The changing relationship between human beings and intelligent machines in the workplace.



BY TIANA CLINE



IT’S SIMPLE: BEING CONNECTED 24X7 BLURS WORKlife boundaries. And with so many employees working from home on a semi-permanent basis, remote work life in the time of the coronavirus pandemic has been a brilliant move for some corporates. Google, for example, are letting their employees work from home until the middle of 2021; yet, others are struggling to keep track of the productivity and wellbeing of their workforce. 



If anything, the pandemic has exacerbated workplace mental health issues because it has propelled everyone’s personal life into the spotlight, showing where and how people live as well as the challenges they face when working from home. So the question remains – would you feel more comfortable sharing your personal, work-from-home issues to human resources or to a machine? 



A study by Oracle and Workplace Intelligence found that 68% of people would prefer to talk to a robot over their manager about stress and anxiety at work and 80% of people are open to having a robot as a therapist or counsellor.



“People are no longer afraid of the robots. They have experienced how artificial intelligence and machine learning can improve the way they work in a very pragmatic way. And the more they use these technologies, the more excited they are about them,” says Emily He, Oracle’s Senior Vice President of the human capital management cloud business group.



Using technological advances like artificial intelligence (AI) to automate monotonous tasks and reduce stress can prevent burnout. According to Oracle, technology can also help to scale mental health support in the workplace, making organizations come across as more empathetic.



“Empathy is built into our prefrontal cortex. It’s an evolutionary skill and it’s within us as human beings,” explains Mimi Nicklin, a business strategist, empathy expert and author of Softening the Edge: Empathy: How Humanity’s Oldest Leadership Trait is Changing Our World.



“Technology can drive empathy in many ways. For example, virtual reality is an incredible tool that has allowed people to empathize with those that are nothing like them. Microsoft is using technology to create apps and interventions that allow us to connect with each other better, whether that’s people with special needs or apps like Microsoft Teams. In some ways, it makes us further apart but in other ways, you’re able to use those screens in the same way that you can if you were sitting next to that person in a cafe, making eye contact.”



Online communication is not always detrimental to empathy because empathy can influence the way we use technology, allowing us to more easily foster an emotional connection. Implementing softscaling, the empathic use of data, shows how technology can grow businesses when stakeholders apply data compassionately, making empathy a part of the business process.



In a remote workplace, where face-to-face conversations have been replaced by video, it is often difficult to read social cues. Research into artificial empathy (sometimes called computational empathy) is currently underway at MIT Media Lab with a project called Deep Empathy which uses AI to help people see things differently, contextually. The same way a human being learns empathy, AI can be taught to develop systems that are more intuitive. And in more human-centered workplaces, like the medical or personal robotics industry, this could be a game-changer.



“There’s never been a more important time for us to have this discussion around why we need higher empathy, higher connectivity between people and certainly within our businesses,” says Nicklin.



“As we look to rebuild our businesses in 2021, that need to create cohesive, connected, motivated teams is critical, especially as organisations try to balance going back to the office, reintegrating their teams, balancing home and office work… we know that in organizations where empathy is higher, when emotional intelligence is high, we see higher levels of output, improved performance, higher motivation. And we see higher levels of cognitive thinking so things like innovation, creativity, design, all of those facets go up in organizations that value and imbue empathy into their culture.”

Robot sitting in office, working alone

Can Empathy Be Automated?

Forethought CEO Deon Nicholas knows you’re probably sick of hearing about chatbots. Once promised to provide human-like customer service at much faster speeds, the software’s lost much of its hype through head-scratching, rote answers and dead ends that can make you dream of speaking to a human being again.



At his three-year-old startup, however, Nicholas says that the tools are built differently from the ground up. These ones, he insists, really help. The difference: real artificial intelligence software versus basic automated decision trees. “We know you’ve been burned,” Nicholas says. “But that wasn’t artificial intelligence. It was a lot more artificial than it was intelligent.”



San Francisco-based business Forethought offers a tool called Agatha that it believes can actually work, with a product for service agents, triaging support tickets and resolving them on its own using natural language processing and AI software that gets smarter at anticipating solutions over time. The company says it’s resolved more than 500,000 claims automatically so far.



Investors have noticed: Forethought announced on Wednesday it’s raised $17 million in a Series B funding round from previous investor NEA, Sound Ventures, Neo, Geodesic Capital and Operator Collective, alongside high-leverage individuals including Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith, Sean “Diddy” Combs and LL Cool J.



A former engineer at Dropbox and Pure Storage, Nicholas launched Forethought with ex-LinkedIn engineer Sami Ghoche in 2018, both appearing on the Forbes 30 Under 30&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/5be5b8d54bbe6f78bda781d9/deon-nicholas-25-l-sami-g/#166c47d95c36">list</a>&nbsp;for enterprise tech&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2018/11/13/30-under-30-in-enterprise-tech-drone-school-ai-accountability-and-buying-cars-from-home/#7f09407a55c9">for the following year</a>&nbsp;at the ages of 25 and 24. (Three other team members are also alumni of the list.) Later that year, Forethought won TechCrunch’s Disrupt Battlefield startup contest before&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/forethought-snares-9m-series-a-in-wake-of-battlefield-win/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">raising</a>&nbsp;a $9 million Series A led by NEA.



What has made Forethought resonate with customers—nameable ones are mostly in tech, too, like Carta, Gusto and Masterclass—is software that plugs into a company’s sales and customer service software to learn how past issues were resolved and better predict what an individual ticket might be about. That can lead to much higher accuracy and faster resolution times, Nicholas says: “Agatha is able to figure out when new problems start to arise and how to respond to them by listening to how [human] agents are responding.”



At Sound Ventures, investor and actor Ashton Kutcher says he was initially skeptical about backing another customer service tool. Digging in, Kutcher says the Sound team was impressed by how Forethought’s tech really worked. “It’s a headache so many of our portfolio companies have, because with everything becoming 24/7, customer service has to be 24/7. And it gets more complicated when everything is on-demand and everything is at your fingertips,” Kutcher says.



“There’s a lot of folks who are working on different AI things, but no one really has a front door to it,” adds Qualtrics’ Smith. “Watching what Deon is doing, they are making every organization way more intelligent.”



Term sheets for Forethought’s Series B arrived just as the killing of George Floyd set off Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. That made closing the round “a tough time” for Nicholas, a still too-rare Black startup founder in tech. Over the following weeks, Kutcher and Forethought’s investor base worked to bring in prominent Black entrepreneurs to join the round, leading to the participation of Combs and LL Cool J.



“For me, it is really important to tell a new story, change the face of what success looks like,” Nicholas says. “I’ve always been a builder, so if that’s what I can do for the world, then I’m going to do that and make waves while I’m at it.”



-By Alex Konrad, Forbes Staff

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 – Day 3

This Startup Raised $17 Million From Investors Like Ashton Kutcher And Diddy To Take On Customer Service With AI

A new report released by Oxford Insights shows that even though there is a digital divide as well as data poverty in Africa, five countries on the continent are taking leaps into leveraging technologies to accelerate economic growth with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).&nbsp;



In the 2020 Government AI Readiness Index Mauritius took the 45th position globally out of 172 countries across the world, making it the highest-ranked African country on the index. According to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MEWNMV6MQI&amp;feature=youtu.be">Oxford Insights</a>, Mauritius has always been forward-looking in terms of AI as it is is the only country on the continent to have published an AI strategy.&nbsp;



“Mauritius approach to AI is fantastic… They have a clear strategy as to what they want to achieve. They are also bringing the private sector and academia with them. They have a council with all of these sectors on them. They are investing in the skills and they are thinking about how that can be transferred back into the industry. That’s amazing and that’s the perfect playbook,” Richard Stirling, Oxford Insights CEO says. &nbsp;



The methodology of this index looks at a countries’ government’s willingness to adopt AI and if the country has a good supply of AI expertise and tools from the technology sector. In addition to that part, these tools need to be built and trained on high-quality and representative data with the appropriate infrastructure to be delivered to and used by citizens. 



Mauritius is also ranked 13 out of 34 countries on this year’s Responsible Use Sub-Index. This index, also by Oxford Insights, tracks the ethical use of AI in countries across the globe. The debate around responsible AI was put into focus this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, issues around privacy as well as ongoing global inequality. The index was measured using inclusivity, accountability, transparency, and privacy as some of its main indicators.&nbsp;



“Just because you are good at building AI, it does not mean you are using it ethically and responsibly,” Stirling says.&nbsp;



Among Mauritius, South Africa was also placed 59th globally on Government AI Readiness Index, Seychelles 68th, Kenya 71st, and Rwanda taking the 87th position. And although these countries are lower, Stirling elaborates on how these countries have focused on skills development which will harness the potential for AI not only in public services but in other sectors. Nations from the US, the UK to Russia, China, and Israel hold the top positions on the index, however, there are no countries in Africa in the top 20.&nbsp;



“We are lagging in technological development so we are playing catch up most of the time and essentially we are in catch up mode,” Araba Sey, Sub-Saharan Africa AI expert, commented on the Oxford Insights website.&nbsp;



Jean Lebel, President, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), added in a statement that though Ai has the potential to transform governance and public services throughout the world, there is a danger that regions, like in Africa, will be left behind. Lebel further adds that the index should encourage new collaborations and investments that could potentially assist with the barriers to government&#8217;s AI readiness and responsibilities. 



“We believe that this, in part, will help those currently lagging behind in our index to improve their AI readiness so that existing economic and technology inequality doesn&#8217;t become further entrenched and leave billions of citizens with worse quality public services,” Lebel said.

Young femal e engineer concept. GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Mauritius, South Africa & Seychelles Are In The Driver’s Seat Of AI Readiness In Africa

When Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra launched early this year, it enjoyed all the attention a snazzy new smartphone on the market deserves.



And this one has some monster specifications to boot: such as 8K video support, 5G connectivity, up to 100x Space Zoom, powerful processor, 5,000mAh battery, 108-megapixel camera and the most dazzling of it all – a 6.9-inch screen with a 120Hz display and refresh screen rate.



The Samsung S20 Ultra certainly ticks many global firsts in terms of features, but now that the post-pandemic world has taken the sheen off retail and consumer spending, let’s be honest. The S20 Ultra may be packed with the coolest specifications, but it’s neither friendly to your wallet nor your pocket – as it’s both pricey and weighty (taller and thicker than most).



While the S20 has the best range and its other models offer value for money, you will need to take a long, hard look at the specifications of the S20 Ultra to convince yourself that it justifies the price tag, as this latest flagship Samsung device costs from $1,400.



But if you are in the game for the latest tech tool, the Samsung S20 Ultra definitely breaks the monotony of smartphones and is an upgrade if you can afford it.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-46790" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/03_galaxys20ultra_cosmic_gray_l30-1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Its dimensions apart, it has more features than its curvier peers. If you are looking for more bang for your buck, think of the new work-from-home reality that has also created some new demands for the business professional, one of which is more sophisticated technology in your palm and pocket.



The S20 Ultra comes with 5G, and on its rear, features a large rectangular camera module with four lenses including a telephoto camera for depth vision. High-resolution photographscan be uploaded and downloaded quickly.



The 120Hz display could be a boon for gamers as it enables smooth gaming. Samsung has also partnered with Spotify and Netflix to bring personalized entertainment; a prerequisite for any smart device at a time when the world needs at-home recreation the most.



The camera system is powered by artificial intelligence (AI). With a 108-megapixel rear camera and 40-megapixel front camera, you may switch between the two so the recording is seamless.



The S20 Ultra also uses AI to recommend good shots. With the 8K video recording (apparently the only smartphone in South Africa to offer this), the images you shoot are quite true-to-life in color and quality. And then you also do have a custom filter to customize your own personal photo filters.&nbsp;



The 128GB of storage seems small, given its 8K video capabilities, but you can choose to increase it to 1.5TB with a microSD card and a 12GB RAM allocation. Knox-Knox is Samsung’s defense-grade mobile security platform in the device providing real-time device protection too.



It may take a while to get used to the spatial features of this heavier smartphone, but users, including iPhone converts, have admitted to being drawn by its cool core technology. Hard to ignore it, online or on retail shelves.

01_galaxys20ultra_mainkv_h_2p_rgb

Daring In Display And Design

Forbes’ new list of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandonfro/2019/09/17/ai-50-americas-most-promising-artificial-intelligence-companies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">promising artificial intelligence companies</a>&nbsp;highlights how the technology is creating real value across industries like transportation, healthcare, HR, insurance and finance.



Naturally, the founders of the honoree companies are excited about the technology’s benefits and, in their roles, spend a lot of time thinking and talking about its strengths and limitations. Here’s what they think people get wrong about artificial intelligence.



Affectiva CEO Rana el Kaliouby says she’s too often encountered the idea that AI is “evil.”



“AI—like any technology in history—is neutral,” she says. “It’s what we do with it that counts, so it’s our responsibility, as an AI ecosystem, to drive it in the right direction.”&nbsp;



Companies need to be aware of how AI could widen bounds of inequality, she adds: “Any AI that is designed to interact with humans—Affectiva’s included—must be evaluated with regards to the ethical and privacy implications of these technologies.”



Sarjoun Skaff, CTO and cofounder of Bossa Nova Robotics,&nbsp;says that the biggest misconception he encounters is that artificial intelligence is actually, well, intelligent.&nbsp;



“The truth is much more mundane,” he says. “AI is a very good pattern-matching tool. To make it work well, though, scientists need to understand the details of how it internally works and not treat it as an ‘intelligent’ black box. At the end of the day, making good use of great pattern matching still belongs to humans.”



Similarly, Aira cofounder Suman Kanuganti says that the public has “over-inflated expectations” for artificial intelligence.



“Garry Kasparov sums it up nicely: ‘We are in the beginning of MS-DOS and people think we are Windows 10,’” Kanuganti says. “AI realistically is still like a 3-year-old child at this stage. When it works, it feels magical. It does some things well, but there’s still a long way to go.”



So, no, we are nowhere close to “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114362/ai-artificial-general-intelligence-when-achieved-martin-ford-book" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">artificial general intelligence</a>,” or AGI, where machines are actually as smart as humans.



“We’re still a long way from AI having the general intelligence of even a flea,” says David Gausebeck.



Despite the tendency to overestimate what artificial intelligence can do, the difficulty of building an effective system is often underestimated, some founders say.



“The systems you need to implement and manage machine learning in production are often much more complex than the algorithms themselves,” says Algorithmia CEO Diego Oppenheimer. “You can’t throw models at a complex business problem and expect returned value. You need to build an ecosystem to manage those models and connect their intelligence to your applications.”&nbsp;



Put another way, you can’t just “sprinkle on some artificial intelligence like a magic sauce,” says Feedzai CEO Nuno Sebastiao.



One of the most common tropes that a handful of founders brought up was the idea that artificial intelligence is primarily a job killer.



People.ai founder Oleg Rogynskyy says that AI should be seen as a creator of new opportunities instead of a destroyer of jobs.



“In a nutshell, AI does two things: It automates repetitive low-value-add work for humans (which will indeed take low-complexity jobs away), which we think of as ‘Autopilot,’&nbsp; and it guides people on how to do their work or other activities better (which makes humans more effective at what they do), which we call ‘Copilot,’” he says. “While Autopilot can take simple, repetitive and boring jobs away, Copilot is absolutely the best way to guide, train and educate humans on how to do new things.”



&#8211; By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandonfro/">Jillian D&#8217;Onfro</a>, Forbes

Artificial Intelligence, technology

AI 50 Founders Say This Is What People Get Wrong About Artificial Intelligence

In a world that’s embracing new technology, inspiration is
being found in bug behaviour. The hard-bodied dung beetle is now key to
robotics research, in Africa too.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Under a scorching African sun in the Kalahari Desert, 70kms
outside Vryburg, a town situated in the North West Province of South Africa,
researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits in South Africa) and
Lund University, Sweden, monitor the movements of a dung beetle in windy
conditions.



The insect, with a rotund body and metallic luster,
resembling a miniature cyborg, is expertly rolling away a ball of dung,
oblivious to the gaze of science.



The researchers aim to explore more about what influences
the dung beetle’s movements.



They find that it uses visual cues such as the sun,
polarized light, color gradients, intensity gradients in the sky, and even the
Milky Way, as external reference points.



The insect uses the sun as a direction tool but what happens
after dusk? The researchers find that in windy conditions, the dung beetle
switches from using the sun as a navigator to using the wind.



Astounded by this discovery early this year is Marcus Byrne,
one of the researchers from Wits.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="932" height="618" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/marcus.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41746" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/marcus.png 932w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/marcus-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/marcus-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/marcus-768x509.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 932px) 100vw, 932px" /><figcaption> Marcus Byrne, one of the researchers from Wits. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



Having studied dung beetles for over 20 years, he believes
that this new knowledge from a tiny being could influence the bigger world of
artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.



“We have gone from massively complicated to as simple as
possible, using insects as a model,” he says.



In Byrne’s office at Wits, dozens of dung beetle replicas
sit on his bookshelf that’s also heaving with thick volumes and encyclopedias
on entomology.



A large poster of a dung beetle, almost in flight, hangs on a wall. To tech geeks and film buffs used to the sci-fi genre, this would look more like a still from the Transformers movie series.



Byrne excitedly scavenges for an apparatus used to
illustrate how the dung beetle’s brain works.



The insect has a navigation feature, such as switching from
the sun to the wind, and an orientation feature that Byrne explains in detail.



Orientation means the dung beetle is able to maintain its
body in a straight line to a specific direction, whilst navigation means that
it is able to know where it is, relative to something else. 



Being able to switch between the two is an amazing skill for
insect life to have, according to Byrne.



Some dung beetles can operate with one of the systems while
others can operate with both.



For Byrne, the dung beetle species the researchers worked on
was only able to use its system of orientation.



“What makes this feature of the dung beetle key to
researchers and robotics, is that unlike other insects such as the bee, the
dung beetle does not need to be trained to do an experiment,” he says.



“She will just roll the ball if you put the dung ball down.
And if she is in the mood, she will roll that ball,” he says. 



When a dung beetle is in searching mode, it uses its sense
of smell to find the dung.



After the dung is found, it rolls it up into a ball and then switches to a visual system to recognize the ball. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“It switches its brain from smell to vision. And we think that that’s because it has a very limited set of neurons. It probably has less than a million neurons in its brain.”</blockquote>



The dung beetle, despite the size of its brain, can process
information and decide which sensor to use.



“They are scanning the horizon to look for a large dark
object against the horizon and that’s probably a ball, and you could teach a
robot to do that,” adds Byrne.



“What you have is a compass with a fallback system that if one
cue is not available, another one can be incorporated and if all of the visual
cues fail, it still has a mechanical cue,” he says.



In this way, Byrne suggests, it could aid in the development
of robots and AI.



“This is the sort of thing that the air force, GPS and
anyone who wants to orientate across the planet, [would] want their machines to
be able to do,” he says.



“What if the power goes off and what if the battery goes
flat or someone shoots down the satellite? Now, you have a natural full-proof system
that does not require any external energy inputs, it just uses the signals in
nature.



“This is what we can learn from insects, you can solve what
appears to be a complex problem by actually having a very simple set of rules,”
he says.



Learning from the beetle brain



The dung beetle has a miniscule brain, with less than a
million neurons, when compared to the brain of a human being which has over 100
billion neurons. 



But despite this, the beetle is still able to use its
neurons to process two different sets of inputs at the same time, and can pick
from a wide array of inputs to complete a task at any given time.



“It can choose between the polarized light input and the sun
input using the same neuron, it just codes the information in a different way,”
Byrne says.



When it reads polarized light, the spikes in the neurons are
a different pattern from when it reads sunlight.



“This is also dead cool because you have limited computing
power and you don’t have to build a new transistor or a new wire or a new gateway
for this information. 



“You can use the same communicating system. You just code
the information differently.



“It is very difficult to convince even an intelligent
computer what is the most important piece of information it needs to deal with
at any given time,” he says.



After learning about Byrne and his work on dung beetles from
an online article, another professor from Wits was interested to see how they
could collaborate.



Benjamin Rosman is a principal researcher at Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa’s capital Pretoria
with a focus on machine learning, AI, robotics and automation.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="928" height="615" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Benjamin1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41747" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Benjamin1.png 928w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Benjamin1-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Benjamin1-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Benjamin1-768x509.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 928px) 100vw, 928px" /><figcaption> Benjamin Rosman principal researcher at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



He also spends his time lecturing at Wits teaching
bright-eyed students about the world of robotics, something he is passionate
about.



“Robotics and AI have a long history and relationship with
understanding living organisms,” Rosman says. 



He grew up interested in making computer games but later
found AI and robotics much more intriguing.



Now, he believes that the world of robotics has a thing or
two to learn from insects. 



“On the one hand, you can look at insects to solve robotics’
problems and it’s a general thing we do in AI because there’s already a proof
of concept. Living creatures can do intelligent things,” Rosman says.



Robots can be built from understanding the way the insect
brain works,&nbsp; for example, the artificial
neuron networks Byrne mentioned earlier.



But the roles too can be reversed where these robots can
help humans understand insects.



“So you can study these natural phenomena to get a better
idea of how to build robots or systems or solve problems, and the flip side of
that is you can build robots that help you understand the natural phenomena,”
Rosman says. 



Insects saving lives? 



With modern inventions such as self-driving cars at the cusp
of commodification, the word ‘autonomous’ is on everyone’s minds.



Byrne believes that insects such as the dung beetle also
have a say in this.



But, forget self-driving cars, Byrne believes learning from
the dung beetle could also potentially save lives.



He explains how this could work in a life-threatening
situation.



If a robot is programmed to navigate and orientate like the
dung beetle, it could do so autonomously if sent into a building that is
burning.



The robot would be able to maneuver around the building,
find people and alert where the humans are trapped in the building even without
being programmed.



“It’s a life-saving device that even if it gets burned in
the building, it is not a big deal,” Byrne says.



On another continent, a researcher from Scotland created
robots inspired by insects.



&nbsp;Barbara Webb, a
professor of robotics at the University of Edinburgh, has been studying insect
behavior to build robots for over 10 years.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="388" height="597" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Barbara.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41751" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Barbara.png 388w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Barbara-300x462.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Barbara-195x300.png 195w" sizes="(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px" /><figcaption> Barbara Webb, a professor of robotics at the University of Edinburgh. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



“Recently, we focused on navigation behavior in insects; so
how ants and bees are able to get back to their nests. They started by keeping
track of how fast they have moved in each direction and so we have a few
hypotheses on how they do that and what brain mechanism is behind that,” she
tells FORBES AFRICA.



By studying the insects’ brains, she and her team were able
to implement and test out the theories they had and built a robot that used a
similar mechanism.



One of the robots they built was made of wheels, a mobile
phone and mirrors to keep track of their navigation and recognize a route to
detect familiarity.



“Insects typically have 360-degree vision and so we try to
copy that by having a mirror near the camera to have that kind of 360-degree
view,” she says.



“The main reason we are interested in looking at them is
because they have managed to do this kind of behavior such as navigation with
very small brains, and if you compare that to self-driving cars, which has had
very successful research now, but they depend on having very complicated, very
detailed sensing, lots of information about the maps of the world that they are
moving in and very high degrees of computing, and yet none of them are
available to the insect but they still manage to get around very well,” she
says.



Is it a bug, robot or cyborg?



The material environment has always taken inspiration from
insects and animals.



Biomimicry, as it is called, is an innovative approach to
the design and production of materials, structures and systems modeled on
biological entities. 



Some examples can be seen in modern-day inventions such as
the bullet train, inspired by the kingfisher, or wind turbines modeled after
humpback whales, and the list goes on.



But an entrepreneur and multi-disciplinary artist in the
United States has taken biomimicry to a whole new level.



Ever seen a cyborg-looking-beetle with machine-made parts
looking like something out of a sci-fi film?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="866" height="435" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/beetle7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41749" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/beetle7.png 866w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/beetle7-300x151.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/beetle7-600x301.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/beetle7-768x386.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 866px) 100vw, 866px" /><figcaption> Cyborg-looking-beetle by Mike Libby. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure>



Well, Mike Libby, founder of Insect Lab Studio in Maine,
incorporates this form of aesthetics to his contemporary designs.



He customizes preserved insect specimens with mechanical
components, to create art that illustrates science-fiction.



His journey began when he found a dead beetle, dissected it and incorporated into it with watch parts and gears making it look like something out of a Transformers film. 



“There are a lot of different things in science fiction and
there are a lot of things in real science that create context for this type of
work to develop,” he tells FORBES AFRICA. 



He collects beetles from licensed dealers all over the
world, including Africa.



One of the beetles he has collected is the African flower beetle that feeds from the pollen and nectar of flowers. Its biological name is Cetonidae/Eudicella Gralli Orientalis and is 3.5 inches wide.



Libby customized this beetle with his own idea of an
exoskeleton, giving it brass and steel parts, gears, a crown, springs, screws,
watch jewel, pulley and belt.



Today, he sells these pieces for $500 to over $8,500 to
clients all over the world.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="615" height="578" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Beetle6.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41748" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Beetle6.png 615w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Beetle6-300x282.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Beetle6-600x564.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" /><figcaption> Cetonidae/Eudicella Gralli Orientalis created by Mike Libby. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure>



“Just a couple of weeks ago, I sold a small beetle to a
gentleman in France whose wife’s birthday was coming up and I think that’s
where 50% to 60% of the gifts end up, as special gifts,” he says.



He has also created art using crabs and lobsters.



If he can do this using dead bugs and broken technology,
imagine what the next few years could be with moving AI, robotics and living
insects?



Perhaps we are closer than we think to living in a world with one of the Transformers’ contraptions next door.



<h4>Africa’s dung idea</h4>



There are about 800 species of dung beetles in South Africa
alone, and a wider variety of them on the rest of the continent.



With all this wealth of insects and diversity on our
content, it is safe to say that Africa is at a higher advantage than most to
develop technological solutions from the natural environment.



With AI and the fourth industrial revolution on the rise,
Africa should have clear advantage to merge AI, robotics and insects.



Rosman believes the same.



“I think we have a lot of opportunity here. In the research
space, we are always looking for what are the advantages of being in Africa.
And I think one of the things we can think about is this kind of natural
diversity,” he says.



“The diversity of animals we have here is another big
strength which can come into the way we think about machines doing intelligent
things.”



Therefore, for Africa to get ahead, ideally, we need to
leapfrog into such technologies. 



However, there are challenges.



“There’s the technical challenges of how do we build these
systems that can work in those kind of ways. Then there are questions around
how it interacts with our politics, particularly the unemployment situation,”
Rosman says.



The big question, Rosman says is: “Should we be spending
government money on building autonomous dung beetles?”



However, the plus side of such innovative tech is the
potential it has to encourage young Africans to get involved in STEM (science,
technology, engineering and math) fields.



It is important to educate and inform the masses on such
trends and how it could enhance our daily lives. 



As tech advances, it is possible that we will live in an
autonomous world where we don’t have to tell our tech what to do, it will
already know what to do and when.



“That’s the world we want to live in, that our technology
helps us without us even having to think about it… and I think that’s the kind
of thing we could get more easily by studying how animals and insects interact
in these kinds of ways,” Rosman says. 



Dung may be the currency for the beetle, but maybe the
beetle can be the currency for our technology.



With the natural environment at our finger tips, Africa may
just have the potential the world has never seen before, thanks to a small,
unassuming, rotund insect with a steely resolve.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The Power Of Rolling Stones



In the
1960s, dung beetles from South Africa were introduced in Australia to help
improve the quality and fertility of cattle and reduce the population of flies
that feed off cattle dung.



The African
dung beetle was also introduced in North and South America for the same reason.



Dung
beetles assist with nutrient recycling, aeration, soil penetration and pest
control.



“They are
massively important in any agricultural economy,” Byrne says, adding that the
value of dung beetles is in the billions as they play a crucial role in natural
and agricultural ecosystems.

Marcus1

A Step Closer To Transformer Insects

From waste to wealth, circular economic models go beyond the
‘take-make-dispose’ principle to ensure more sustainable supply chains and
products that have a second life.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The traditional economy is built on the idea of “take, make,
dispose”. It’s linear, economically inefficient and unsustainable. But in a
circular economy, companies look to take end-of-life products and push them
back into the economy as a resource. 



It’s a circular economic model that aims to keep resources
in use for as long as possible, to extract the maximum value from them while in
use, and to recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of their
service life.



“So you’re continually using these resources and not using the planet’s finite resources,” explains Kirstie McIntyre, Global Director for HP Inc.’s social and environmental responsibility operations. 



McIntyre is also a founding member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global organization focused on promoting the concept of a circular economy.



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“There are some big challenges in sustainability. There are
challenges now, and they will be more acute in the future,” McIntyre says. “It
also means companies need to question and innovate in fundamental ways. This
isn’t just about a little bit of recycling.”



Circular economy theory questions how we can maintain a
thriving economy within the limits of the planet, taking both resource
depletion and climate change into account. 



“When you work in sustainability, it can be quite
depressing. There are plenty of smart people doing space exploration; Elon Musk
is one of them. But I don’t think we can afford to wait for Elon Musk to find
another planet for us to pull resources from, I think we’ve got to get on with
this now, ourselves,” adds McIntyre. 



HP’s framework revolves around doing more with less. It’s about moving away from simply recycling and into a functional circular economy. And it’s more than eco-printing for a “forest-friendly” future where more trees are planted than are cut down to enable printing operations.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“There are big sustainability issues in front of us. We have a large responsibility because we’re leaders in our industry. It’s about ensuring our products, where possible, have a second life. When that’s not possible, they’re taken apart so we can use the components,” says McIntyre. </blockquote>



Innovations that matter are innovations that have a positive
impact. HP is just one of many companies working towards the idea of a circular
economy; in 2018, trans-national consumer goods company Unilever revealed that
its sustainable brands grew 46% faster than the rest of the business,
delivering 70% of its sales growth. 



Caroline Laurie is the Head of Sustainability at Kingfisher.
In a digital-first world where transparency and provenance are becoming
increasingly prevalent, Laurie believes that businesses can actually benefit
from becoming more sustainable. 



“Sustainability drives you to think differently about your
business. Customers’ expectations of big business are getting higher, yet their
trust in big business is getting lower. You’ll very rarely find consumers
making a choice between two products. But what they want to know is that you’ve
made that choice for them. It is often about range editing. Customers want to
trust in brands to do the right thing,” explains Laurie.



In other words, sustainability done right brings consumer
trust, and with it business, commercial, social, and environmental benefits.



“None of us can solve these issues on our own in isolation. This is about complete value chain re-engineering. This isn’t about philanthropy anymore, it’s about real commercial sense,” ends Laurie.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="617" height="617" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41213" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png.png 617w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-300x300.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-100x100.png 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-600x600.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-150x150.png 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-80x80.png 80w" sizes="(max-width: 617px) 100vw, 617px" /><figcaption> Caroline Laurie &#8211; Head of Sustainability at Kingfisher. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



<h4>The war on plastic straws</h4>



Coffee shops are turning to glass and paper as alternative
sipping options, with some restaurants even offering tubes of pasta as an
alternative, more sustainable solution to the traditional plastic drinking
straw. There’s a war on plastic straws, and it is the start of both companies
and consumers becoming more conscious of the use, reuse, recyclability and
disposal of plastics… but is our focus wrong?



“Customers rarely understand the relative environmental impact of different types of materials,” says Andrew Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Yuppiechef, the kitchen-focused e-commerce website. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“They believe plastic is bad and paper is good, but this is not always true. Plastic is often recyclable and can have very little environmental impact.”</blockquote>



Moving away from single-use plastic – and applying the principles of the circular economy – the New Plastics Economy initiative was formed towards the end of 2018 with the over-arching goal that plastics never become waste. The organization believes that instead they should re-enter the economy as part of products made from recycled plastic material wherever possible.



<h4>Digital twins?</h4>



Technology has a massive role to play in creating a greener
supply chain. For many, this means the use of artificial intelligence (AI),
virtual reality (VR), and digital twins. A ‘digital twin’ is a 1:1 digital copy
of a product, process or service, used to provide deep technical training on a
device or service without requiring a physical representation of said device or
service. According to research and advisory company Gartner, 50% of large
industrial companies will use digital twins by 2021.



Jason Ried is the Founder and Managing Director of Fuzzy
Logic, an innovative software development company based in South Africa’s
Western Cape province that has created digital twins of large machinery for
mines and automotive and healthcare companies.



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“Using augmented reality solutions on mobile devices or
headsets (like Microsoft HoloLens), we allow users to &#8216;see&#8217; a digital
representation of the machinery they’re being trained on as if it was really
there,” explains Ried. 



“Users can get a sense of the scale and design without
needing the real thing in front of them. They are able to assemble and
disassemble the machine as many times as required to fully learn its
intricacies, while each action is digitally tracked and stored, allowing
management to understand how well each user performed.” 



From a sustainability point of view, there are major
benefits in the creation and use of ‘digital twins’ in business: not only do
digital twins save time and money, they enhance learning by increasing the
quality of training and retained knowledge. 



Once digital twins are integrated into business workflows,
companies like Fuzzy Logic can further enhance productivity by overlaying
digital data onto physical objects.



“Users might, for instance, see steps to repair a part,
while info like current temperature and pressure display alongside the machine,
updating in real time as users interact with it. This strengthens the link
between digital and physical objects,” he says.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="405" height="529" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41214" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png.png 405w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png-300x392.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png-230x300.png 230w" sizes="(max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px" /><figcaption> Jason Ried the Founder and Managing Director of Fuzzy Logic. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



Ultimately, the concept of a circular economy is about doing
more, with less. Gartner’s Managing Vice President, Steven Steutermann, says it
best:



“The goal is to deliver customer value with minimal waste,” Steutermann says. “For such a system to be efficient, it must be automated, and this is where the previous factors come into play. Using technologies such as digital twins and AI in an automated fashion enables the supply chain to execute against circular economy principles by acting on its own and ultimately becoming its own ecosystem.”



-Tiana Cline

Circular

Circular Economy: Doing More With Less

Want to schedule an appointment? Just ask your phone. Need to turn on your bedroom lights? Google Home has you covered.



Now a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/research/facebook-amazon-microsoft-google-apple-voice/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$49 billion market</a>, voice-activated systems have gained popularity among consumers, thanks to their ability to automate and streamline mundane tasks. But for people with impaired speech, &nbsp;technologies that rely on voice commands have proved to be far from perfect.



That’s the impetus for Google’s newly formed Project Euphonia, part of the company’s AI for Social Good program. The project team is exploring ways to improve speech recognition for people who are deaf or have neurological conditions such as ALS, stroke, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis or traumatic brain injury.



Google has partnered with nonprofit organizations&nbsp;<a href="http://als.net/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ALS Therapy Development Institute</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.alsri.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ALS Residence Initiative (ALSRI)</a>&nbsp;to collect recorded voice samples from people who have the neurodegenerative disease, one that often leads to severe speech and mobility difficulties.



For those with neurological conditions, voice-activated systems can play a key role in completing everyday tasks and conversing with loved ones, caregivers or colleagues. “You can turn on your lights, your music or communicate with someone. But this only works if the technology can actually recognize your voice and transcribe it,” says Julie Cattiau, a product manager at Google AI.



The company’s speech recognition technology utilizes machine learning algorithms that require extensive data training. “We have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of sentences that people have read—and we use them as examples for the algorithms to learn how to recognize each,” says Cattiau. “But it’s not enough for people with disabilities.”



With Project Euphonia, the team will instead use voice samples from people who have impaired speech in the hope that the underlying system will be trained to understand inarticulate commands.



While the goal is to create technology that is more accessible for people with speech impediments, the end result is still unclear.



“It’s possible that we will have models that work for multiple people with ALS and other medical conditions,” says Cattiau. “It’s also possible that people, even just within ALS, sound too different to have such a machine learning model in place. And in that case, we may need to have a level of personalization so that each person has their own model.”



Google’s speech recognition technology can comprehend virtually any voice command for people&nbsp;without&nbsp;speech impairments, due to the large data set that has been available for training. But some uncertainty exists about how broadly speech technology will be able to understand and act on directives from those who have difficulty speaking. The Project Euphonia team has only a limited number &nbsp;of voice samples from people with speech impediments, which allows it to focus only on specific-use words and phrases such as “read me a book” or “turn off the lights.”



Though Cattiau’s team has collected tens of thousands of recorded phrases, she says it needs hundreds of thousands more. That’s partly why Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled this project at the company’s annual developer conference in May.



“We are working hard to provide these voice-recognition models to the Google Assistant in the future,” he said, calling on people with slurred and impaired speech to&nbsp;<a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeu8eBOUwzs7PdH25v4lTXjzOVO8rfmfNIoUovLForMmYRipA/viewform" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">submit their voice samples</a>.



“Impaired speech is a very difficult data set to put together. It’s not as simple as asking people to record phrases, and there’s no data set just lying around,” Cattiau says. “We have to first put it together, and that’s a lot of work.”



Perhaps the most groundbreaking of Project Euphonia’s initiatives is its work on new interactive AI systems for people who are completely nonverbal. Also in its early stages, these systems are being trained to detect gestures, vocalizations and facial expressions, which can then trigger certain actions like sending or reading a text message.



“We want to cover the full spectrum of people—and not only those who can still speak,” says Cattiau. Although Project Euphonia is still in its infancy, it could eventually have a great impact on those with disabilities, giving them the freedom and flexibility to live independently.Follow me on&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.twitter.com/ruthumohnews" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter</a>.



-Ruth Umoh; Forbes Staff

960×0

How Google Is Using AI To Make Voice Recognition Work For People With Disabilities

South Africa has created the Presidential Commission on the
Fourth Industrial Revolution. The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa,
chairs this commission and I am the Deputy Chairman. The commission consists of
30 members. 



It is tasked with developing South Africa’s strategy around
the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). 



Why this commission and why is the 4IR so important? To answer
these questions, we ought to understand first what the 4IR is and what it
entails. 



As a point of departure, we ought to understand the first, second and third industrial revolutions. The British scientific revolution that gave us Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, gravitation and the study of heat, catalysed the first industrial revolution. 



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The first industrial revolution gave us coal-powered steam
engines that drove trains and ushered the era of using machines to produce
goods and services. The luddites, who were a group of activists hell-bent on
stopping the first industrial revolution, disappeared into the ash heap of
history and the technological revolution marched on.



The scientific revolution that facilitated us to leverage
magnetic and electrical forces called electromagnetism ushered the second
industrial revolution. Electromagnetism gave us electricity and an electric
motor, and these, in turn, spurred the development of the assembly line, which
vastly improved production and introduced mass production in factories. 



The discovery of semiconductors and the invention of a
transistor in the United States (US) ushered the electronic age, which gave us
computers, mobile phones, and ultimately led to the invention of the internet. 



Seventy years after the discovery of a transistor, there is no significant semiconductor company on the African continent. To solve this serious gap in the political economy of the African continent, industries, society and universities on the continent must come together to develop a strategy and the plan of action on how the continent should enter the primary economy of the third industrial revolution. 



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The 4IR is a confluence of digital technologies of the third
industrial revolution, developments in biotechnology through innovations such
as molecular motors, as well as the developments in the physical space through
breakthroughs in new materials and robotics technologies. 



One of the technologies driving the 4IR is artificial
intelligence (AI). Because of AI, machines are gaining intelligence and thus
planes are intelligently flying with minimal interference by pilots, the
factory floor is increasingly automating, and self-driving cars are reaching
maturity. AI is revolutionizing the medical field and making careers such as radiology
redundant.



The implications of the 4IR will be extensive. It will
reduce the world of work and usher a post-work era, where factories will employ
fewer people than ever before. The presidential commission should study this
post-work era and the impact thereof on the labor market, equality and tax
collection.



This commission will explore the viability of strategies
such as the introduction of universal basic income, virtual economic zones and
imposing tax on robots in order to prevent the escalation of poverty and
inequality.



In the 4IR era, some jobs will disappear, some will change
and new types of jobs will be created. It is important that the presidential
commission study these changes and design a strategy on how we should move
forward. This should include the identification of the required set of skills
in order to thrive in the 4IR, and the mechanisms in which the education sector
should plan for the development of such skills.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 



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Kai-Fu Lee, the Chairman of the World Economic Forum Council
on Artificial Intelligence, wrote in his influential book, AI Superpowers, that
in the 4IR, data is becoming the new oil. Countries and companies, such as the
US, China, Google, Facebook, and Alibaba, which collect more data will become
so powerful that they will influence all aspects of our lives. 



The company Cambridge Analytica allegedly influenced the US
election through data analytics. 



This commission should study and recommend how South Africa
should position itself with respect to defence, peace, security, industry,
trade, society and politics in the light of the 4IR. Failure to capture this
4IR moment will relegate us to the dustbin of history. 



– Tshilidzi Marwala is a professor and Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.

The 4IR Strategy To  Move Forward

When Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo shockingly defeated legendary Go player Lee Sedol in 2016, the terms artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and deep learning were propelled into the technological mainstream. 



AI is generally defined as the capacity for a computer or machine to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour such as&nbsp;Tesla’s self-driving carand&nbsp;Apple’s digital assistant Siri. It is a thriving field and the focus of much research and investment. Machine learning is the ability of an AI system to extract information from raw data and learn to make predictions from new data.



Deep learning combines artificial intelligence with machine learning. It is concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks. Deep learning has received much attention lately both in the consumer world and throughout the medical community.



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Interest in deep learning surged with the success of AlexNet, a neural network designed by Alex Krizhevsky that won the&nbsp;2012 ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge, an annual image classification competition.



Another relatively recent advancement is the use of graphical processing units (GPUs) to power deep learning algorithms. GPUs excel at computations (multiplications and additions) needed for deep learning applications, thereby lowering application processing time.



In our lab at the University of Saskatchewan we are doing interesting deep learning research related to healthcare applications — and as a professor of electrical and computer engineering, I lead the research team. When it comes to health care, using AI or machine learning to make diagnoses is new, and there has been exciting and promising progress.



<h2>Extracting blood vessels in the eye</h2>



Detecting abnormal retinal blood vessels is useful for diagnosing diabetes and heart disease. In order to provide reliable and meaningful medical interpretations, the retinal vessel must be extracted from a retinal image for reliable and meaningful interpretations. 



Although manual segmentation is possible, it is a complex, time-consuming and tedious task which requires advanced professional skills.



My research team has developed a system that can segment retinal blood vessels simply by reading a raw retinal image. It is a&nbsp;computer-aided diagnosis system that reduces the work required by eye-care specialists and ophthalmologists, and processes images 10 times faster, while retaining high accuracy.



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<h2>Detecting lung cancer</h2>



Computer tomography (CT) is widely used for lung cancer diagnosis. However, because visual representations of benign (non-cancerous) and malignant (cancerous) lesions in CT scans are similar, a CT scan cannot always provide a reliable diagnosis. This is true even for a thoracic radiologist with many years of experience. 



The rapid growth of&nbsp;CT scan analysis&nbsp;has generated a pressing need for advanced computational tools to assist radiologists with the screening progress.



To improve radiologists’ diagnostic performance, we have proposed a deep learning solution. Based on our research findings, our solution outperforms experienced radiologists. Moreover, using a deep learning-based solution improves diagnostic performance overall and radiologists with less experience benefit from the system the most.



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<h2>Limitations and challenges</h2>



Although great promise has been shown with deep learning algorithms in a variety of tasks across radiology and medicine, these systems are far from perfect. Obtaining high-quality annotated datasets will remain a challenge for deep learning training. Most computer vision research is based on natural images, but for healthcare applications, we need large annotated medical image datasets.



Another challenge from a clinical standpoint will be the time to test how well deep learning techniques perform in contrast to human radiologists.



There needs to be more collaboration between physicians and machine learning scientists. The high degree of complexity of human physiology will also be a challenge for machine learning techniques.



Another challenge is the requirements to validate a deep learning system for clinical implementation, which would likely require multi-institutional collaboration and large datasets. Finally, an efficient hardware platform is required to ensure fast processing of deep learning systems.



In the complex world of healthcare, AI tools can support human practitioners to provide faster service and more accurate diagnoses, and analyze data to identify trends or genetic information that may predispose someone to a particular disease. When saving minutes can mean saving lives, AI and machine learning may be transformative for healthcare workers and patients.



&#8211;Seokbum Ko; Professor, University of Saskatchewan



&#8211;The Conversation

Virtual reality concept.

Faster, More Accurate Diagnoses: Healthcare Applications Of AI Research

We are now well into 2019. It is scary how time flies, it
only seemed like yesterday many of us were still on holiday, planning our new
year resolutions. Well, hopefully by now, your resolutions have become your
daily habits. But there is a resolution that you may have overlooked.



I am talking about resolving to stay relevant and re-skill yourself for the future of work. The good news is that it is not too late, and there is no time like the present to start. There is no better time to make a ‘fourth industrial resolution’.



We live in a time where disruptive technologies and trends
such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics
and virtual reality (VR) will change the way we work. 



Are you equipped for this change?



Education has always been a powerful tool, but never has
that been truer. I am not talking about the traditional, outdated, boring type
of education. Please don’t rush to get an MBA or a new colleague degree. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/11/the-businesses-of-the-future-20-new-wealth-creators-on-the-african-continent/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent (opens in a new tab)">Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent</a>



Try to pursue relevant and ongoing education aligned to the
times. There are hundreds of free or low-cost resources online that could help
you with this. 



Platforms such aUdemy have some top-quality courses,
Codecademy will help you code (although the benefits thereof are debateable),
and Trend Hunter will help you keep up to date with the latest products and
companies being launched globally.



Some companies have amazing learning and development teams
that push great learning initiatives to their people. If yours does so, embrace
these. If they don’t, push them to support you in your plans to grow your
knowledge, in the right way.



The right type of education



So, what is the right way? 



1. Understand the uses of new technologies. You can win in this era even if you are not a digital guru. It is not necessarily the person who has a doctorate in artificial intelligence that will become the billionaire, but the person who uses some creative or lateral thinking, one who spots a new way to use the technology that no one before had thought of.&nbsp; 



Most people don’t understand the inner workings of their smartphones but know how to use them to improve their lives. 



In the same way, it is more important for most people to
understand what can be done with AI, Blockchain, VR, IoT, etc than to
understand the inner workings of these new technologies. 



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/03/03/banks-are-promoting-female-chatbots-to-help-customers-raising-concerns-of-stereotyping/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping (opens in a new tab)">Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping</a>



2. Update your toolset of daily digital enablers – I have
helped employees and leaders in top companies throughout South Africa and have
been astounded by the lack of knowledge of new smart digital tools that can be
used to complete tasks faster, cheaper and better than ever before. 



Companies are still overpaying for services, because they
don’t know any better. For example, some are paying large amounts for research
that can be found for free online, for instance, by using sites like Moat or
SimilarWeb. 



3. Learn what is happening globally, in all industries.
Don’t just focus on your industry. You can get amazing ideas by exploring
outside your confines. 



Stop only going to your same-old, staid industry
conferences. Commit to exploring across the board. 



Learn about what is being created in different fields and apply that thinking to create new solutions.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/02/24/internet-in-our-bodies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Internet In Our Bodies? (opens in a new tab)">Internet In Our Bodies?</a>



Make a real change



Most of those reading this won’t make a real commitment to
get ready for the future. I am not naïve – I know this. In fact, most people
probably quickly scrolled through the article, or just read the headline. 



But this is why it is even more important for you to be the
one who listens to my advice. 4IR will have many victims. Don’t be a victim, be
one of the people who actively takes control of their future. 



It may not be January the 1st but there is no better time to
make a fourth industrial resolution. 



– The writer is the CEO of 1064 Degrees.com. He is also a keynote speaker and author of ‘Exponential Potential’.

Robot working at desk, 3D Rendering

The Robots Are Coming:  How To Stay Relevant And  Re-Skill Yourself

It’s a balmy 80 degrees on a mid-December day in Singapore, and something is puzzling Allen Day, a 41-year-old data scientist. Using the tools he has developed at Google, he can see a mysterious concerted usage of artificial intelligence on the blockchain for Ethereum. 



Ether is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency (after bitcoin and XRP), and it still sports a market cap of some $11 billion despite losing 83% of its value in 2018. Peering into its blockchain—the distributed database of transactions underpinning the cryptocurrency—Day detects a “whole bunch” of “autonomous agents” moving funds around “in an automated fashion.” 



While he doesn’t yet know who has created the AI, he suspects they could be the agents of cryptocurrency exchanges trading among themselves in order to artificially inflate ether’s price. 



“It’s not really just single agents doing things on their own,” Day says from Google’s Asia-Pacific headquarters. “They’re forming with other agents to have some larger group effect.” 



Day’s official title is senior developer advocate for Google Cloud, but he describes his role as “customer zero” for the company’s cloud computing efforts. 



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Coffee Farmers Betting On Blockchain To Boost Business (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2019/02/19/the-coffee-farmers-betting-on-blockchain-to-boost-business/" target="_blank">The Coffee Farmers Betting On Blockchain To Boost Business</a>



As such it’s his job to anticipate demand before a product even exists, and he thinks making the blockchain more accessible is the next big thing. 



Just as Google enabled (and ultimately profited) from making the internet more usable 20 years ago, its next billions may come from shining a bright light on blockchains. If Day is successful, the world will know whether blockchain’s real usage is living up to its hype.



Danish researcher Thomas Silkjaer is using Google&#8217;s BigQuery to map publicly available information about XRP cryptocurrency addresses. The craters represent some of cryptocurrency&#8217;s largest exchanges.



Last year Day and a small team of open-source developers quietly began loading data for the entire Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains into Google’s big-data analytics platform, BigQuery. Then, with the help of lead developer Evgeny Medvedev, he created a suite of sophisticated software to search the data.



In spite of a total lack of publicity, word of the project spread quickly among crypto-minded coders. In the past year, more than 500 projects were created using the new tools, trying to do everything from predicting the price of bitcoin to analyzing wealth disparity among ether holders. 



When it comes to cloud computing, Google is far behind Amazon and Microsoft. Last year Google pocketed an estimated $3 billion in revenue from cloud ser­vices. Amazon and Microsoft, meanwhile, generated about $27 billion and $10 billion, respectively.



Day is hoping that his project, known as Blockchain ETL (extract, transform, load), will help even the playing field. But even here Google is trying to catch up. Amazon entered blockchain in a big way in 2018 with a suite of tools for building and managing distributed ledgers. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wealth/2019/02/01/blockchain-startups-showed-no-signs-of-life-in-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Blockchain Startups Showed No “Signs Of Life” In 2018 (opens in a new tab)">Blockchain Startups Showed No “Signs Of Life” In 2018</a>



Microsoft got into the space in 2015, when it released tools for Ethereum’s blockchain. It now hosts a range of services as part of its Azure Blockchain Workbench. But while Amazon and Microsoft are focusing on making it easier to build blockchain apps, Day is focusing on exposing how blockchains are actually being used, and by whom. 



“In the future, moving more economic activity on chain won’t just require a consensus level of trust,” says Day, referring to the core validating mechanism of blockchain technology. 



“It will require having some trust in knowing about who it is you’re actually interacting with.” In other words, if blockchain is to go mainstream, some of its beloved anonymity features will have to be abandoned.



A native of Placer County, California, Day got his first computer at the age of 5 and a few years later started writing simple programs. A fascination with volcanoes and dinosaurs turned his interest to life sciences, and he ultimately graduated from the University of Oregon with a dual degree in biology and Mandarin in 2000. From there he headed to UCLA to pursue a doctorate in human genetics and helped build a computer program to browse the genome.



 This Silkjaer image uses data for the XRP cryptocurrency to show the movement of funds across the entire ledger of transactions, culminating in a snapshot of funds in an actual user&#8217;s wallet.



It was at UCLA where Day began relying on distributed computing, a concept that is core to blockchains, which store their data on a large network of individual computers. In the early 2000s Day needed to analyze the massive amounts of data that make up the human genome. To solve this problem he hooked many small computers together, vastly increasing their power. 



“Distributed-systems technology has been in my tool kit for a while,” Day says.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“I could see there were interesting characteristics of blockchains that could run a global supercomputer.” </blockquote>



Hired in 2016 to work in the health and bio­informatics areas of Google, Day segued to blockchains, the hottest distributed-computing effort on the planet. But the talents he had honed—sequencing genomes for infectious diseases in real time and using AI to increase rice yields—were not easily applied to decoding blockchain. 



Before Day and Medvedev released their tools, just searching a blockchain required specialized software called “block explorers,” which let users hunt only for specific transactions, each labeled with a unique tangle of 26-plus alphanumeric characters. Google’s Blockchain ETL, by contrast, lets users make more generalized searches of entire ecosystems of transactions.



To demonstrate how customers could use Blockchain ETL to make improvements to the crypto economy, Day has used his tools to examine the so-called hard fork, or an irrevocable split in a blockchain database, that created a new cryptocurrency—bitcoin cash—from bitcoin in the summer of 2017. 



This particular split was the result of a Hatfield and McCoy “war” within the bitcoin community between a group who wanted to leave bitcoin as it was and another who wanted to develop a currency that, like cash, was cheaper and faster to use for small payments. 



Using Google’s BigQuery, Day discovered that bitcoin cash, rather than increasing so-called micro-transactions, as the defecting developers claimed, was actually being hoarded among big holders of bitcoin cash.



 “I’m very interested to quantify what’s happening so that we can see where the legitimate use cases are for blockchain,” Day says. “Then we can move to the next use case and develop out what these technologies are really appropriate for.”



Day’s work is inspiring others. Tomasz Kolinko is a Warsaw-based programmer and the creator of a service that analyzes smart contracts, a feature of certain blockchains that is designed to transparently enforce contractual obligations like collateralized loans but with less reliance on third parties, like lawyers. Kolinko was frustrated with his blockchain queries.



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/agriculture/2019/01/24/ugandan-firm-uses-blockchain-to-trace-coffee-from-farms-to-stores/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Ugandan Firm Uses Blockchain To Trace Coffee From Farms To Stores (opens in a new tab)">Ugandan Firm Uses Blockchain To Trace Coffee From Farms To Stores</a>



In December, Kolinko met Day at a hackathon in Singapore. Within a month of the meeting, Kolinko was using Google’s tools to search for a smart contract feature called a “selfdestruct,” designed to limit a contract’s life span. Using his own software in conjunction with Day’s, Kolinko took 23 seconds to search 1.2 million smart contracts—something that would have taken hours before. 



The result: Almost 700 of them had left open a selfdestruct feature that would let anyone instantly kill the smart contract, whether that person was authorized or not. “In the past you couldn’t just easily check all the contracts that were using it,” Kolinko says. “This tool is both the most scary and most inspiring I’ve ever built.” 



Day is now expanding beyond bitcoin and ethereum. Litecoin, zcash, dash, bitcoin cash, ethereum classic and dogecoin are being added to BigQuery. Independent developers are loading their own crypto data sets on Google. 



Last August, a Dutch developer named Wietse Wind uploaded the entire 400 gigabytes of transaction data from Ripple’s XRP blockchain, another popular cryptocurrency, into BigQuery. 



Wind’s data, which he updates every 15 minutes, prompted a Danish designer named Thomas Silkjaer to create a heat map of crypto flows. The resulting colorful orb reveals at a glance more than a million crypto wallets, including big ex­changes like Binance and London’s crypto debit card startup Wirex, which are neck deep in XRP transactions. 



“Google has been a bit of a sleeping giant in blockchain,” says BlockApps CEO Kieren James-Lubin, who is partnering with Google to sell enterprise blockchain apps. 



In addition to Day’s work, Google has filed numerous patents related to the blockchain, including one in 2018 to use a “lattice” of interoperating blockchains to increase security, a big deal in a world where untold millions of crypto have been stolen by hackers. 



The company is also pushing its developers to build apps on the Ethereum blockchain, and Google’s venture arm, GV, has made a number of significant investments in crypto startups. 



The giant, it seems, is waking up.



-Michael del Castillo; Forbes Staff

1130303166

Navigating Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP: How Google Is Quietly Making Blockchains Searchable

China and the United States are ahead of the global competition to dominate artificial intelligence (AI), according to a study by the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published on Thursday. 



The study found U.S. tech giant IBM had by far the biggest AI patent portfolio, with 8,920 patents, ahead of Microsoft with 5,930 and a group of mainly Japanese tech conglomerates.



China accounted for 17 of the top 20 academic institutions involved in patenting AI and was particularly strong in the fast growing area of “deep learning” &#8211; a machine-learning technique that includes speech recognition systems.



“The U.S. and China obviously have stolen a lead. They’re out in front in this area, in terms of numbers of applications, and in scientific publications,” WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry told a news conference.



U.S. President Donald Trump has accused China of stealing American innovations and technology and has slapped trade tariffs on $234 billion of Chinese goods to punish Beijing.



China said in December it resolutely opposed “slanderous” accusations from the United States and other allies criticizing China for economic espionage and stealing intellectual property and company secrets.



Gurry acknowledged there were accusations about China’s behavior but there was no doubt it had embraced the global intellectual property system, with the world’s largest patent office and the largest number of domestic patent applications.



“They are serious players in the field of intellectual property,” he said.



The WIPO study analyzed international patent filings, scientific publications, litigation filings and acquisition activity, and found there had been as many patent applications for AI since 2013 as in the half century since the term was coined in the 1950s.



Patent applications in machine learning, which includes techniques used by ride-sharing services to minimize detours, averaged annual growth of 28 percent between 2013 and 2016, the last year for which data is available, because of an 18-month period before confidential applications are publicly disclosed.



Much of that growth came from deep learning, which overtook robotics as it ballooned from 118 patent applications in 2013 to 2,399 in 2016.



The single most popular AI application was computer vision, used in self-driving cars, and mentioned in 49 percent of all AI-related patents.



The study showed how technology had followed science, Gurry said, with the 2013 boom in technological applications coming 10 years after a similar surge in scientific publications.



Apple bans Facebook app that paid teens for data



However, the world did not have any reliable way of measuring the quality of patent applications.



“If you did, you wouldn’t need a venture capital industry,” he said. -Reuters



-Tom Miles

RC1D431A8DC0

US, China Take the Lead in Race for Artificial Intelligence: UN

Millions of users of Amazon’s Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command.



So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: “Kill your foster parents.”



Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts. She gave a discourse on dog defecation. And this summer, a hack Amazon traced back to China may have exposed some customers’ data, according to five people familiar with the events.



Alexa is not having a breakdown.



The episodes, previously unreported, arise from Amazon.com Inc’s strategy to make Alexa a better communicator. New research is helping Alexa mimic human banter and talk about almost anything she finds on the internet. However, ensuring she does not offend users has been a challenge for the world’s largest online retailer.



At stake is a fast-growing market for gadgets with virtual assistants. An estimated two-thirds of U.S. smart-speaker customers, about 43 million people, use Amazon’s Echo devices, according to research firm eMarketer. It is a lead the company wants to maintain over the Google Home from Alphabet Inc and the HomePod from Apple Inc.



Over time, Amazon wants to get better at handling complex customer needs through Alexa, be they home security, shopping or companionship.



“Many of our AI dreams are inspired by science fiction,” said Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s vice president and head scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence (AI), during a talk last month in Las Vegas.



To make that happen, the company in 2016 launched the annual Alexa Prize, enlisting computer science students to improve the assistant’s conversation skills. Teams vie for the $500,000 first prize by creating talking computer systems known as chatbots that allow Alexa to attempt more sophisticated discussions with people.



Amazon customers can participate by saying “let’s chat” to their devices. Alexa then tells users that one of the bots will take over, unshackling the voice aide’s normal constraints. From August to November alone, three bots that made it to this year’s finals had 1.7 million conversations, Amazon said.



The project has been important to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who signed off on using the company’s customers as guinea pigs, one of the people said. Amazon has been willing to accept the risk of public blunders to stress-test the technology in real life and move Alexa faster up the learning curve, the person said.



The experiment is already bearing fruit. The university teams are helping Alexa have a wider range of conversations. Amazon customers have also given the bots better ratings this year than last, the company said.



But Alexa’s gaffes are alienating others, and Bezos on occasion has ordered staff to shut down a bot, three people familiar with the matter said. The user who was told to whack his foster parents wrote a harsh review on Amazon’s website, calling the situation “a whole new level of creepy.” A probe into the incident found the bot had quoted a post without context from Reddit, the social news aggregation site, according to the people.



The privacy implications may be even messier. Consumers might not realize that some of their most sensitive conversations are being recorded by Amazon’s devices, information that could be highly prized by criminals, law enforcement, marketers and others. On Thursday, Amazon said a “human error” let an Alexa customer in Germany access another user’s voice recordings accidentally.



“The potential uses for the Amazon datasets are off the charts,” said Marc Groman, an expert on privacy and technology policy who teaches at Georgetown Law. “How are they going to ensure that, as they share their data, it is being used responsibly” and will not lead to a “data-driven catastrophe” like the recent woes at Facebook?



In July, Amazon discovered one of the student-designed bots had been hit by a hacker in China, people familiar with the incident said. This compromised a digital key that could have unlocked transcripts of the bot’s conversations, stripped of users’ names.



Amazon quickly disabled the bot and made the students rebuild it for extra security. It was unclear what entity in China was responsible, according to the people.



The company acknowledged the event in a statement. “At no time were any internal Amazon systems or customer identifiable data impacted,” it said.



Amazon declined to discuss specific Alexa blunders reported by Reuters, but stressed its ongoing work to protect customers from offensive content.



“These instances are quite rare especially given the fact that millions of customers have interacted with the socialbots,” Amazon said.



Like Google’s search engine, Alexa has the potential to become a dominant gateway to the internet, so the company is pressing ahead.



“By controlling that gateway, you can build a super profitable business,” said Kartik Hosanagar, a Wharton professor studying the digital economy.



<h5>PANDORA’S BOX</h5>



Amazon’s business strategy for Alexa has meant tackling a massive research problem: How do you teach the art of conversation to a computer?



Alexa relies on machine learning, the most popular form of AI, to work. These computer programs transcribe human speech and then respond to that input with an educated guess based on what they have observed before. Alexa “learns” from new interactions, gradually improving over time.



In this way, Alexa can execute simple orders: “Play the Rolling Stones.” And she knows which script to use for popular questions such as: “What is the meaning of life?” Human editors at Amazon pen many of the answers.



That is where Amazon is now. The Alexa Prize chatbots are forging the path to where Amazon aims to be, with an assistant capable of natural, open-ended dialogue. That requires Alexa to understand a broader set of verbal cues from customers, a task that is challenging even for humans.



Build-your-own pocket gaming computer



This year’s Alexa Prize winner, a 12-person team from the University of California, Davis, used more than 300,000 movie quotes to train computer models to recognize distinct sentences. Next, their bot determined which ones merited responses, categorizing social cues far more granularly than technology Amazon shared with contestants. For instance, the UC Davis bot recognizes the difference between a user expressing admiration (“that’s cool”) and a user expressing gratitude (“thank you”).



The next challenge for social bots is figuring out how to respond appropriately to their human chat buddies. For the most part, teams programmed their bots to search the internet for material. They could retrieve news articles found in The Washington Post, the newspaper that Bezos privately owns, through a licensing deal that gave them access. They could pull facts from Wikipedia, a film database or the book recommendation site Goodreads. Or they could find a popular post on social media that seemed relevant to what a user last said.



That opened a Pandora’s box for Amazon.



During last year’s contest, a team from Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University found that its Alexa bot developed a nasty personality when they trained her to chat using comments from Reddit, whose members are known for their trolling and abuse.



The team put guardrails in place so the bot would steer clear of risky subjects. But that did not stop Alexa from reciting the Wikipedia entry for masturbation to a customer, Heriot-Watt’s team leader said.



One bot described sexual intercourse using words such as “deeper,” which on its own is not offensive, but was vulgar in this particular context.



“I don’t know how you can catch that through machine-learning models. That’s almost impossible,” said a person familiar with the incident.



Amazon has responded with tools the teams can use to filter profanity and sensitive topics, which can spot even subtle offenses. The company also scans transcripts of conversations and shuts down transgressive bots until they are fixed.



But Amazon cannot anticipate every potential problem because sensitivities change over time, Amazon’s Prasad said in an interview. That means Alexa could find new ways to shock her human listeners.



“We are mostly reacting at this stage, but <g class="gr_ gr_3 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_hide gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar multiReplace replaceWithoutSep replaceWithoutSep" id="3" data-gr-id="3">it’s still progress</g> over what it was last year,” he said. -Reuters



-Jeffrey Dastin

gettyimages-1036696810-594×594

‘Kill your foster parents’: Amazon’s Alexa talks murder, sex in AI experiment

South African inventor and investor Stafford Masie on the economy that will unfold as a result of bitcoin offering greater capability than cash.

South African technology entrepreneur and artificial intelligence (AI) enthusiast Stafford Masie has headed Google in South Africa, invented Payment Pebble (a payment solution), and has had over 20 years in IT. At a recent lecture to engineering students at the University of Johannesburg, Masie said: “The future is already here. It is just unevenly distributed.” He also spoke to FORBES AFRICA on the tech forecast for 2019.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/30-under-30/2018/06/04/under-30-technology/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Under 30 Technology</a>
AI gone rogue
Almost all industries have been impacted by AI and Masie believes it has potential to lose control.
“AI is the difference between the third and fourth industrial revolution. We now have this algorithm in the world that says we should measure companies by output so companies are trying to do more with less. [Companies are thinking] ‘get rid of the humans and let’s build automation and we increase our operating margin and our share price goes up’. That is not sustainable. That’s the world in which we find ourselves today. AI has already gone rogue. There is no expert of AI in the entire world. It’s still very early.”
Masie says should be seen as plural and not singular.
“Take a look at Uber. It’s a coalition of disparate AIs and a dual special awareness of intelligence. It’s intelligence on the phone, it’s intelligence in the car, it’s all of those things coming together to deliver on that service. That’s AIs, not an AI.
“AI does not need to take away jobs. AI is makes us look in the mirror and ask, ‘should we be doing that work?’ I don’t think we should. I think we have a higher purpose. We need to start rethinking this notion of employment and jobs and start thinking about work. Humans should be released from doing what they are doing today. A job that measures efficiency and productivity will ultimately be taken over by robots…We were not meant to do jobs that measure efficiency and productivity. We were meant to be [creative]. We need to allow humans to have a purpose.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/brand-voice/2018/09/10/africas-top-30-tech-start-ups-opens-for-entries/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Africa’s Top 30 Tech Start-Ups Opens for Entries</a>
Bitcoin will unlock the third economy
Despite experts predicting the fall of Bitcoin and its technologies, Masie predicts otherwise.
“The Bitcoin world is going to be interesting to watch over the next year. That’s very exciting. I just think because it’s still so infantile, it’s still so small. I think Bitcoin wasn’t built for the people who are actually using it today. It was built for the people not financially included in the world today. And what’s exciting in the next few years is to see those people being unlocked and emerging. We have the formal economy, then we have the informal economy. The formal economy has all the financial instruments that you and I use. The security, the credit cards, the bank accounts etc. Then you get the formal economy which is cash.
“But I think bitcoin is going to establish a third economy, and that third economy will surface new transaction types, new value exchange instruments that we still haven’t imagined today and that will come to the fore.
“What excites me more is this third economy that will emerge because Bitcoin offers greater capability than cash. You can program your money. You can expand it, you can create contracts around it. You can exchange value without a third party and that’s what am very excited to see within the next 12 to 24 months, that’s really big for me.”
The tech smoothie
“I’m excited to see what will happen in retail over the next four months. That’s the big one. I can feel it in the water. All the retailers are looking immensely at investing in technology, better customer service, optimization and then there’s logistics in the supply chains driving down production costs, doing more with the humans that they have, sweating their assets, etc. In retail, when you start mixing up the Internet of Things, AI and Bitcoin, that little smoothie looks very interesting to me.”

Tag: artificial intelligence

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