more impressive—seriously—is the hybrid’s build process: The main structural components are designed by Czinger’s proprietary AI software and then 3D-printed. “These structures cannot be made more perfect for the requirements inputted,” says Kevin Czinger, who, along with his son Lukas, cofounded Los Angeles–based Czinger Vehicles. “You could have 1,000 engineers and they would never get to this solution.”
