platforms

HoloLens-based app could let sick patients stay at home yet still receive quality care

On 09/05/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, assistive technologies, emerging technologies, health, nursing, platforms, society, tools, by Daniel Christian

Holographic Doctor’s visit#MixedReality #Hololens #DigitalTransformation #AR #VR #AI #MR #Telemedicine #Healthcare #AugmentedReality #VirtualReality #Medicine #HealthTech pic.twitter.com/agkVSDVAnz

— Marcus Borba (@marcusborba) September 2, 2019

Also see:

From DSC:
This type of thing makes me wonder about the future of the legal profession as well. For example, here’s a relevant quote from The Uberization of Legal Technology by Felix Shipkevich:

In an age when there’s an app for everything, whether it’s to book air travel, rent a car, sell products or start a business, there wasn’t an app that could simply and easily connect you with legal counsel. Giving consumers a tool to book free consultations is the future of law, and the heart of attorney business development.

Consumers have historically had little access to attorneys for a variety of reasons. First, unlike for doctors and mechanics, there is no annual legal checkup (though perhaps there should be). Consumers may be intimidated by not knowing costs upfront or even knowing if they have a case worth discussing. Assuming that every American will have at least three legal questions annually, there’s an untapped market of over a billion potential legal inquiries every year.

And by the way, as legal-related matters aren’t taught much in K-16, that’s an interesting idea:

First, unlike for doctors and mechanics, there is no annual legal checkup (though perhaps there should be).

Four Big Themes Of Legal Tech + Innovation in 2019 [artificiallawyer.com]

On 09/04/2019, in entrepreneurship, future, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, by Daniel Christian

Four Big Themes Of Legal Tech + Innovation in 2019 — from artificiallawyer.com

Excerpt:

Many people are now heading off on holiday after what has been a frenetic period of change in the realm of legal tech and law firm innovation. In this article Artificial Lawyer identifies four key themes that help to make sense of what is happening.

These four themes are:

Consolidation and Platformization;
Continued Proliferation of Legal Tech Companies;
Incubator/Accelerator Growth;
More Than Law – Law Firms as Tech Producers.

How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Transforms Video Technology

On 08/29/2019, in A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, digital video, education technology, platforms, storytelling, technology (general), television, tools, by Daniel Christian

How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Transforms Video Technology — from datafloq.com

AI and machine learning have many use cases in digital video technology. Here are several of them…

Why GCs Aren’t Buying What Legal Tech Is Selling and Why It Matters for Firms [Warren & Cipriani]

On 08/28/2019, in 21st century, corporate / business world, Cost of legal services - including access, emerging technologies, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, society, tools, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Why GCs Aren’t Buying What Legal Tech Is Selling and Why It Matters for Firms — from law.com by Zach Warren and Gina Passarella Cipriani
Legal technology companies have to get out of their own way in vying for law department adoption, and buyers need to know what they want.

Excerpt:

The legal technology industry has some significant hurdles to overcome in its increased push to sell into legal departments, general counsel say. And GCs admit that they are part of the problem.

On the one hand, technology companies aren’t doing themselves any favors by flooding the market with, at times, dozens of the same offerings, few of which solve specific problems the in-house community has, GCs say. But at the same time, general counsel admit to being distracted, budget-constrained and often unfamiliar with the capabilities of the products they are being pitched.

“It’s overwhelming,” says HUB International chief legal officer John Albright. “There are hundreds of these vendors, and most of them you’ve never heard of.”

As Albright sees it, the legal technology industry is “heavily fragmented,” with vendors selling solutions to a discrete issue that doesn’t necessarily solve the full problem he has or fit into the larger organization’s information systems.

Also see:

Artificial Intelligence Further Exacerbates Inequality In Discrimination Lawsuits — from forbes.com by Patricia Barnes
Excerpt:
The legal system just keeps getting more and more unequal for American workers who are victims of employment discrimination, wage and hour theft, etc. The newest development is that America’s top employers and the law firms that represent them are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate their responses to workers’ legal claims, thereby increasing efficiency while cutting costs.

Reflections on “Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system” [Elgan]

On 08/27/2019, in 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, emerging technologies, ethics, face-to-face, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, hearts -- matters of the heart, intelligent systems, internet, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, Microsoft, morals/values, platforms, policy, political science, privacy, society, surviving, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system — from fastcompany.com by Mike Elgan
In China, scoring citizens’ behavior is official government policy. U.S. companies are increasingly doing something similar, outside the law.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Have you heard about China’s social credit system? It’s a technology-enabled, surveillance-based nationwide program designed to nudge citizens toward better behavior. The ultimate goal is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step,” according to the Chinese government.

In place since 2014, the social credit system is a work in progress that could evolve by next year into a single, nationwide point system for all Chinese citizens, akin to a financial credit score. It aims to punish for transgressions that can include membership in or support for the Falun Gong or Tibetan Buddhism, failure to pay debts, excessive video gaming, criticizing the government, late payments, failing to sweep the sidewalk in front of your store or house, smoking or playing loud music on trains, jaywalking, and other actions deemed illegal or unacceptable by the Chinese government.
…
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
Many Westerners are disturbed by what they read about China’s social credit system. But such systems, it turns out, are not unique to China. A parallel system is developing in the United States, in part as the result of Silicon Valley and technology-industry user policies, and in part by surveillance of social media activity by private companies.

Here are some of the elements of America’s growing social credit system.

If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.

From DSC:
Who’s to say what gains a citizen points and what subtracts from their score? If one believes a certain thing, is that a plus or a minus? And what might be tied to someone’s score? The ability to obtain food? Medicine/healthcare? Clothing? Social Security payments? Other?

We are giving a huge amount of power to a handful of corporations…trust comes into play…at least for me. Even internally, the big tech co’s seem to be struggling as to the ethical ramifications of what they’re working on (in a variety of areas).

Is the stage being set for a “Person of Interest” Version 2.0?

5 Reasons Why BU’s $24K MBA Is A Big Deal [Kim]

On 08/24/2019, in cost of getting a degree, Cost of legal services - including access, higher education, ideas, IT in HE, law schools, leadership, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, MBA, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, platforms, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

5 Reasons Why BU’s $24K MBA Is A Big Deal — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kim
Why I’m intrigued.

Excerpt:

The newly announced $24K BU MBA, created in partnership with edX, is a big deal.

Here are 5 reasons why:
#1: The Evolving Connection Between Status and Price:

The Boston University Questrom School of Business is ranked in the top 50 global business schools by US News, in the top 70 by the Economist. Questrom is a brand name business school in a market where the value of the MBA is directly proportional to the status of the institution.

Today, status and price are tightly correlated in the postsecondary market. This is especially true in professional education. Student prices are not set at costs, but at perceived value.

BU should be given credit for challenging this status quo. I suspect that the Questrom $24K MBA will end up improving BU’s place in the global MBA rankings.

What is different now is that it will not only be enthusiasm for learning science that will drive schools (and MBA programs) to improve their programs. It will be the market.

International Legal Tech Conference Breaks Attendance Record [Skolnik]

On 08/23/2019, in 21st century, Blockchain, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, professional development, society, tools, by Daniel Christian

International Legal Tech Conference Breaks Attendance Record — from biglawbusiness.com by Sam Skolnik

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Law firms are cashing in on blockchain through the growth of practice groups that represent blockchain developers and users. Attorneys are also are considering growing their use of “smart contracts,” which are blockchain based.

In addition to seeking continued growth in its membership and conferences, ILTA in the coming year will be focusing on diversity and inclusion within the legal tech sector, said Rush.

Legal tech investments have skyrocketed from $233 million two years ago to $1.7 billion in 2018, according to figures from the Legal Tech Sector Landscape Report by Tracxn Technologies.

Armies of delivery robots, drones, pods: Do we really want to create this kind of future?

On 08/22/2019, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, robotics, society, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, by Daniel Christian

Autonomous robot deliveries are coming to 100 university campuses in the U.S. — from digitaltrends.com by Luke Dormehl

Excerpt:

Pioneering autonomous delivery robot company Starship Technologies is coming to a whole lot more university campuses around the U.S. The robotics startup announced that it will expand its delivery services to 100 university campuses in the next 24 months, building on its successful fleets at George Mason University and Northern Arizona University.

Postmates Gets Go-Ahead to Test Delivery Robot in San Francisco — from interestingengineering.com by Donna Fuscaldo
Postmates was granted permission to test a delivery robot in San Francisco.

And add those to ones formerly posted on Learning Ecosystems:

Amazon patents ‘surveillance as a service’ tech for its delivery drones — from theverge.com by Jon Porter
This futuristic driverless pod will soon be delivering pizza in Texas — from digitaltrends.com by Trevor Mogg
Amazon is creating detailed 3D models of suburbia to train its new delivery robots — from theverge.com by James Vincent
‘Eventually, we’ll be delivering around the world.’

From DSC:
I’m grateful for John Muir and for the presidents of the United States who had the vision to set aside land for the national park system. Such parks are precious and provide much needed respite from the hectic pace of everyday life.

Closer to home, I’m grateful for what my parents’ vision was for a place to help bring the families together through the years. A place that’s peaceful, quiet, surrounded by nature and community.

So I wonder what kind of legacy the current generations are beginning to create? That is…do we really want to be known as the generations who created the unchecked chaotic armies of delivery drones, delivery robots, driverless pods, etc. to fill the skies, streets, sidewalks, and more?

I don’t. That’s not a gift to our kids or grandkids…not at all.

Gartner: Top Wireless Tech Trends to Watch [Kelly]

On 08/22/2019, in 21st century, emerging technologies, engineering, internet, IT in HE, platforms, robotics, society, tools, trends, United States, by Daniel Christian

Gartner: Top Wireless Tech Trends to Watch — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpts:

The research firm identified 10 key wireless trends worth watching as the technology continues to develop over the next five years:

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) wireless. This is the technology that will allow conventional cars, self-driving cars and the road infrastructure to all share information and status data.
Wireless sensing. This involves using the absorption and reflection of wireless signals as sensor data for radar tracking purposes. As an example, Gartner pointed to wireless sensing as an indoor radar system for robots and drones.

Google brings AI to studying with Socratic — from zdnet.com by Stephanie Condon
Ahead of the new school year, Google is re-launching a mobile learning app it acquired last year.

Excerpt:

Google this week started rolling out a revamped version of a mobile learning app, called Socratic, that the tech giant acquired last year. The updated app, with new machine learning-powered features, coincides with the start of the school year, as well as other Google for Education initiatives.

Socratic aims to help both high school and university students in their studies outside of the classroom. If students need help answering a study question, they can now use the Socratic app to ask a question with their voice, or to take a picture of a question in their study materials. The app will then find relevant material from across the web.

Also see:

The School of Tomorrow Will Revolve Around AI — from datafloq.com
Excerpt:
We live in exponential times, and merely having a digital strategy focused on continuous innovation is no longer enough to thrive in a constantly changing world. To transform an organisation and contribute to building a secure and rewarding networked society, collaboration among employees, customers, business units and even things is increasingly becoming key.Especially with the availability of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, organisations now, more than ever before, need to focus on bringing together the different stakeholders to co-create the future. Big data empowers customers and employees, the Internet of Things will create vast amounts of data and connects all devices, while artificial intelligence creates new human-machine interactions. In today’s world, every organisation is a data organisation, and AI is required to make sense of it all.

Addendum on 8/23/19

Google: Gmail’s new AI spelling, grammar checks help you avoid email blunders — from zdnet.com by Liam Tung
Gmail on G Suite gains new AI-assisted spellcheck and grammar features.

6 basic Youtube tips everyone should know — from hongkiat.com by Kelvon Yeezy

Example tips:

1. Share video starting at a specific point . <– A brief insert from DSC: This is especially helpful to teachers, trainers, and professors
If you want to share a YouTube video in a way that it starts from a certain point, you can do so in a couple of simple steps.

Just pause the video at the point from where you want the other user to start watching it and right-click on the video screen. A menu will appear from which you can choose Copy video URL at the current time. The copied link will open the video starting from that specific time.

4. More accurate video search
There are millions of videos on Youtube. So trying to find that specific Youtube video you want to watch is an adventure in itself. In this quest, you might find yourself crawling through dozens of pages hoping to find the video you actually want to watch.

If you don’t want to go through all this hassle, then simply add allintitle: before the keywords you are using to search for the video. This basically gives you only those videos that include the chosen keywords.

AI is in danger of becoming too male — new research — from singularityhub.com by Juan Mateos-Garcia and Joysy John

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

But current AI systems are far from perfect. They tend to reflect the biases of the data used to train them and to break down when they face unexpected situations.
…
So do we really want to turn these bias-prone, brittle technologies into the foundation stones of tomorrow’s economy?
…
One way to minimize AI risks is to increase the diversity of the teams involved in their development. As research on collective decision-making and creativity suggests, groups that are more cognitively diverse tend to make better decisions. Unfortunately, this is a far cry from the situation in the community currently developing AI systems. And a lack of gender diversity is one important (although not the only) dimension of this.

A review published by the AI Now Institute earlier this year showed that less than 20 percent of the researchers applying to prestigious AI conferences are women, and that only a quarter of undergraduates studying AI at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley are female.

From DSC:
My niece just left a very lucrative programming job and managerial role at Microsoft after working there for several years. As a single woman, she got tired of fighting the culture there.

It was again a reminder to me that there are significant ramifications to the cultures of the big tech companies…especially given the power of these emerging technologies and the growing influence they are having on our culture.

Addendum on 8/20/19:

Google’s Hate Speech Detection A.I. Has a Racial Bias Problem — from fortunes.com by Jonathan Vanian
Excerpt:
A Google-created tool that uses artificial intelligence to police hate speech in online comments on sites like the New York Times has become racially biased, according to a new study. The tool, developed by Google and a subsidiary of its parent company, often classified comments written in the African-American vernacular as toxic, researchers from the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence said in a paper presented in early August at the Association for Computational Linguistics conference in Florence, Italy.
.
On the positive side of things:
Number of Female Students, Students of Color Tackling Computer Science AP on the Rise — from thejournal.com

Not easy being a parent these days…

On 08/19/2019, in change, generational differences, internet, K-12 related, parents/guardians, platforms, relationships, society, student-related, technology (general), tools, Uncategorized, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
After reviewing the item below — and after trying to limit the screen time of our youngest daughter these days — I am again reflecting on how difficult it is to raise kids today. I’m not going to get on the technology bashing train, but I’m just going to say that — at least in this area of life — my parents had it much easier! 🙂 It’s not easy to cut off the kids’ access to the Internet these days…as the article below illustrates!

Teen goes viral for tweeting from LG smart fridge after mom confiscates all electronics — from cbsnews.com by Caitlin O’Kane

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Dorothy said she was boiling rice one night and was too preoccupied by her phone, so the stove burst into flames. “So my mom took all my tech so i’d pay more attention to my surroundings,” she said.

Then she explained that both the DS and Wii allow image share, so she could send images from those devices to Twitter, adding messages.

Sometime after finding her DS, it was taken again, so Dorothy started tweeting from yet another connected device: her fridge. “My mom uses it to google recipes for baking so I just googled Twitter,” she told CBS News.

Reflections on “Why AIoT Is Emerging As The Future Of Industry 4.0” [Janakiram MSV]

On 08/15/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, ethics, platforms, society, tools, by Daniel Christian

Why AIoT Is Emerging As The Future Of Industry 4.0 — from forbes.com by Janakiram MSV]

Excerpts:

“By combining AI with industrial IoT, we add an important ability 2connected systems – Act.”

AI goes beyond the visualizations by acting on the patterns and correlations from the telemetry data. It plugs the critical gap by taking appropriate actions based on the data. Instead of just presenting the facts to humans to enable them to act, AI closes the loop by automatically taking an action. It essentially becomes the brain of the connected systems.

The future of industrial automation lies in the convergence of AI and IoT. Artificial Intelligence of Things will impact almost every industry verticle including automotive, aviation, finance, healthcare, manufacturing and supply chain.

From DSC:
I’ve often wondered which emerging technologies will be combined with each other to produce something powerful. According to the article referenced above, AI + IoT = AIoT is something to put on the radar. I’m not at all crazy about the word “lethal” being used in this article/context though — I certainly hope that’s not the case.

Also relevant/see:

The list of ethical guidelines for AI is growing rapidly — from eiuperspectives.economist.com

Artificial intelligence (AI) has, of late, been the subject of so many announcements, proclamations, predictions and premonitions that it could occupy its own 24-hour cable news channel. In technology circles, it has become a kind of holy grail, akin to fire, the wheel or the steam engine in terms of world-changing potential. Whether these forecasts come to pass is still an open question. What is less in doubt are the vast ethical ramifications of AI development and use, and the need to address them before AI becomes a part of everyday life.

A reckoning for 2U, and OPMs? [McKenzie]

On 08/14/2019, in collaboration, colleges, community colleges, distance education, higher education, instructional design, IT in HE, online learning, platforms, teaching online, United States, universities, using teams, vendors, by Daniel Christian

A reckoning for 2U, and OPMs? — from insidehighered.com by Lindsay McKenzie
After online program management company 2U talked openly about its challenges, the company’s stock plummeted. Analysts say the company, and others like it, are down but not out.

Excerpt:

An hour before Chip Paucek, CEO and co-founder of 2U, held an investor call late Tuesday afternoon [on 7/30/19] , the online program management company’s stock was valued at $36.50. Over the next 24 hours, as investors responded to the news he delivered, its stock plunged to $12.80 — a decrease of almost 65 percent.

In that investor call, Paucek delivered a set of messages that wouldn’t have surprised many who watch the online education space closely. Online program management is a difficult business to be in. Online education is increasingly competitive, student acquisition and marketing costs are going up, and the regulatory landscape is becoming more complex.
…
Offering hybrid or fee-for-service options is something many OPM companies already do, but 2U has long been resistant to this change. It’s a significant shift in strategy, said Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director of University Ventures.

There has been long-running disagreement about whether fee for service or revenue sharing is the better option for institutions, said Pianko. “What’s really interesting is that 2U went from being the strongest proponent of the revenue share forever camp to effectively embracing the future of fee for service,” he said. “With the 2U move, we would expect a rapid move toward fee for service across the board.”

Also see:

What the Big Edtech Mergers and Acquisitions of 2019 Signal for the Industry — from edsurge.com by Tony Wan

“How can technology be used at scale to address the massive re-skilling that’s going to be needed in the workforce going forward?”

— Kelly Fuller, a director at BMO Capital Markets who covers the ed tech sector

Learning Ecosystems

HoloLens-based app could let sick patients stay at home yet still receive quality care

Four Big Themes Of Legal Tech + Innovation in 2019 [artificiallawyer.com]

Why GCs Aren’t Buying What Legal Tech Is Selling and Why It Matters for Firms [Warren & Cipriani]

5 Reasons Why BU’s $24K MBA Is A Big Deal [Kim]

International Legal Tech Conference Breaks Attendance Record [Skolnik]

Gartner: Top Wireless Tech Trends to Watch [Kelly]

A reckoning for 2U, and OPMs? [McKenzie]

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