Lifeboat Foundation

It’s been a hot, hot year in the world of data, machine learning, and AI. Just when you thought it couldn’t grow any more explosively, the data/AI landscape just did: the rapid pace of company creation, exciting new product and project launches, a deluge of VC financings, unicorn creation, IPOs, etc.

It has also been a year of multiple threads and stories intertwining.

One story has been the maturation of the ecosystem, with market leaders reaching large scale and ramping up their ambitions for global market domination, in particular through increasingly broad product offerings. Some of those companies, such as Snowflake, have been thriving in public markets (see our MAD Public Company Index), and a number of others (Databricks, Dataiku, DataRobot, etc.) have raised very largely (or in the case of Databricks, gigantic) rounds at multi-billion valuations and are knocking on the IPO door (see our Emerging MAD company Index).

Duke professor becomes second recipient of AAAI Squirrel AI Award for pioneering socially responsible AI.

Whether preventing explosions on electrical grids, spotting patterns among past crimes, or optimizing resources in the care of critically ill patients, Duke University computer scientist Cynthia Rudin wants artificial intelligence (AI) to show its work. Especially when it’s making decisions that deeply affect people’s lives.

Continue reading “A ‘New Nobel’ — Computer Scientist Wins $1 Million Artificial Intelligence Prize” »

This looks familiar…

Robo Woman — 1,968 taken from the British Pathe reel “Miss Honeywell — World’s First Robotic Woman”. See this playlist of our best clips:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF58DA24745914ADC

Continue reading “World’s First Robotic Woman” »

“This speed bag resupply feature is a game changer for the warfighter,” said in a statement Mike Goodwin, sales and strategy manager Bell. “With the ability to drop supplies quickly and efficiently in a drop zone or a remote location, we can get critical supplies delivered as soon as they’re needed.”

Bell claims the APT has already flown 420 times at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, in Georgia, and other sites. Now, the company is seeking to demonstrate how the aircraft can drop supplies on demand at its cruising speed of 80 mph (129 km/h).

Continue reading “Goodbye Paradrops! Bell Showcases Its New Autonomous Supply Drop Drone” »

The robot dog has a remote-controlled rifle attached to its back as a human operator can control it via an Android tablet. The robot has been named the SPUR, which stands for Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle.

It features a 6.5mm Creedmoor rifle, from military defense company SWORD International, on top of a Quadrupedal Unmanned Ground Vehicle (QUGV) developed by Ghost Robotics.

The SPUR was first displayed at the US Army’s annual convention in Washington DC on Monday.

Continue reading “Armed with remote-controlled rifles, military robot dogs are now on the move” »

At the outbreak of World War I, the French army was mobilized in the fashion of Napoleonic times. On horseback and equipped with swords, the cuirassiers wore bright tricolor uniforms topped with feathers—the same get-up as when they swept through Europe a hundred years earlier. The remainder of 1914 would humble tradition-minded militarists. Vast fields were filled with trenches, barbed wire, poison gas and machine gun fire—plunging the ill-equipped soldiers into a violent hellscape of industrial-scale slaughter.

Capitalism excels at revolutionizing war. Only three decades after the first World War I bayonet charge across no man’s land, the US was able to incinerate entire cities with a single (nuclear) bomb blast. And since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1,945 our rulers’ methods of war have been made yet more deadly and “efficient”.

Continue reading “Algorithms of war: The military plan for artificial intelligence” »

While reading or listening about the future of the world and its technology, you might have heard the term Artificial Intelligence. It surely is the future of technology and applications in the near future, major tech companies have been working on developing better versions of AI and are expecting it to revolutionize technology.

With many companies heavily investing towards Artificial Intelligence, Social giant ‘Facebook’ is not far behind in this race towards the rising industry. Facebook a few years ago took it’s step into the world of AI and is now making big moves by creating AI based products and slowly capturing a large market share in this industry.

AI based developments in Facebook have increased since the company increased its workforce in the AI sector. Recent news suggests that developers at Facebook are working towards another interesting AI program, this one will be able to see, hear and memorize everything users do. Facebook said that it wants the AI to have things such as episodic memory which means that the AI would be able to remember even small details such as where you kept your car keys. Surprising isn’t it?

“Robotic” textiles could help performers and athletes train their breathing, and potentially help patients recovering from post-surgery breathing changes.

A new kind of fiber developed by researchers at MIT and in Sweden can be made into clothing that senses how much it is being stretched or compressed, and then provides immediate tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or vibration. Such fabrics, the team suggests, could be used in garments that help train singers or athletes to better control their breathing, or those help patients recovering from disease or surgery to recover their breathing patterns.

Full Story:

Demand for highly desirable digital skills is hitting new heights. A recent Learning and Work Institute report noted that one in four (27%) employers now need the majority of their workers to have in-depth specialist knowledge in one or more technology areas. And 60% of those surveyed expect their reliance on advanced digital skills to increase over the next five years.

The skills gap is particularly prevalent in the security tech sector. A global study from the Center for Cyber Safety and Education predicted a terrifying shortage of 1.8 million security workers by 2022. This is made worse by the number of young people taking IT-related GCSEs in the UK, falling by 40% since 2015 (according to Learning and Work Institute data).

This scarcity of qualified professionals has inflated salaries, making it hard for firms that cannot afford to offer large paychecks and grand benefit packages to secure top talent.