Worlds first AI minister stated that the United Arab Emirates is pursuing more than just economic gains in its quest to become a global leader in the field. The UAE’s minister of state for AI, Omar bin Sultan al-Olama, said “quality of life” considerations were key, and also stressed the importance of a “responsible” rollout—with impacts potentially reverberating for decades. “We are looking at AI as a tool,” he told AFP in an interview in Dubai. “It’s a tool that we need to use to unleash the quality of life…
Read MoreMonth: April 2022
Forever 21 parent Authentic Brands sues payment startup Bolt
Bolt Financial Inc., the payments firm best known for its founder’s inflammatory Twitter threads accusing Silicon Valley of being governed by “mob bosses,” is being sued by one of its most well-known clients. Authentic Brands Group claims that Bolt not only failed to deliver promised technologies, but also that the clothing retailer lost more than $150 million in online sales as a result of Bolt’s integration with Forever 21. According to the complaint, Bolt sought money at increasingly high valuations by “consistently overstating” the scope of its integration with ABG’s…
Read MoreHow to teach new skills to robots?
A warehouse robot pulls mugs off a shelf and places them into boxes for delivery as e-commerce orders flood in. Everything runs smoothly until the warehouse undergoes a change, requiring the robot to grasp taller, narrower mugs that are stored upside down. Reprogramming that robot involves hand-labeling thousands of images that show it how to grasp these new mugs, then training the system all over again. However, MIT researchers have developed a novel technique that would just take a few human demonstrations to reprogram the robot. This machine-learning method enables…
Read MoreAn AI breakthrough in healthcare sector
LabGenius, an AI-driven scientific research firm, is using Graphcore’s IPUs (Intelligence Processing Units) to accelerate its drug discovery efforts. LabGenius is now working on developing new cancer and inflammatory disease medicines. For its potentially life-saving work, the company blends AI, lab automation, and synthetic biology. Until now, the company’s workloads were performed on standard GPUs. LabGenius claims that switching from Cirrascale Cloud Services to Graphcore’s IPUs in cloud instances lowered model training time from one month to around two weeks. “Previously we used GPUs and it took us about a…
Read MoreWhere will STEM education be in next 5 years?
There were over 8.6 million STEM jobs in 2015, and that number is rising exponentially. In fact, STEM jobs have grown twice as fast than any other field in the last 10 years. However, it is projected that 2.4 million STEM jobs will be unfilled by 2025. Yet, STEM education programs have not kept pace–calling into question whether there will be enough qualified employees available to take on these new positions. Worryingly, only 16% of high school graduates are proficient in STEM and interested in pursuing a STEM career. With…
Read MoreAgritech firm DeHaat acquires Y-Cook India
DeHaat, a full stack agritech platform that provides farmers with end-to-end agricultural services, announced the all-cash acquisition of Y-Cook India. Y-Cook India is a food technology company that provides steamed produce that is ready to eat. Janardhan Swahar, Vijay Reddy, and Gayathri Swahar founded it in 2011. The Bengaluru-based company processes and exports sweet corn and lentils to nine different nations. Omnivore Partners, Oikocredit, and 021 Capital are among the investors. While OikCredit and 021 Capital will profit from this deal, Omnivore, which is also a DeHaat investor, will have…
Read MoreWhy these Malaysian companies are on the road to robotics
Earlier this year, Malaysian Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, announced that the country is working on a National Robotics Roadmap (NRR) to increase national productivity by utilising robotics technology. According to Ismail Sabri, the goal is to reduce reliance on foreign labour and reduce the flow of foreign cash. According to a Bernama report, the government’s roadmap is to increase robot usage from 55 units per 10,000 workers in 2019 to 195 units per 10,000 workers by 2030. In addition, a MyDigital Catalytic Initiatives Task Force will be…
Read MoreRobotaxi startup gains license in China
Pony.ai, a self-driving technology company backed by Toyota Motor Corp, announced on Sunday that it had secured a taxi licence in China, allowing some of its self-driving vehicles to begin charging fares. The company claimed to be the country’s first autonomous driving company. The company said that it has been granted a licence to operate 100 self-driving vehicles in the Nansha neighbourhood of Guangzhou. Pony.ai was also granted permission to provide paid autonomous robotaxi services in Beijing last year, and has since began providing rides. Rides are being offered on…
Read MoreHow to compete with robots?
When it comes to the future of intelligent robots, the first question people ask is often: how many jobs will they make disappear? Whatever the answer, the second question is likely to be: how can I make sure that my job is not among them? A team of EPFL roboticists and economists from the University of Lausanne just published a study in Science Robotics that answers both questions. They developed a method to calculate which of the already existing jobs are more likely to be performed by machines in the…
Read MoreNew way to ride the tech boom
Naples Global LLC, a hedge fund based in the United States, has partnered with LegalPay, an Indian third-party lawsuit funding startup, to create a fund to assist local entrepreneurs involved in disputes with their investors, including private equity firms. They’ve agreed to form a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to assist cash-strapped founders in resolving issues with their investors through litigation, arbitration, and other means. “Since most founders are first-generation entrepreneurs, they lack the financial muscle to assert their legal rights,” said LegalPay CEO Kundan Shahi. “The idea behind this product is…
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