Lifeboat Foundation

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

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

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

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

“But if you are familiar with the advanced search options these sites offer or read any number of books or blogs on ‘Google Dorks, ’ you’ll likely be more fearful of them than something with limited scope like Shodan”.

And it’s recently emerged that Shodan, a search engine for the Internet of Things, allows users to snoop on screenshots of anything filmed by a webcam from cash register cameras to babies sleeping in a cot. It’s pitched mainly as a security research tool and a way for businesses to monitor connected device usage, but it has also exposed controls to utilities, heating and cooling units, and traffic systems.

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In a paper published in Nature on 28th January 2016, we describe a new approach to computer Go. This is the first time ever that a computer program “AlphaGo” has defeated a human professional player.

The game of Go is widely viewed as an unsolved “grand challenge” for artificial intelligence. Games are a great testing ground for inventing smarter, more flexible algorithms that have the ability to tackle problems in ways similar to humans. The first classic game mastered by a computer was noughts and crosses (also known as tic-tac-toe) in 1952. But until now, one game has thwarted A.I. researchers: the ancient game of Go.

Continue reading “Google DeepMind: Ground-breaking AlphaGo masters the game of Go” »

Wise Autoresponse for your Customer Support Call Center needs — I do know that one of the large financial institutions in NYC announced in Dec. that they were replacing their tier 1 & tier 2 support with AI this summer.

BERKELEY, CA — (Marketwired) — 01/27/16 — Wise.io, which delivers machine learning applications to help enterprises provide a better customer experience, today announced the availability of Wise Auto Response, the first intelligent auto reply functionality for customer support organizations. Using machine learning to understand the intent of an incoming ticket and determine the best available response, Wise Auto Response automatically selects and applies the appropriate reply to address the customer issue without ever involving an agent. By helping customer service teams answer common questions faster, Wise Auto Response removes a high percentage of tickets from the queue, freeing up agents’ time to focus on more complex tickets and drive higher levels of customer satisfaction.

“Wise Auto Response has dramatically eased the burden on our support agents, allowing us to reply to half of all tickets automatically,” said Francesca Noli, VP of Marketing at Product Madness. “Now we are able to focus agent attention on more complex, customer-facing issues like payment problems, which have a direct impact on our bottom line. Wise gives us the best of both worlds: it has the power of an artificial intelligence system like Watson, along with the lightweight integration we need to successfully apply machine learning to our service operations quickly, easily and cost effectively.”

Wise Auto Response identifies common customer inquiries that can be responded to with a high level of confidence — such as password resets and basic product functionality, or standard “thank you” email templates that don’t require hands-on follow up — and automatically responds without the need for any manually written business rules. The new functionality complements the current suite of predictive applications offered by Wise.io, including Wise Routing, which automates the support ticket triage process, and Wise Recommended Response, which provides a ranked shortlist of appropriate macros and templates for each new customer inquiry.

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VR membership HUB (YouTube for VR) ; loading & sharing your own 3D content with others.

BEIJING, Jan. 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Ku6 Media Co., Ltd. (“Ku6 Media” or the “Company,” NASDAQ: KUTV), a leading internet video company focused on User Generated Content (“UGC”) in China via its website www.ku6.com, today announced that the Company has entered into a strategic cooperation agreement (the “Agreement”) with 720Yun.com to enhance the Company’s virtual reality (“VR”) strategy previous announced. The company recently launched a cooperative VR community at the following website: http://www.ku6.com/c2015/720yun/.

Ku6 Media and 720Yun.com’s cooperative VR community currently features eight categories, including aerial photography, SLR (single lens reflex) photography, virtual effects, quick mode (RICOH THETA), cities, campuses, fun and business projects. The Company expects to add additional categories to the VR community in the future.

Pursuant to the Agreement, 720Yun.com will provide three-dimensional panorama technology and contents to Ku6 Media in the form of video and picture, and serve as technical support for the Company’s new VR products. The two companies will work together in exploring and developing potential business models relating to three-dimensional panorama contents.

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

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

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

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The “Uber” of healthcare — I can truly see it with AI Healthcare and CRISPR as well as BMI technologies.

Business Insider chatted with CEOs and investors alike to find out what technology and treatment could be the Uber of healthcare.

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Essentially, the jobs being replaced will give rise to new roles that people can take up.

“There are new classes of jobs that we haven’t thought of yet. Those who can curate and manage the full rich data lifecycle will be a new class of professional,” Shadbolt added.

Whether you like it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are going to be a big part of the future workforce.

Continue reading “3 ways robots and AI will change the way you work” »

Google/ Alphabet certainly has been diversified; and doesn’t look like they’re going to slow down any time soon.

Unlike most chief executives, Larry Page has invested far beyond Google’s company’s core business, and in many ways has made it a reflection of his personal fascinations.

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