Lifeboat Foundation

The transition to renewable energy, critical for the world’s future, is limited today by energy storage and transmission challenges. Beaming solar power from space is an elegant solution that […] promises a remarkable payoff for humanity: a world powered by uninterruptible renewable energy.

The California Institute of Technology reports the first successful beaming of solar energy from space down to a receiver on the ground, via the MAPLE instrument on its SSPD-1 spacecraft.

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In the digital age, SaaS businesses have started embracing transformative technologies, such as Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. According to a research firm, the market for artificial intelligence (AI) is nearly 100 billion USD, which is expected to grow twentyfold by 2030, up to almost 2 trillion USD.

Although AI promises revolutionary advancements and cloud computing enables efficient storage and processing of massive amounts of data, their rapid adoption also raises concerns about cybersecurity. In 2021, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be $6 trillion.

Local language data helps automated systems understand and respond to users in their own language and can help businesses reach their target audiences more effectively, said Ganesh Gopalan, founder and CEO of AI startup Gnani.ai, during a panel discussion at the Mint Digital Innovation Summit & Awards on Friday.

“If we don’t have, firstly, content in the local language, if we can’t talk to machines in the local language, then it is not possible for no system to work and, you know, reach the right audience,” said Gopalan.

The panel discussion also included Vivekanand Pani, Co-founder, Reverie Language Technologies, who agrees that to develop an AI tool for any language, the availability of data is crucial.

“There [are] two types of companies in the world: Those who are great at AI and everybody else,” Mark Cuban said.

One California-based startup, Varda Space Industries, is betting that big business will lie in relatively unassuming satellites that will spend days or months in Earth’s orbit quietly carrying out pharmaceutical development. Its research, company officials hope, could lead to better, more effective drugs — and hefty profits.

“It’s not as sexy a human-interest story as tourism when it comes to commercialization of the cosmos,” said Will Bruey, Varda’s CEO and cofounder. “But the bet that we’re making at Varda is that manufacturing is actually the next big industry that gets commercialized.”

Varda is expected to launch its first test mission Monday aboard a SpaceX rocket. A window for take-off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California begins at 2:19 p.m. PT.

Internet of Things technology is expanding quickly across industries. The growth is unsurprising—after all, the data derived can drive improvements in productivity and customer service, speed up innovation, lead to cost savings by powering predictive maintenance, and more. Businesses can implement IoT technology to monitor their internal systems, manage their equipment or enhance the consumer products they sell.

However, whether a business develops and manages its own products and systems or purchases equipment and service from a vendor, it must be aware of the challenges that can come with IoT tech, which include addressing the increased cybersecurity risk, managing a potentially massive influx of data and more. Below, 15 members of Forbes Technology Council share some of the challenges they foresee for businesses implementing IoT technologies in the next few years and how those issues can be overcome.

The experiments are the first of their kind and could lead to new advances in computing.

A team at the University of Chicago.

Founded in 1,890, the University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Located on a 217-acre campus in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, near Lake Michigan, the school holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings. UChicago is also well known for its professional schools: Pritzker School of Medicine, Booth School of Business, Law School, School of Social Service Administration, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Divinity School and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

A unique use case for AI is around enhanced transaction monitoring to help combat financial fraud. Traditional rule-based approaches to anti-money laundering (AML) use static thresholds that only capture one element of a transaction, meaning they deliver a high rate of false positives. Not only is this hugely inefficient, but it can also be very demotivating for staff. With AI, multiple factors can be reviewed simultaneously to extract a risk score and develop an intelligent understanding of what risky behavior looks like. A feedback loop based on advanced analytics means that the more data is collected, the more intelligent the solution becomes. Pinpointing financial crime becomes more efficient and employees also benefit from more free time to focus efforts on other areas of importance like strategy and business development.

Thanks to its ever-increasing applications to evolving business challenges, regulators and financial institutions can no longer turn a blind eye to the potential of AI, with the power to revolutionize the financial system. It presents unique opportunities to reduce the capacity for human error, costing highly regulated industries billions each year.

What’s clear is that some technologies will, over time, become too difficult to ignore. As we saw with the adoption of the cloud, failure to embrace innovative technologies means organizations will get left behind. The cloud was once a pipedream, but now it’s a crucial part of all business operations today. Businesses implemented (or are in the process of implementing) huge digital transformation projects to migrate business processes to the cloud. Similarly, new organizations will kickstart their businesses in the cloud. This is a lesson that technologists must remain alert and continue to keep their finger on the pulse when it comes to incorporating fresh solutions.

Here’s what Silicon Valley Business Journal senior reporter Max A. Cherney had to say on KQED’s Forum about Nvidia and the AI boom.