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Energy giant National Grid is using Spot to keep employees safe and ensure uptime at a critical facility.

National Grid introduced Spot into the thyristor hall at Sandy Pond Converter Station just a few days before the facility’s shutdown period. The inspection robot was equipped with both a high-resolution 30X optical zoom pan/tilt/zoom camera and an infrared (IR) thermal camera to detect signs of potential problems.

A top priority at the facility is the monitoring of equipment conditions. Because the valve hall is water-cooled, any leaks could cause issues leading to equipment overheating and malfunction. While stationary cameras could detect signs of water leaks in certain locations, there’s no way for those cameras to cover every angle of the valve hall.

With the optical zoom camera, Spot was able to inspect the equipment during operation. Just as importantly, the IR camera allowed the robot to detect “hot spots,” where the equipment is hotter in some areas than others.

A new research paper written by a team of academics and computer scientists from Spain and Austria has demonstrated that it’s possible to use Facebook’s targeting tools to deliver an ad exclusively to a single individual if you know enough about the interests Facebook’s platform assigns them.

The paper — entitled “Unique on Facebook: Formulation and Evidence of (Nano)targeting Individual Users with non-PII Data” — describes a “data-driven model” that defines a metric showing the probability a Facebook user can be uniquely identified based on interests attached to them by the ad platform.

The researchers demonstrate that they were able to use Facebook’s Ads manager tool to target a number of ads in such a way that each ad only reached a single, intended Facebook user.

According to this guy, the argument will be that the AI is needed to make split second decisions, and will gradually increase from there.


Retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal joins ‘Influencers with Andy Serwer’ to share his biggest fears regarding artificial intelligence.

ANDY SERWER: I want to ask you about AI, artificial intelligence, because you wrote, “ceding the ability to manage relationships to an algorithm, we rolled a dangerous die.” What are the specific uses of AI that concern you and then we can talk about AI weapons and that’s really scary stuff. But let’s talk about it generally and then specifically with regard to the military.

STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Let’s start by something we all get. We call company X and we get this recording that says if you’re calling about so-and-so hit one. If you’re calling about so-and-so hit two. And you go for a while and by the time you get to 8 and they didn’t cover your problem, you’re furious. And you just want to talk to someone. You want somebody to take your problem for you.

Using AI to analyze your income and expenses regularly is a great way to help you better understand where your money goes each month. Most modern financial institutions have apps that will automatically categorize your spending into expense types, making it easy for you to see how much of your paycheck ends up going toward rent/mortgage, food, transportation, entertainment, etc.

Technology is empowering women to build wealth through AI-assisted financial management. Women are now able to invest and manage their finances by using technology that automatically invests and manages money for them. This software provides a unique algorithm for each woman with personalized goals, risk tolerance, income, and age.

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Women in America are disproportionately under-served when it comes to financial products and services. They own less than 1% of the country’s wealth, and they hold even less of their own assets.

International diplomacy has traditionally relied on bargaining power, covert channels of communication, and personal chemistry between leaders. But a new era is upon us in which the dispassionate insights of AI algorithms and mathematical techniques such as game theory will play a growing role in deals struck between nations, according to the co-founder of the world’s first center for science in diplomacy.

Michael Ambühl, a professor of negotiation and conflict management and former chief Swiss-EU negotiator, said recent advances in AI and machine learning mean that these technologies now have a meaningful part to play in international diplomacy, including at the Cop26 summit starting later this month and in post-Brexit deals on trade and immigration.

Advanced analytics and other AI-driven tools and technologies have been transforming the way organizations function by harnessing valuable information from the largest datasets and providing important insights. With the continued growth of cognitive technologies and increasingly widespread adoption by many industries, what will the future of advanced analytics and AI adoption look like?

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