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Category: space – Page 1,019

Overall, this is a good article. However, for AI to truly take off across industry; you must understand the industries that you’re trying to enable. I keep finding this gap in all of the AI discussions.

Yes, we have opportunities in the consumer space; however, if you truly want to be embraced by industry to enable it’s front and back office operations you must ensure that the AI that you’re developing can easily support and enable businesses. Granted not all AI belongs in business and are sometimes better suit for the consumer space or government and vice versa. However, when designing and developing AI; you truly have to know up front who is your primary targeted audience and remain focused towards that audience.

Dr. Kailash Nadh, who holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from London’s Middlesex University and is the CTO of financial technology firm Zerodha, talks about why AI hasn’t picked up yet and what lies in the future.

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Finally, folks are getting the real picture around re-tooling and retraining folks for new jobs in an oncoming AI future. In my posts; I have highlighted the need for governments and businesses to retrain people as well as ensure that their is some level of funding established to assist displaced workers, and especially as we see the maturity of Quantum in the AI space this will definitely be a must.

Untitled“If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it… then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords.” – Aristotle.

Humans have such a love/hate relationship with technology that it’s almost comical. All of our own creation, once we’ve perfected amazing innovations, we often turn on them–when convenient. As the PC became common and marketed toward the masses in the 80s, a new world of automation, both good and bad, was predicted. As mad scientists tucked away in secret, underground labs began creating evil robots in a slew of sci-fi movies that we consumed greedily, along with becoming affectionate toward machines like C-3P0 and R2-D2 just birthed in what would be a continuing pop subculture with a momentum of its own, our imaginations ran wild. Fearmongers cited that automation would make many jobs obsolete; robots would begin doing what was left as an economic apocalypse ensued for the human race.

In truth, the birth of the computer created a huge industry of jobs, from manufacturing and maintenance to advanced software engineering and entire IT departments. And although it’s been predicted through the ages that robots would begin doing all of our tasks, how many of us are actually employing robots in the home or office–and how many people do you know who lost their jobs because it was given to a humanoid instead? Probably none. But still, yes, there are whispers saying that may change one day soon. And while we’ve all heard that talk for decades past, it is undeniable that innovation on nearly every level has been accelerated recently, and is predicted to continue as 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and robotics evolve–just as a few examples.

Continue reading “World Economic Forum Report: Existing Workforce Must Prepare, Re-Skill & Up-Skill for Impending Fourth Industrial Revolution” | >

Interesting

(JNS.org) Shefa Yamim, an Israeli exploration and mining company, announced that it has discovered rare minerals near Israel’s port city of Haifa.

A report prepared by geologist William Griffin of Australia’s Macquarie University examined the mineral samples of corundum stones sent to him by Shefa Yamim, which found the stones in several sites in the Kishon River. The corundum stones contain a variety of rare minerals, including Moissanite and tistarite.

“Until now, [tistarite] has been found on a single meteorite that came from outer space; this has been the first find in nature in nature of this mineral, whose source is deep inside the Earth,” Shefa Yamim said, Haaretz reported.

Continue reading “Israeli mining company discovers rare minerals near Haifa” | >

Space is not a government program; it’s the rest of the Universe. Private space business is now a major factor, bent on finding investors interested in generating profits by making space more accessible to more people. Space business pays taxes to governments; it does not consume tax revenues. Further, space business can offer launch services to government agencies at highly competitive rates, thus saving taxpayer dollars. How can they do this, competing with government-funded boosters with a 50-year track record? Simple: governments have no incentive to cut costs. Traditional aerospace industry giants have a huge vested interest in boosters that were developed to military and NASA standards, among which economy was not even an issue. But innovative, competitive companies such as XCOR Aerospace and Mojave Aerospace, without such baggage (and overhead) can drive costs down dramatically. This is a proven principle: notice that we are no longer buying IBM PCs with 64 k of RAM for $5000 a unit.

Even more important in the long view, space is a literally astronomical reservoir of material and energy resources. The profit potential of even a single such resource, such as solar power collectors in space beaming microwave power to Earth, is in the trillions of dollars. What would it be worth to the world to reduce fossil fuel consumption by a factor of 20 or 100 while lowering energy costs? Can we afford to continue pretending that Earth is a closed system, doomed to eke out finite resources into a cold, dark future?

Can we afford space? Wrong question. Can businesses afford space? Yes. We get to reap the benefits of their innovative ideas and free competition without footing the bill.

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Cannot wait for the new AR contacts.

NEW YORK, Jan. 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — This new IDTechEx report is focused on how the market for smart glasses and contact lenses is going to evolve in the next decade, based on the exciting research and developments efforts of recent years along with the high visibility some projects and collaborations have enjoyed. The amount of visibility this space is experiencing is exciting developers of a range of allied technologies into fast-tracking/focusing their efforts, as well as creating devices and components designed specifically to serve this emerging industry.

Some of the newest devices that have ignited significant interest in smart eyewear are going above and beyond the conventional definition of a smart object; they are in effect, portable, wearable computers with a host of functionalities, specially designed apps etc. that add new ways for the wearer to interact with the world along with smartphone capabilities, health tracking options and many other features. The features of some of the more advanced devices have been based on and have sparked worldwide innovation efforts aiming to create an ecosystem of components that will enable what is bound to be a revolution in form factor for wearables.

User interface is probably one of the most significant features in this revolution. As interfacing with computers undergoes a constant evolution, allowing for wider adoption as interaction becomes more “natural”, smartglasses are bringing about the next big step in this ever-changing space. From keyboards to touchscreens to cameras & positioning/location/infrared sensors, a new wave of innovation is making interfacing with computers gesture-based, and nowhere else is that more obvious than in eye-worn computing.

Continue reading “AR & VR Smartglasses and Functional Contact Lenses 2016−2026” | >