Asia

Sony’s canvas redefines the giant display landscape.

The bigger your giant display, the more important viewing angle becomes.
In this example, we’re showing an 8K x 2K (7680 x 2160) screen.

Sony redefines high-end visual display with new canvas for creativity — from blog.sony.com

Excerpt:

The scalable system is made up of multiple display units (each measuring 18 x 16 inches) that can be joined together with no bezels to create a limitless and seamless large-screen display.

Also see:

Sony’s InfoComm introductions include best LED-based video wall EVER — from ravepubs.com by Gary Kayye

Excerpt:
Sony is literally blowing people away with their new Crystal LED technology. Sony’s new Canvas display system is a high-end visual display that re-defines the landscape for large-scale visual entertainment. The new technology, Crystal Light Emitting Diode Integrated Structure (CLEDIS), uses Sony’s ultrafine LEDs in a unique surface mounting structure as its light source to deliver a visual experience not possible with even the highest end conventional LED array. This scalable new type of canvas delivers an unmatched viewing experience, offering 99 percent black surface area, for high contrast, high resolution and immersive visuals.

This new type of canvas enables limitless flexibility and creativity in public spaces and high-end visual entertainment. It is far more advanced when compared to the technologies currently available for large-scale display, offering a leap forward in depth, contrast, color, resolution and impact.

From DSC:
Leveraging the power of the BYOD phenomenon along with the increased usage of active learning-based classrooms, if students could “upload” their content to such enormous screens, one could easily imagine some highly-engaging discussions — providing students with excellent opportunities to create and share their own content. Numerous windows and applications could be simultaneously displayed on such a video wall, providing/hosting some serious Jigsaw teaching techniques!

If there were 100 Developers in the world [visionmobile.com]

On 06/09/2016, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Canada, computer science, Europe, global / globalization, India, Microsoft, platforms, programming, student-related, tools, UK, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Also from visionmobile.com’s Developer Economics newsletter:

Amazon Alexa now has over 1,000 Skills, up from 135 in January — from techcrunch.com by Sarah Perez
Microsoft launches a project management app called Planner — from theverge.com by Nick Statt
To compete with Trello and Asana
Excerpt:
Microsoft wants to help businesses and small teams collaborate and track work with a new app called Planner. Released [on 6/6/16] for free as part of the Office 365 suite, Planner is a project management service similar to products like Asana and Trello. Microsoft isn’t doing anything particularly groundbreaking here. It uses the established concept of a digital whiteboard plastered with note cards, which you can use to track projects, communicate progress, and attach files. It also integrates with other Microsoft products like OneNote and Outlook.
This app builder is letting students turn their ideas into apps for free — from techcrunch.com by Fitz Tepper

Ericsson Mobility Report 2016

On 06/06/2016, in 21st century, Asia, Australia, Canada, communications, digital video, Europe, global / globalization, India, internet, microlearning, mobile learning, mobile technologies, telecommunications, trends, UK, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Ericsson Mobility Report 2016 — from ericsson.com

Also see:

The promise of 5G will fuel growth in video streaming and IoT devices, report claims — from digitaltrends.com by Christian de Looper
Excerpt:
The smartphone has largely taken over our digital lives, but if the Ericsson Mobility Report is anything to go by, mobile devices and other smart gadgets will continue to grow in prominence over the course of the next decade. Both the Internet of Things, video, and mobile internet use are expected to rise in prominence. According to Ericsson, IoT devices are set to overtake mobile in the connected devices category by 2018. The IoT space will maintain a hefty compound annual growth rate of 23 percent between 2015 and 2021. Part of this growth has to do with the introduction of 5G networks, which are expected to launch at some point in 2020.

We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future. Once we grasp that essential insight, we recognize our responsibility and capability for building our dreams of tomorrow and avoiding our nightmares.

–Edward Cornish

From DSC:
This is the fifth posting in a series that highlights the need for us to consider the ethical implications of the technologies that are currently being developed. What kind of future do we want to have? How can we create dreams, not nightmares?

In regards to robotics, algorithms, and business, I’m hopeful that the C-suites out there will keep the state of their fellow mankind in mind when making decisions. Because if all’s we care about is profits, the C-suites out there will gladly pursue lowering costs, firing people, and throwing their fellow mankind right out the window…with massive repercussions to follow. After all, we are the shareholders…let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot. Let’s aim for something higher than profits. Businesses should have a higher calling/purpose. The futures of millions of families are at stake here. Let’s consider how we want to use robotics, algorithms, AI, etc. — for our benefit, not our downfall.

Other postings:
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

From page 212 of
Mary Meeker’s annual report re: Internet Trends 2016

The White House is prepping for an AI-powered future — from wired.com by April Glaser

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Researchers disagree on when artificial intelligence that displays something like human understanding might arrive. But the Obama administration isn’t waiting to find out. The White House says the government needs to start thinking about how to regulate and use the powerful technology while it is still dependent on humans.

“The public should have an accurate mental model of what we mean when we say artificial intelligence,” says Ryan Calo, who teaches law at University of Washington. Calo spoke last week at the first of four workshops the White House hosts this summer to examine how to address an increasingly AI-powered world.
…
“One thing we know for sure is that AI is making policy challenges already, such as how to make sure the technology remains safe, controllable, and predictable, even as it gets much more complex and smarter,” said Ed Felten, the deputy US chief of science and technology policy leading the White House’s summer of AI research. “Some of these issues will become more challenging over time as the technology progresses, so we’ll need to keep upping our game.”

Meet ‘Ross,’ the newly hired legal robot — from washingtonpost.com by Karen Turner

Excerpt:

One of the country’s biggest law firms has become the first to publicly announce that it has “hired” a robot lawyer to assist with bankruptcy cases. The robot, called ROSS, has been marketed as “the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney.”

ROSS has joined the ranks of law firm BakerHostetler, which employs about 50 human lawyers just in its bankruptcy practice. The AI machine, powered by IBM’s Watson technology, will serve as a legal researcher for the firm. It will be responsible for sifting through thousands of legal documents to bolster the firm’s cases. These legal researcher jobs are typically filled by fresh-out-of-school lawyers early on in their careers.

Confidential health care data divulged to Google’s DeepMind for new app — from futurism.com by Sarah Marquart

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Google DeepMind’s new app Streams hopes to use patient data to monitor kidney disease patients. In the process, they gained confidential data on more than 1.6 million patients, and people aren’t happy.
…
This sounds great, but the concern lies in exactly what kind of data Google has access to. There are no separate statistics available for people with kidney conditions, so the company was given access to all data including HIV test results, details about abortions, and drug overdoses.

In response to concerns about privacy, The Royal Free Trust said the data will remain encrypted so Google staff should not be able to identify anyone.

Two questions for managers of learning machines — from sloanreview.mit.edu by Theodore Kinni

Excerpt:

The first, which Dhar takes up in a new article on TechCrunch, is how to “design intelligent learning machines that minimize undesirable behavior.” Pointing to two high-profile juvenile delinquents, Microsoft’s Tay and Google’s Lexus, he reminds us that it’s very hard to control AI machines in complex settings.

The second question, which Dhar explores in an article for HBR.org, is when and when not to allow AI machines to make decisions.

All stakeholders must engage in learning analytics debate — from campustechnology.com by David Raths

Excerpt:

An Ethics Guide for Analytics?
During the Future Trends Forum session [with Bryan Alexander and George Siemens], Susan Adams, an instructional designer and faculty development specialist at Oregon Health and Science University, asked Siemens if he knew of any good ethics guides to how universities use analytics.

Siemens responded that the best guide he has seen so far was developed by the Open University in the United Kingdom. “They have a guide about how it will be used in the learning process, driven from the lens of learning rather than data availability,” he said.

“Starting with ethics is important,” he continued. “We should recognize that if openness around algorithms and learning analytics practices is important to us, we should be starting to make that a conversation with vendors. I know of some LMS vendors where you actually buy back your data. Your students generate it, and when you want to analyze it, you have to buy it back. So we should really be asking if it is open. If so, we can correct inefficiencies. If an algorithm is closed, we don’t know how the dials are being spun behind the scenes. If we have openness around pedagogical practices and algorithms used to sort and influence our students, we at least can change them.”

From DSC:
Though I’m generally a fan of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), we need to be careful how we implement it or things will turn out as depicted in this piece from The Verge. We’ll need filters or some other means of opting in and out of what we want to see.

What does ethics have to do with robots? Listen to RoboPsych Podcast discussion with roboticist/lawyer Kate Darling https://t.co/WXnKOy8UO2
— RoboPsych (@RoboPsychCom) April 25, 2016

Retail inventory robots could replace the need for store employees — from interestingengineering.com by Trevor English

Excerpt:

There are currently many industries that will likely be replaced with robots in the coming future, and with retail being one of the biggest industries across the world, it is no wonder that robots will slowly begin taking human’s jobs. A robot named Tory will perform inventory tasks throughout stores, as well as have the capability of directing customers to where what they are looking for is. Essentially, a customer will type in a product into the robot’s interactive touch screen, and it will start driving to the exact location. It will also conduct inventory using RFID scanners, and overall, it will make the retail process much more efficient. Check out the video below from the German Robotics company Metre Labs who are behind the retail robot.

From DSC:
Do we really want to do this? Some say the future will be great when the robots, algorithms, AI, etc. are doing everything for us…while we can just relax. But I believe work serves a purpose…gives us a purpose. What are the ramifications of a society where people are no longer working? Or is that a stupid, far-fetched question and a completely unrealistic thought?

I’m just pondering what the ramifications might be of replacing the majority of human employees with robots. I can understand about using robotics to assist humans, but when we talk about replacing humans, we had better look at the big picture. If not, we may be taking the angst behind the Occupy Wall Street movement from years ago and multiplying it by the thousands…perhaps millions.

Automakers, consumers both must approach connected cars cautiously — from nydailynews.com by Kyle Campbell
Several automakers plan to have autonomous cars ready for the public by 2030, a development that could pose significant safety and security concerns.

Excerpt:

We’re living in the connected age. Phones can connect wirelessly to computers, watches, televisions and anything else with access to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and money can change hands with a few taps of a screen. Digitalization allows data to flow quicker and more freely than ever before, but it also puts the personal information we entrust it with (financial information, geographic locations and other private details) at a far greater risk of ending up in the wrong hands.

Balancing the seamless convenience customers desire with the security they need is a high-wire act of the highest order, and it’s one that automakers have to master as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
…
Because of this, connected cars will potentially (and probably) become targets for hackers, thieves and possibly even terrorists looking to take advantage of the fledgling technology. With a wave of connected cars (220 million by 2020, according to some estimates) ready to flood U.S. roadways, it’s on both manufacturers and consumers to be vigilant in preventing the worst-case scenarios from playing out.

Also, check out the 7 techs being discussed at this year’s Gigaom Change Conference:

Scientists are just as confused about the ethics of big-data research as you — wired.com by Sarah Zhang

Excerpt:

And that shows just how untested the ethics of this new field of research is. Unlike medical research, which has been shaped by decades of clinical trials, the risks—and rewards—of analyzing big, semi-public databases are just beginning to become clear.

And the patchwork of review boards responsible for overseeing those risks are only slowly inching into the 21st century. Under the Common Rule in the US, federally funded research has to go through ethical review. Rather than one unified system though, every single university has its own institutional review board, or IRB. Most IRB members are researchers at the university, most often in the biomedical sciences. Few are professional ethicists.

Addendums on 6/3 and 6/4/16:

Apple supplier Foxconn replaces 60,000 humans with robots in China — from marketwatch.com
Excerpt:
The first wave of robots taking over human jobs is upon us. Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.02% supplier Foxconn Technology Co. 2354, +0.95% has replaced 60,000 human workers with robots in a single factory, according to a report in the South China Morning Post, initially published over the weekend. This is part of a massive reduction in headcount across the entire Kunshan region in China’s Jiangsu province, in which many Taiwanese manufacturers base their Chinese operations.
There are now 260,000 robots working in U.S. factories — from marketwatch.com by Jennifer Booton (back from Feb 2016)
Excerpt:
There are now more than 260,000 robots working in U.S. factories. Orders and shipments for robots in North America set new records in 2015, according to industry trade group Robotic Industries Association. A total of 31,464 robots, valued at a combined $1.8 billion, were ordered from North American companies last year, marking a 14% increase in units and an 11% increase in value year-over-year.
Judgment Day: Google is making a ‘kill-switch’ for AI — from futurism.com
Excerpt:
Taking Safety Measures
DeepMind, Google’s artificial intelligence company, catapulted itself into fame when its AlphaGo AI beat the world champion of Go, Lee Sedol. However, DeepMind is working to do a lot more than beat humans at chess and Go and various other games. Indeed, its AI algorithms were developed for something far greater: To “solve intelligence” by creating general purpose AI that can be used for a host of applications and, in essence, learn on their own.This, of course, raises some concerns. Namely, what do we do if the AI breaks…if it gets a virus…if it goes rogue?In a paper written by researchers from DeepMind, in cooperation with Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, scientists note that AI systems are “unlikely to behave optimally all the time,” and that a human operator may find it necessary to “press a big red button” to prevent such a system from causing harm. In other words, we need a “kill-switch.”
Is the world ready for synthetic life? Scientists plan to create whole genomes — from singularityhub.com by Shelly Fan
Excerpt:
“You can’t possibly begin to do something like this if you don’t have a value system in place that allows you to map concepts of ethics, beauty, and aesthetics onto our own existence,” says Endy. “Given that human genome synthesis is a technology that can completely redefine the core of what now joins all of humanity together as a species, we argue that discussions of making such capacities real…should not take place without open and advance consideration of whether it is morally right to proceed,” he said.
This is the robot that will shepherd and keep livestock healthy — from thenextweb.com
Excerpt:
The Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) is no stranger to developing innovative ways of modernizing agriculture. It has previously presented technologies for robots that can measure crop yields and collect data about the quality and variability of orchards, but its latest project is far more ambitious: it’s building a machine that can autonomously run livestock farms. While the ACFR has been working on this technology since 2014, the robot – previously known as ‘Shrimp’ – is set to start a two-year trial next month. Testing will take place at several farms nearby New South Wales province in Australia.

How do we teach robots right from wrong? Soon the problem won’t be hypothetical — from digitaltrends.com byMark Wyner
.
The question of who owns the data is about to get a lot trickier — from fortune.com by Barb Darrow
.
AI doctors will become ‘as ubiquitous as stethoscopes’ — from wired.co.uk
.
In a blink: Sony’s contact lens records video — from ravepubs.com by Gary Kayye <– From DSC: This should not be allowed in my opinion

Mary Meeker’s annual report re: Internet Trends 2016 [KPCB]

On 06/02/2016, in 21st century, Apple, Asia, Australia, Canada, change, communications, corporate / business world, Europe, global / globalization, Google, internet, platforms, trends, UK, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

The 2016 edition of Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report covers today’s Internet growth and an in-depth look at the following:

Global Internet users have surpassed 3B; India has supplanted the US as the world’s second-largest Internet market.
Internet user growth remains consistent (led by acceleration in India), while smartphone user and shipment growth have slowed.
In the face of a slowing global economy, key macro growth drivers from the past 2 decades are less certain.
Internet advertising (particularly via mobile) continues to grow, but so does ad-blocking, pushing the envelope on development of more innovative ad formats.
New online-first brands have rapidly grown in popularity for the millennial generation with their focus on omni-channel and personalized distribution strategies.
In communication, video and images shared are growing as a means of storytelling; creators, consumers, and advertisers are taking part.
Messaging has evolved from simple, expressive conversation to business-focused use cases, with Asian platforms often leading the way.
More efficient and often more convenient than typing, voice-based interfaces are ramping quickly and creating a new paradigm for human-computer interaction.
Transportation is being re-imagined, as the rise of car computerization, autonomous driving, and sharing transform our understanding of mobility.
Looking to China, Internet leadership continues, as the country boasts global innovation powerhouses in e-commerce, messaging, travel, financial services, and on-demand transportation.
The proliferation of data generated by a multitude of devices has fostered tremendous business opportunity, but privacy concerns abound.

@ 277MM Users…India passed USA to become #2 global user market behind China

Global GDP growth slowing = Growth in 6 of last 8 years @ below 20-year average

Total global debt loads over 2 decades = High & rising faster than GDP

From DSC:
Looking at this graphic — with Gen Z using 5 screens at once — it’s unlikely that faculty members will be able to stop students from bringing and using their screens/devices. It might be better to ride the wave and use technologies in class, rather than try to halt the wave.

Ways for businesses to contact Millennials = Social media & chat…worst way = telephone

An interesting, award-winning approach from Singapore Management University (SMU)

On 03/07/2016, in active learning, Asia, business, collaboration, education technology, higher education, ideas, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, MBA, pedagogy, smart classrooms, student-related, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

SMU’s pioneering pedagogy, SMU-X, recognised globally for innovation, creativity and impact — from by smu.edu.sg

Excerpt:

SMU launched the SMU-X initiative in 2015 following three-and-a-half years of study and conceptualisation. Through SMU-X, the University introduced across all its six Schools innovative and fresh curriculum that is multi-disciplinary and hands-on, and also created unconventional, flexible spaces for 24/7 use that meet the usage patterns and behaviours of the millennial student.

Four key principles characterise all SMU-X courses:

(i) inter-disciplinary content and activities;
(ii) experiential learning via an actual problem/issue faced by an organisation;
(iii) active student-mentoring by faculty and industry; and
(iv) three-way learning by faculty, student and partner organisation, in the form of a tripartite sharing forum at the end of the course.

Mobile World Congress 2016: Event Highlights

Excerpts:

Over 100,000 attendees came to Mobile World Congress 2016: nearly 101,000, in fact. Attendees from 204 countries and territories were present, and was covered by more than 3,600 members of the international press and media.
More than 2,200 companies participated
Everything from virtual reality, new handsets and ingenious app ideas, to 3D printing, privacy protection and backend solutions were on display.
5G & NFV, mobile apps, retail & digital commerce, mobile media, IoT and security
374 speakers from consumer brands, mobile organisations, mobile operators and industries touched by the mobile market — including advertising, banking, health, NGOs, entertainment and education.

Also see their blog.

“2020 Vision: Experts Predict the Future of Virtual Reality”; using VR to train teachers; plus 7 other items re: VR/AR

On 02/19/2016, in Asia, Augmented Reality (AR), education technology, emerging technologies, Europe, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, journalism, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, teaching & learning, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

2020 Vision: Experts Predict the Future of Virtual Reality — from vrscout.com by Eric Chevalier

Excerpt:

VR will be the new internet.
You will spend your flights in virtual reality.
AR will beat VR.
There will be no MMO. [yet]
Virtual reality will change the film industry.
Parallax technology won’t be able to support augmented reality.
The space we’ll explore won’t be in the sky.
We will see a MMO game with a million subscribers.
The Divine Comedy will provide a model for successful VR storytelling.
Robots will touch you in VR and you’ll like it.
Journalism will be forever transformed.

Teachers-in-training learn through virtual reality — from thedmonline.com by Madeleine Beck

Excerpt:

The UM School of Education is using a program that allows teachers-in-training to practice classroom skills in a virtual setting before sending them into local elementary and secondary schools.

The simulated TeachLivE classroom consists of an 80-inch monitor with five student avatars. Each avatar has his or her own personality.

“All five avatar children are actually controlled by somebody in Florida, an actor or actress,” Dean of the School of Education David Rock said. “They’re set up with equipment so that if the actor raises his hand in Florida, the avatar child will raise his hand on the screen.”

EON Reality launches EON Creator AVR, a do-it-yourself augmented and virtual reality knowledge content creation application for teachers and students
EON Creator AVR empowers students and teachers to make engaging AR and VR knowledge transfer applications without programming skills.

Excerpt:

IRVINE, CA, February 16th, 2016 – EON Reality Inc., the world leader in Virtual Reality based knowledge transfer for industry, education, and edutainment, announced the upcoming release of EON Creator AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality), a mobile based application that enables users to easily create, share, collaborate, and publish Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) knowledge content. Using EON Reality’s patent pending Augmented Virtual Reality (AVR) technology, EON Creator AVR combines both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality with a large AR/VR component library and assessment database to create one of a kind learning experiences. EON Creator AVR also leverages built in intelligence to help students and teachers quickly create highly interactive learning content directly on their tablets, smart phones, VR headsets, or AR glasses without requiring programming skills.

5 top augmented reality apps for education — from hongkiat.com by Gabriela Jugaru

Excerpt:

1. Google Sky Map
This is an augmented reality app which makes learning about astronomy interesting and fun. Instead of looking at descriptions of constellations in a book and then attempting to identify them in the sky, you can use Google Sky Map to directly identify stars and constellations using the camera on your smartphone.

Google Sky Map

How virtual reality could soon help stroke victims recover — from cnet.com by Max Taves
A $100 million investment in a Swiss startup highlights how VR offers more than just fun and games.

Excerpt:

Doctors could soon start prescribing an unusual solution to help stroke victims in the US: virtual reality goggles.

That’s the hope of Switzerland-based MindMaze, which on Wednesday got a $100 million investment to bring its blend of virtual reality hardware and neuroscience to market. The four-year-old startup’s technology has already won approval from regulators in Europe, where its applications for brain injury victims showcase what could soon be possible in the United States.

MindMaze’s 34-year-old founder and CEO Tej Tadi explains how: Imagine a stroke victim who’s lost control of her left hand but can still move her right hand. After putting on MindMaze goggles, the patient sees a 3-D image, or avatar, of her left hand that moves as she moves her right hand.

“That triggers areas in the brain to say, ‘Wait, let’s regain control of this hand’,” says Tadi. “The hand that was not working now works.” And that process of tricking the brain into seeing something that’s actually not there in the real world accelerates recovery, he says.

The Associated Press is partnering with AMD for more virtual reality journalism — from theverge.com by Adi Robertson

Excerpt:

After moving into virtual reality video journalism last year, the Associated Press is partnering with chip maker AMD for a new push into VR. Today, the companies announced that they’re launching a web portal for AP virtual reality, promising more journalistic endeavors soon — including “lifelike VR environments” built with the help of AMD.

Several news outlets have now started producing 360-degree videos, which can be watched through a Google Cardboard headset or a smartphone. The New York Times, which partnered with production house Vrse.works, offers documentary video about topics like child refugees and the 2016 presidential election in a dedicated NYT VR app. Vice has similarly partnered with Vrse.works, and ABC News worked with Jaunt to record a 360-degree version of a tour in North Korea. So far, the AP has partnered with a VR studio called RYOT, whose past work includes a short film about the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

Blippar’s new augmented reality app is supposed to recognize any object you point it at (video) — from recode.net by Lauren Goode

Excerpt:

But it’s safe to say that augmented reality is coming into a new phase: The contextual information being supplied is getting smarter, and people are gradually becoming more aware of the capabilities of AR and virtual reality (some are even excited to wear headsets, if you can believe it). So Blippar, in an effort to evolve along with the rest of the AR world, has just launched a new version of its smartphone app that is supposed to recognize literally any object you point at it — whether it has been “tagged” with an AR code or not.

Meta Unveils Incredible Augmented Reality Headset at TED — from uploadvr.com

Excerpt:

Redwood City-based Meta showed its latest AR glasses live on stage at TED in Vancouver.

The Meta 2 was demonstrated live by CEO Meron Gribetz with a person-to-person “call” showing a hand-off of a 3D model from a holographic person. Gribetz’ perspective was shown through the glasses as he reached out and took a model of a brain — a 3D hologram — from the hands of a colleague he saw projected in front of him.

“We’re all going to be throwing away our external monitors,” Gribetz said.

Example slides from their
SlideShare presentation:

and from the PDF:

accenture: Technology Vision 2016 | People First: The Remedy to Digital Culture Shock — from accenture.com

Excerpt:

Winners in the digital age do much more than complete a technology checklist. They know their success hinges on people. Understanding changing customer needs and behaviors is, of course, hugely important. But the real deciding factor in the digital era will be the ability to evolve corporate culture. That means not simply taking advantage of emerging technologies but, critically, embracing the new business strategies that those technologies drive.

You can’t solve this challenge just by consuming more and more technology. Nor, as some fear, by replacing humans with machines. Instead, enterprises must focus on enabling people – consumers, employees and ecosystem partners – to do more with technology. That demands a digital corporate culture enabling people to continuously adapt, learn, create new solutions, drive relentless change, and disrupt the status quo. In an age where tech is grabbing the limelight, true leaders will, in fact, put people first.

But the real deciding factor in the era of intelligence will be a company’s ability to evolve its corporate culture to not only take advantage of emerging technologies, but also, critically, embrace the new business strategies that those technologies drive.

From DSC:
Are we preparing our students to be ready for — and successful in — this changing workplace? Are adults ready for this changing workplace? It appears that some are, and some are left reeling by the pace of change.

What is our role as educators in K-12? In higher ed?

What are the roles of trainers and/or mentors in the marketplace?

How does one help another person to learn quickly?

——–

Addendum:

The Most Digital Companies Are Leaving All the Rest Behind — from Harvard Business Review by James Manyika, Gary Pinkus, and Sree Ramaswamy
Excerpt:
The answer is that a new digital divide has opened up in America. Just about every individual, company and sector of the economy now has access to digital technologies — there are hardly any “have nots” anymore. But a widening gap exists between the “haves” and a group we call the “have-mores”: companies and sectors that are using their digital capabilities far more than the rest to innovate and transform how they operate.

Digital in 2016 [Simon Kemp from “We Are Social”]

On 02/09/2016, in Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, global / globalization, India, internet, mobile technologies, social learning / networks, social media, society, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

Digital in 2016 — from wearesocial.sg by Simon Kemp

Excerpt:

[On January 27, 2016] we’re very excited to share our huge new Digital in 2016 report: We Are Social’s comprehensive study of digital, social and mobile usage around the world.

Last year’s global report has already been read almost 2 million times on SlideShare, but we’ve also had many requests for information on other countries, so this year we’ve decided to produce a report in three distinct parts:

1. Digital in 2016: the main report, which you can read in the SlideShare embed above (or on SlideShare by clicking here), containing all the digital data, social stats and mobile numbers you need to understand the state of digital around the globe, as well as in-depth studies of 30 of the world’s key economies.

2. 2016 Digital Yearbook: an additional document which contains headline digital, social and mobile data and statistics for 232 countries around the world. You can read and download this report for free too – you’ll find it as another SlideShare embed further down in this post, but you can also find it on SlideShare by clicking here.

3. The Executive Summary: this blog post, which presents our analysis of the key trends and context behind the numbers in this year’s report, as well as our forecasts and predictions for the coming twelve months. You can also download the Executive Summary in PDF form by clicking here.

We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future. Once we grasp that essential insight, we recognize our responsibility and capability for building our dreams of tomorrow and avoiding our nightmares.

–Edward Cornish

From DSC:
This posting represents Part III in a series of such postings that illustrate how quickly things are moving (Part I and Part II) and to ask:

How do we collectively start talking about the future that we want?
Then, how do we go about creating our dreams, not our nightmares?
Most certainly, governments will be involved….but who else should be involved?

As I mentioned in Part I, I want to again refer to Gerd Leonhard’s work as it is relevant here, Gerd asserts:

I believe we urgently need to start debating and crafting a global Digital Ethics Treaty. This would delineate what is and is not acceptable under different circumstances and conditions, and specify who would be in charge of monitoring digressions and aberrations.

Looking at several items below, ask yourself…is this the kind of future that we want? There are some things mentioned below that could likely prove to be very positive and helpful. However, there are also some very troubling advancements and developments as well.

The point here is that we had better start talking and discussing the pros and cons of each one of these areas — and many more I’m not addressing here — or our dreams will turn into our nightmares and we will have missed what Edward Cornish and the World Future Society are often trying to get at.

Google’s Artificial Intelligence System Masters Game of ‘Go’ — from abcnews.go.com by Alyssa Newcomb

Excerpt:

Google just mastered one of the biggest feats in artificial intelligence since IBM’s Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov at chess in 1997.

The search giant’s AlphaGo computer program swept the European champion of Go, a complex game with trillions of possible moves, in a five-game series, according Demis Hassabis, head of Google’s machine learning, who announced the feat in a blog post that coincided with an article in the journal Nature.

While computers can now compete at the grand master level in chess, teaching a machine to win at Go has presented a unique challenge since the game has trillions of possible moves.

Along these lines, also see:
Mastering the game of go with deep neural networks and tree search — from deepmind.com

Harvard is trying to build artificial intelligence that is as fast as the human brain — from futurism.com
Harvard University and IARPA are working together to study how AI can work as efficiently and effectively as the human brain.

Excerpt:

Harvard University has been given $28M by the Intelligence Advanced Projects Activity (IARPA) to study why the human brain is significantly better at learning and retaining information than artificial intelligence (AI). The investment into this study could potentially help researchers develop AI that’s faster, smarter, and more like human brains.

Digital Ethics: The role of the CIO in balancing the risks and rewards of digital innovation — from mis-asia.com by Kevin Wo; with thanks to Gerd Leonhard for this posting

What is digital ethics?
In our hyper-connected world, an explosion of data is combining with pattern recognition, machine learning, smart algorithms, and other intelligent software to underpin a new level of cognitive computing. More than ever, machines are capable of imitating human thinking and decision-making across a raft of workflows, which presents exciting opportunities for companies to drive highly personalized customer experiences, as well as unprecedented productivity, efficiency, and innovation. However, along with the benefits of this increased automation comes a greater risk for ethics to be compromised and human trust to be broken.

According to Gartner, digital ethics is the system of values and principles a company may embrace when conducting digital interactions between businesses, people and things. Digital ethics sits at the nexus of what is legally required; what can be made possible by digital technology; and what is morally desirable.

As digital ethics is not mandated by law, it is largely up to each individual organisation to set its own innovation parameters and define how its customer and employee data will be used.

New algorithm points the way towards regrowing limbs and organs — from sciencealert.com by David Nield

Excerpt:

An international team of researchers has developed a new algorithm that could one day help scientists reprogram cells to plug any kind of gap in the human body. The computer code model, called Mogrify, is designed to make the process of creating pluripotent stem cells much quicker and more straightforward than ever before.

A pluripotent stem cell is one that has the potential to become any type of specialised cell in the body: eye tissue, or a neural cell, or cells to build a heart. In theory, that would open up the potential for doctors to regrow limbs, make organs to order, and patch up the human body in all kinds of ways that aren’t currently possible.

The world’s first robot-run farm will harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce daily — from techinsider.io by Leanna Garfield

Excerpt (from DSC):

The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots.

So much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on human farmers, the indoor Vegetable Factory will employ robots that can harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day.

Don’t expect a bunch of humanoid robots to roam the halls, however; the robots look more like conveyor belts with arms. They’ll plant seeds, water plants, and trim lettuce heads after harvest in the Kyoto, Japan farm.

Drone ambulances may just be the future of emergency medical vehicles — from interestingengineering.com by Gabrielle Westfield

Excerpt:

Drones are advancing everyday. They are getting larger, faster and more efficient to control. Meanwhile the medical field keeps facing major losses from emergency response vehicles not being able to reach their destination fast enough. Understandable so, I mean especially in the larger cities where traffic is impossible to move swiftly through. Red flashing lights atop or not, sometimes the roads are just not capable of opening up. It makes total sense that the future of ambulances would be paved in the open sky rather than unpredictable roads.

.

Phone shop will be run entirely by Pepper robots — from telegraph.co.uk by Rhiannon Williams

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Creator company SoftBank said it planned to open the pop-up mobile store employing only Pepper robots by the end of March, according to Engadget.

The four foot-tall robots will be on hand to answer questions, provide directions and guide customers in taking out phone contracts until early April. It’s currently unknown what brands of phone Pepper will be selling.

Wise.io introduces first intelligent auto reply functionality for customer support organizations — from consumerelectronicsnet.com
Powered by Machine Learning, Wise Auto Response Frees Up Agent Time, Boosting Productivity, Accelerating Response Time and Improving the Customer Experience

Excerpt:

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.

Video game for treating ADHD looks to 2017 debut — from educationnews.org

Excerpt:

Akili Interactive Labs out of Boston has created a video game that they hope will help treat children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by teaching them to focus in a distracting environment.

The game, Project: EVO, is meant to be prescribed to children with ADHD as a medical treatment. And after gaining $30.5 million in funding, investors appear to believe in it. The company plans to use the funding to run clinical trials with plans to gain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in order to be able to launch the game in late 2017.

Players will enter a virtual world filled with colorful distractions and be required to focus on specific tasks such as choosing certain objects while avoiding others. The game looks to train the portion of the brain designed to manage and prioritize all the information taken in at one time.

Addendum on 1/29/16:

Killer robots are coming but there are no laws about using them — from hackread.com

“Microlearning: The e-Learning method taking off around the world” [Knowles]; also, podcasting for professors

On 01/16/2016, in A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, Adobe, Apple, Asia, Australia, blogs / blogging / vlogging, Canada, colleges, communications, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, educational games / serious games, elearning, Europe, faculty/staff, flipping -- inverted learning, global / globalization, higher education, ideas, India, learning ecosystem, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, multi-touch, online learning, podcasting, social media, streams of content, teachers, tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, universities, vendors, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Microlearning: The e-Learning method taking off around the world — from educators.co.nz by Catherine Knowles

Excerpt:

Technology is disrupting traditional learning bringing new methods and tools into educational institutions and businesses.

Microlearning, for instance, has displayed great potential for growth, according to Association Learning + Technology 2016 – a report published by Tagoras and sponsored by YM Learning.

The report looks at the use of technology to enable and enhance learning in the continuing education and professional development market and provides insight into how the role technology plays in learning has and will evolve.

In fact, among five emerging types of learning (microlearning, massive open online courses (MOOCs), flipped classes, gamified learning, and microcredentials), microlearning shows the highest rate of adoption – and arguably the greatest potential for growth.

Podcasting is perfect for people with big ideas. Here’s how to do it — from by Todd Landman
Surprisingly few academics have learned how to podcast – but it’s a great way to reach a wider audience

Excerpt:

In the face of conflict in the Middle East, the flow of refugees to Europe and the violence associated with Islamic State and other militants, there has never been a more important time to talk about human rights. And talk about them is what I do – not in a lecture hall or at conferences with academics, but in a podcast series. Let me explain why.

I have worked as a political scientist for 25 years, focusing on human rights problems such as the struggle for citizenship rights in Latin America and the relationship between inequality and human rights violations.

I am part of a wide network of people dedicated to producing sound evidence on human rights, and my work has been communicated through articles, books and reports. But I am limited in my ability to reach the people I would most like to engage and influence – those who do not have an academic understanding of human rights but might benefit from finding out about it.

There is a new breed of academic who understands this and is committed to bridging the gap between academia and the real world. Many blog, actively seek media coverage of their research and appear on radio and television to shed light on the issues of the day.

From DSC:
Some of the tools that Landman mentioned were:

Skype and ecamm Skype Call Recorder:

A MacBook Pro and its free audio editing software GarageBand (for Mac OS X and for iOS)
A lapel mic used with his iPhone

Some other tools to consider:

From DSC:
The above articles point to the idea — and the need — of creating “streams of content” — something that I wish more professors, teachers, staff, administrators, trainers, and instructional designers would create. Blogs, podcasts, and the use of Twitter come to my mind. Such channels could really help build others’ learning ecosystems.

Many professors and academics — folks who have so much information to share with the world — often produce works just for other academics in their discipline to review/check out. Such bubbles don’t have the impact that would occur if professors created streams of content for members of society to check out and learn from. Such mechanisms would also hopefully strip away some of the more academic sounding language and would get to the point.

Also see:

By the numbers: MOOCS in 2015 — from class-central.com by
How has the MOOC space grown this year? Get the facts, figures, and pie charts

Excerpt:

The MOOC space essentially doubled this year. More people signed up for MOOCs in 2015 than they did in the first three years of the “modern” MOOC movement (which started in late 2011—when the first Stanford MOOCs took off). According to data collected by Class Central, the total number of students who signed up for at least one course has crossed 35 million—up from an estimated 16-18 million last year.

Coursera, the largest online course provider in the world (MOOC or otherwise), added 7 million new students to its userbase (and so it now has 17 million students in total).

This is the first time that the MOOC market has grown faster than Coursera. Last year, Coursera was bigger than all other MOOC providers combined, but in 2015 it accounts for slightly less than 50% of all MOOC students.

…

Currently there are 100+ Specializations, Nanodegrees, and XSeries credentials, most of which were created in 2015, and we can expect that number to more than double in 2016. The projections for 2017 and beyond could be exponential. We tracked this trend early, and this enabled us at Class Central to introduce a free credential exploration and rating service called Credentialing the Credentials.

500+ Universities, 4200 courses, 35 Million Students

Stanford runs MOOC for science teachers on helping students read — from thejournal.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

Next week a new massive open online course will begin for K-12 science teachers who want to learn how to help their students read and understand scientific texts. The course, delivered by Stanford University faculty, is free to participants. Four course sessions will run for 12 weeks and will deliver the equivalent of about 20 hours of professional development. The MOOC begins on January 13 and will be hosted on the NovoEd platform.

“Reading To Learn in Science” is being taught by Jonathan Osborne, a professor of science education in Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. In a previous career, Osborne spent nine years teaching physics in inner city London schools.

This free online course will look at the life and works of William Shakespeare and take you from his Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre in London, from where he secured his central place in English literature.We will look at five of Shakespeare’s plays with the help of actors and experts from around the world. They will explain and explore the universal themes Shakespeare addressed in his work. The plays are: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest and Macbeth. Our video tutor will guide you through the course and look at some of the words and expressions that Shakespeare introduced to the English language. Short quizzes will check your understanding and you’ll be asked to share your ideas and opinions on the topics Shakespeare raises.

Massive Open Online Course market by platform, course, service & region – global forecast to 2020 — from researchandmarkets.com

Excerpt:

The growing demand of reliable online learning technologies is the driving force of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) market.
The market is estimated to grow from USD 1.83 billion in 2015 to USD 8.50 billion by 2020, at an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.0%. Adoption of device-based computing, increased connectivity of platform, and emergence of online and collaborative learning and personalization of technology are some of the prominent factors driving the adoption of MOOC platform and services.
Asia-Pacific (APAC) expected to be grow at the highest CAGR for MOOC platform.

The report will help the market leaders/new entrants in this market in the following ways:

This report segments the MOOC market comprehensively and provides the closest approximations of the revenue numbers for the overall market and the subsegments across end-users and regions.
The report will help stakeholders to understand the pulse of the market and provide them information on key market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities.
This report will help in understanding the competitors better and gain more insights to strengthen their position in the business. The competitive landscape section includes competitor ecosystem, new product developments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions.

Companies Profiled:

Blackboard, Inc.
Coursera, Inc.
Edx, Inc.
Futurelearn
Instructure, Inc.
Iversity, Org.
Miriada X
Novoed, Inc.
Open2Study
Udacity, Inc.

Is the next Uber coming your way? — from ibm.com IBM’s Global C-suite Study

Excerpt:

This report is IBM’s second study of the entire C-suite and the eighteenth in the ongoing series of CxO studies developed by the IBM Institute for Business Value. We now have data from more than 28,000 interviews stretching back to 2003. Our latest study draws on input from:

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs): 818
Chief Finance Officers (CFOs): 643
Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs): 601
Chief Information Officers (CIOs): 1,805
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs): 723
Chief Operating Officers (COOs): 657

…

Innovations that harness new technologies or business models, or exploit old technologies in new ways, are emerging on an almost daily basis. And the most disruptive enterprises don’t gradually displace the incumbents; they reshape entire industries, swiftly obliterating whatever stands in their way. So how are C-suite executives (CxOs) tackling the threat of competition from companies in other sectors or with very different business models? Our latest study explores what they think the future holds, how they’re identifying new trends and how they’re positioning their organizations to prosper in the “age of disruption.”

From DSC:
Is looking out for the next Uber just something that corporations/businesses should be doing? Isn’t this true for us as individuals as well? That is, aren’t our jobs/positions vulnerable to disruption as well? As our organizations go, so we often go. As such, should we leave the pulse checking to others or should we be developing these types of skills ourselves? That is, shouldn’t our own gazes be set on the horizons so that we aren’t broadsided as individuals?

Given the pace of change and given that more of us are freelancing, this is why I think that we need more such training within K-12 and higher education — programs that focus on pulse checking a variety of landscapes. Futurism is not gazing into some magic ball; such skills can be useful today.

DanielChristian-MonitoringTrends

From DSC:
Below are some further items that discuss the need for some frameworks, policies, institutes, research, etc. that deal with a variety of game-changing technologies that are quickly coming down the pike (if they aren’t already upon on). We need such things to help us create a positive future.

Also see Part I of this thread of thinking entitled, “The need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!“ There have been so many other items that came out since that posting, I felt like I needed to add another one here.

What kind of future do we want? How are we going to insure that we get there?

As the saying goes…”Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.” Or another saying comes to my mind…”What could possibly go wrong with this? It’s a done deal.”

While some of the items below should have very positive impacts on society, I do wonder how long it will take the hackers — the ones who are bent on wreaking havoc — to mess up some of these types of applications…with potentially deadly consequences? Security-related concerns must be dealt with here.

5 amazing and alarming things that may be done with your DNA — from washingtonpost.com by Matt McFarland

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Venter is leading efforts to use digital technology to analyze humans in ways we never have before, and the results will have huge implications for society. The latest findings he described are currently being written up for scientific publications. Venter didn’t want to usurp the publications, so he wouldn’t dive into extensive detail of how his team has made these breakthroughs. But what he did share offers an exciting and concerning overview of what lies ahead for humanity. There are social, legal and ethical implications to start considering. Here are five examples of how digitizing DNA will change the human experience:

These are the decisions the Pentagon wants to leave to robots — from defenseone.com by Patrick Tucker
The U.S. military believes its battlefield edge will increasingly depend on automation and artificial intelligence.

Excerpt:

Conducting cyber defensive operations, electronic warfare, and over-the-horizon targeting. “You cannot have a human operator operating at human speed fighting back at determined cyber tech,” Work said. “You are going to need have a learning machine that does that.” He did not say whether the Pentagon is pursuing the autonomous or automatic deployment of offensive cyber capabilities, a controversial idea to be sure. He also highlighted a number of ways that artificial intelligence could help identify new waveforms to improve electronic warfare.

Britain should lead way on genetically engineered babies, says Chief Scientific Adviser — from.telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Knapton
Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said it could be acceptable to genetically edit human embryos

Excerpt:

Last week more than 150 scientists and campaigners called for a worldwide ban on the practice, claiming it could ‘irrevocably alter the human species’ and lead to a world where inequality and discrimination were ‘inscribed onto the human genome.’

But at a conference in London [on 12/8/15], Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said he believed there were ‘circumstances’ in which the genetic editing of human embyros could be ‘acceptable’.

Cyborg Future: Engineers Build a Chip That Is Part Biological and Part Synthetic — from futurism.com

Excerpt:

Engineers have succeeded in combining an integrated chip with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, paving the way for more such artificial systems that combine the biological with the mechanical down the road.

Robots expected to run half of Japan by 2035 — from engadget.com by Andrew Tarantola
Something-something ‘robot overlords’.

Excerpt:

Data analysts Nomura Research Institute (NRI), led by researcher Yumi Wakao, figure that within the next 20 years, nearly half of all jobs in Japan could be accomplished by robots. Working with Professor Michael Osborne from Oxford University, who had previously investigated the same matter in both the US and UK, the NRI team examined more than 600 jobs and found that “up to 49 percent of jobs could be replaced by computer systems,” according to Wakao.

Cambridge University is opening a £10 million centre to study the impact of AI on humanity — from businessinsider.com by Sam Shead

Excerpt:

Cambridge University announced on [12/3/15] that it is opening a new £10 million research centre to study the impact of artificial intelligence on humanity.

The 806-year-old university said the centre, being funded with a grant from non-profit foundation The Leverhulme Trust, will explore the opportunities and challenges facing humanity as a result of further developments in artificial intelligence.

Tech leaders launch nonprofit to save the world from killer robots — from csmonitor.com by Jessica Mendoza
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other tech titans have invested $1 billion in a nonprofit that would help direct artificial intelligence technology toward positive human impact.

2016 will be a pivotal year for social robots — from therobotreport.com by Frank Tobe
1,000 Peppers are selling each month from a big-dollar venture between SoftBank, Alibaba and Foxconn; Jibo just raised another $16 million as it prepares to deliver 7,500+ units in Mar/Apr of 2016; and Buddy, Rokid, Sota and many others are poised to deliver similar forms of social robots.

Excerpt:

These new robots, and the proliferation of mobile robot butlers, guides and kiosks, promise to recognize your voice and face and help you plan your calendar, provide reminders, take pictures of special moments, text, call and videoconference, order fast food, keep watch on your house or office, read recipes, play games, read emotions and interact accordingly, and the list goes on. They are attempting to be analogous to a sharp administrative assistant that knows your schedule, contacts and interests and engages with you about them, helping you stay informed, connected and active.

IBM opens its artificial mind to the world — from fastcompany.com by Sean Captain
IBM is letting companies plug into its Watson artificial intelligence engine to make sense of speech, text, photos, videos, and sensor data.

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence is the big, oft-misconstrued catchphrase of the day, making headlines recently with the launch of the new OpenAI organization, backed by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech luminaries. AI is neither a synonym for killer robots nor a technology of the future, but one that is already finding new signals in the vast noise of collected data, ranging from weather reports to social media chatter to temperature sensor readings. Today IBM has opened up new access to its AI system, called Watson, with a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow other companies and organizations to feed their data into IBM’s big brain for analysis.

GE wants to give industrial machines their own social network with Predix Cloud — from fastcompany.com by Sean Captain
GE is selling a new service that promises to predict when a machine will break down…so technicians can preemptively fix it.

Foresight 2020: The future is filled with 50 billion connected devices — from ibmbigdatahub.com by Erin Monday

Excerpt:

By 2020, there will be over 50 billion connected devices generating continuous data.

This figure is staggering, but is it really a surprise? The world has come a long way from 1992, when the number of computers was roughly equivalent to the population of San Jose. Today, in 2015, there are more connected devices out there than there are human beings. Ubiquitous connectivity is very nearly a reality. Every day, we get a little closer to a time where businesses, governments and consumers are connected by a fluid stream of data and analytics. But what’s driving all this growth?

Designing robots that learn as effortlessly as babies — from singularityhub.com by Shelly Fan

Excerpt:

A wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked, babbling human baby hardly looks like the ultimate learning machine.

But under the hood, an 18-month-old can outlearn any state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithm.

Their secret sauce?

They watch; they imitate; and they extrapolate.

Artificial intelligence researchers have begun to take notice. This week, two separate teams dipped their toes into cognitive psychology and developed new algorithms that teach machines to learn like babies. One instructs computers to imitate; the other, to extrapolate.

Researchers have found a new way to get machines to learn faster — from fortune.com by Hilary Brueck

Excerpt:

An international team of data scientists is proud to announce the very latest in machine learning: they’ve built a program that learns… programs. That may not sound impressive at first blush, but making a machine that can learn based on a single example is something that’s been extremely hard to do in the world of artificial intelligence. Machines don’t learn like humans—not as fast, and not as well. And even with this research, they still can’t.

Team showcase how good Watson is at learning — from adigaskell.org

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence has undoubtedly come a long way in the last few years, but there is still much to be done to make it intuitive to use. IBM’s Watson has been one of the most well known exponents during this time, but despite it’s initial success, there are issues to overcome with it.

A team led by Georgia Tech are attempting to do just that. They’re looking to train Watson to get better at returning answers to specific queries.

Why The Internet of Things will drive a Knowledge Revolution. — from linkedin.com by David Evans

Excerpt:

As these machines inevitably connect to the Internet, they will ultimately connect to each other so they can share, and collaborate on their own findings. In fact, in 2014 machines got their own ”World Wide Web” called RoboEarth, in which to share knowledge with one another. …
The implications of all of this are at minimum twofold:

The way we generate knowledge is going to change dramatically in the coming years.
Knowledge is about to increase at an exponential rate.

What we choose to do with this newfound knowledge is of course up to us. We are about to face some significant challenges at scales we have yet to experience.

Drone squad to be launched by Tokyo police — from bbc.com

Excerpt:

A drone squad, designed to locate and – if necessary – capture nuisance drones flown by members of the public, is to be launched by police in Tokyo.

An advance in artificial intelligence rivals human abilities — from todayonline.com by John Markoff

Excerpt:

NEW YORK — Computer researchers reported artificial-intelligence advances [on Dec 10] that surpassed human capabilities for a narrow set of vision-related tasks.

The improvements are noteworthy because so-called machine-vision systems are becoming commonplace in many aspects of life, including car-safety systems that detect pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as in video game controls, Internet search and factory robots.

Somewhat related:

Novo Nordisk, IBM Watson Health to create ‘virtual doctor’ — from wsj.com by Denise Roland
Software could dispense treatment advice for diabetes patients

Excerpt:

Novo Nordisk A/S is teaming up with IBM Watson Health, a division of International Business Machines Corp., to create a “virtual doctor” for diabetes patients that could dispense treatment advice such as insulin dosage.

The Danish diabetes specialist hopes to use IBM’s supercomputer platform, Watson, to analyze health data from diabetes patients to help them manage their disease.

Why Google’s new quantum computer could launch an artificial intelligence arms race — from washingtonpost.com

8 industries robots will completely transform by 2025 — from techinsider.io

Addendums on 12/17/15:

Russia and China are building highly autonomous killer robots — from businessinsider.com.au by Danielle Muoi

Excerpt:

Russia and China are creating highly autonomous weapons, more commonly referred to as killer robots, and it’s putting pressure on the Pentagon to keep up, according to US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work. During a national-security forum on Monday, Work said that China and Russia are heavily investing in a roboticized army, according to a report from Defense One.

Your Algorithmic Self Meets Super-Intelligent AI — from techcrunch.com by Jarno M. Koponen

Excerpt:

At the same time, your data and personalized experiences are used to develop and train the machine learning systems that are powering the Siris, Watsons, Ms and Cortanas. Be it a speech recognition solution or a recommendation algorithm, your actions and personal data affect how these sophisticated systems learn more about you and the world around you.

The less explicit fact is that your diverse interactions — your likes, photos, locations, tags, videos, comments, route selections, recommendations and ratings — feed learning systems that could someday transform into super–intelligent AIs with unpredictable consequences.

As of today, you can’t directly affect how your personal data is used in these systems

Addendum on 12/20/15:

Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw — from bloomberg.com by Keith Naughton

Addendum on 12/21/15:

Facewatch ‘thief recognition’ CCTV on trial in UK stores — from bbc.com
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Face-recognition camera systems should be used by police, he tells me. “The technology’s here, and we need to think about what is a proportionate response that respects people’s privacy,” he says.
…
“The public need to ask themselves: do they want six million cameras painted red at head height looking at them?

Addendum on 1/13/16:

The Algorithms Are Taking Over: Who Controls Our Online Future? — from forbes.com by Kalev Leetaru

Learning Ecosystems

Ericsson Mobility Report 2016

Mary Meeker’s annual report re: Internet Trends 2016 [KPCB]

100,000+ attendees and 2,200 companies came to Mobile World Congress 2016; see event highlights

“2020 Vision: Experts Predict the Future of Virtual Reality”; using VR to train teachers; plus 7 other items re: VR/AR

Is the next Uber coming your way? [IBM’s Global C-suite Study]

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