Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief

• Microsoft is partnering with a prestigious eye hospital in India to help perfect AI powered computer diagnostics to the field of ophthalmology.
• Artificial intelligence is continually making great strides to integrate more in various healthcare settings, hopefully increasing the quality and availability of patient care.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 285 million people are visually impaired, with 39 million living with blindness and the other 246 million having low vision.

In a world of modern technological advancements, visual impairment has been the subject of much medical research. Perhaps the most notable among these are those that use artificial intelligence (AI), specifically through machine learning. Google’s DeepMind has been working with the UK’s National Health Service to do ophthalmology research.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence is Helping Restore Vision” »

Transparent, self-healing, conducting artificial muscle could power robots of the future…

December 23, 2016: Researchers create a self-healing, transparent, highly stretchable material that can be electrically activated and used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots.

Continue reading “A Wolverine Inspired Material” »

In Brief

• The Taiwanese company that manufactures Apple’s iPhone has announced a three-part plan to fully automate its factories, with hopes to achieve 30% automation by 2020.
• The move could put as many as a million people out of work, another example of automation’s major implications for the global workforce.

Foxconn Electronics, the Taiwanese manufacturing company behind some of the biggest electronic brands’ devices, including Apple’s iPhone, has announced that it will ramp up automation processes at its Chinese factories. The goal is to eventually achieve full automation.

In an article published in Digitimes, General Manager Dai Jia-peng of Foxconn’s Automation Technology Development Committee explains that the process will unfold in three phases.

Continue reading “Apple Manufacturer Foxconn to Fully Replace Humans With Robots” »

Interesting article on future of elections in Newsweek:

Billionaire Facebook founder may follow in Trump’s footsteps in running for office without prior political experience.

Expect to see better language understanding and an AI boom in China, among other things.

After 15 years of development, an Israeli tech firm is optimistic it will finally get its 1,500 kilogramme (1.5 tonne) passenger carrying drone off the ground and into the market by 2020.

The Cormorant, billed as a flying car, is capable of transporting 500 kilogrammes (around half a tonne) of weight and travelling at 185 kilometres per hour. It completed its first automated solo flight over terrain in November. Its total price is estimated at $14 million.

Developers Urban Aeronautics believe the dark green drone, which uses internal rotors rather than helicopter propellers, could evacuate people from hostile environments and/or allow military forces safe access.

Continue reading “Israel’s ‘flying car’ passenger drone moves closer to delivery” »

N” A boom in consumer drone sales has spawned a counter-industry of start-ups aiming to stop drones flying where they shouldn’t, by disabling them or knocking them out of the sky.

Dozens of start-up firms are developing techniques — from deploying birds of prey to firing gas through a bazooka — to take on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are being used to smuggle drugs, drop bombs, spy on enemy lines or buzz public spaces.

The arms race is fed in part by the slow pace of government regulation for drones.

Continue reading “Dog fight: Start-ups take aim at errant drones” »

In Brief

• Princeton University researchers have developed the world’s first integrated silicon photonic neuromorphic chip, which contains 49 circular nodes etched into semiconductive silicon.
• The chip could complete a math equation 1,960 times more quickly than a typical central processing unit, a speed that would make it ideal for use in future neural networks.

As developments are made in neural computing, we can continue to push artificial intelligence further. A fairly recent technology, neural networks have been taking over the world of data processing, giving machines advanced capabilities such as object recognition, face recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation.

These sound like simple things, but they were way out of reach for processors until scientists began to find way to make machines behave more like human brains in the way they learned and handled data. To do this, scientists have been focusing on building neuromorphic chips, circuits that operate in a similar fashion to neurons.

Continue reading “Computing at Light Speed: The World’s First Photonic Neural Network Has Arrived” »

There is no written rule-book to follow when it comes to career survival. The “Future of Work” is about making ourselves employable in a workforce where the priority of business leaders is to invest in automation and digital technology, more than training and developing their own workforces.

As our soon-to-be-released State of Operations and Outsourcing 2017 study, conducted in conjunction with KPMG across 454 major enterprise buyers globally, shows a dramatic shift in priorities from senior managers (SVPs and above), where 43% are earmarking significant investment in robotic automation of processes, compared with only 28% placing a similar emphasis on training and change management. In fact, the same number of senior managers are as focused on cognitive computing as their own people … yes, folks, this is the singularity of enterprise operations, where cognitive computing now equals employees’ brains when it comes to investment!

Continue reading “Let’s cut to the chase – there have never been times as uncertain as these in the world of business” »