As the tech community warmed up to latest trending technologies such as brain-machine interface in the Gartner’s hype cycle, Elon Musk’s Neuralink demonstrated a fully functional sensor along with a robotic surgeon in a tale of three little pigs and a chip. Find out more about the latest happenings in this latest edition of Analytics India Magazine’s Top Weekly News.
Apple Launches AI Residency Programme
Apple is now inviting experts from various fields to apply for their AI/ML residency program. The AI/ML residency program aims to immerse these experts in the ML space. The year-long program will welcome residents with STEM graduate degrees or equivalent industry experience, software development backgrounds, and niche expertise — like design, linguistics, neuroscience, or psychology. The program aims to invest in the resident’s technical and theoretical machine learning development, and help advance their professional careers.
The residents will have the opportunity to attend personalized machine learning and AI courses, learn from an Apple mentor closely involved in their program, collaborate with fellow multi-talented residents, and gain hands-on experience working on high-impact projects. Know more details here.
Neuralink Gives A Major Update
Today, Elon Musk and his Neuralink team surprised the futurists around the world with a handful of updates on their esoteric project. In a physical event that was streamed in the early hours of Saturday, in India, featured display of the sensors that will sit atop the skull, results from experimentation and interesting speculation about the future of Neuralink. Like last year, Musk reiterated that the whole objective of these presentations are to encourage interested candidates across the world to join their team to solve incredibly complex problems. Watch the full presentation here.
White House To Spare $1 Billion For AI Research Institutes
On Wednesday, the White House announced more than $1 billion for the establishment of 12 new AI and QIS research institutes nationwide.
Together, these research Centers will serve as national R&D hubs for spurring innovation, supporting regional economic growth, and training the country’s next generation workforce. These collaborative research and education institutes will focus on a range of AI R&D areas, such as machine-learning, synthetic manufacturing, precision agriculture, and forecasting prediction. Know more details here.
AI Takes Top Seat In The Gartner Hype Cycle
Last week, Gartner released a unique hype cycle; for emerging technologies. It includes technologies that can completely change the direction of human civilization. “This Hype Cycle highlights technologies that will significantly affect business, society and people over the next five to 10 years,” said Brian Burke, Research VP, Gartner.
From algorithmic trust to advanced AI, the Gartner’s hype cycle features many new technologies. The AI technologies include: Adaptive ML, Composite AI, Explainable AI, Responsible AI, AI assisted design and many more. Read the full story here.
LG Releases Air Purifier
On Thursday, LG Electronics (LG) introduced PuriCare, a wearable Air Purifier, which will be available starting in the fourth quarter in select markets. The PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier employs two H13 HEPA filters, similar to the filters used in the company’s home air purifier products.
LG claims to have leveraged their latest advancements in air purification, high-performance replaceable filters in developing PuriCare. This mask comes with Dual Fans and a patented Respiratory Sensor. According to the official press release, LG’s wearable air purifier allows users to take in clean, filtered air while the Respiratory Sensor detects the cycle and volume of the wearer’s breath and adjusts the dual three-speed fans accordingly. The fans automatically speed up to assist air intake and slow down to reduce resistance when exhaling to make breathing effortless. LG’s new product had many wondering why we haven’t seen more of these in the past couple of months. Could there have been a better time to launch these?
Machine Learning Helps Discover 50 New Planets
Thanks to machine learning we now know there are 50 more planets in our vast universe. Researchers from the University of Warwick have identified these new planets using machine learning algorithms. According to the reports, this is the first time ever that astronomers have used a process based on machine learning to analyse a sample of potential planets. Previous ML techniques have ranked candidates, but never determined the probability that a candidate was a true planet by themselves. The algorithm, to discover these planets, skimmed through vast amounts of data obtained from telescope missions such as NASA’s Kepler and TESS, by researchers from Warwick’s Departments of Physics and Computer Science, as well as The Alan Turing Institute.
Karnataka Govt. Launches AI-Driven Hospital Pods
Karnataka government’s minister of education Dr Sudhakar, has tweeted the launch of Vevra Pods. These movable capsules are backed by artificial intelligence and other cutting edge technologies. Vevra Pods were developed by Bengaluru based Vevra in collaboration with Portugal-based healthcare IoT InnoWave Group. With an accommodation capacity of up to 9 beds and a lifetime of more than a decade, these mobile healthcare services are designed to contain easily transmitted diseases such as COVID-19, flu, TB and more. Read more here
WHO’s To Send AI Based Health Alerts
The WHO announced that their Health Alert service on Messenger from Facebook has been upgraded with artificial intelligence (AI) to offer better and more accurate experience for the users.
The new features are as follows:
- AI-powered conversations: Using AI analysis, the service can cluster the most common questions into themes and guide the inclusion of new responses;
- Localized COVID-19 information: data on the latest official case counts for any country are instantly accessible, curated from official WHO COVID-19 information.
Facebook Drops Oculus Forever
This week. Facebook rebranded itself and dropped the name Oculus from flagship events and products. Facebook introduced a new name for Facebook’s AR/VR team — Facebook Reality Labs (FRL). These labs, read the statement, will continue to build the next computing platform. The team had also announced that their flagship annual conference, Oculus Connect—now Facebook Connect— will be held virtually on September 16 and is free for all.
