Tag: artificial intelligence

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News You Can Use: 1/24/2018

  • It’s time for Washington to start working on artificial intelligence

    Visitors to the Capitol today wouldn’t expect to see cutting edge experiments taking place inside the building and sadly, they probably don’t have much faith that Congress is even thinking about the future at all. This shows up in the rhetoric and it shows up in our budgets. Washington spends way too much time re-litigating the past — witness how much time has been devoted to debating old trade deals, the 2010 Affordable Care Act or the 1980s Reagan tax cuts — and has increasingly budgeted and legislated in a backwards looking way.

    Instead of embracing the trends of the future and empowering our citizens, too many policymakers would rather roll back the clock. According to data collected by the Brookings Institute, federal investment in research and development has declined significantly in recent decades, falling from 2.23% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the 1960s to just 0.77% in 2016 (GDP). Think about that, across the same decades when we saw a globally-connected high-tech economy emerge, we dramatically scaled back investment in R&D.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/17/its-time-for-washington-to-start-working-on-artificial-intelligence/?ncid=rss

  • Gartner: AI and B2B marketplaces will dominate procurement

    Amazon’s Web Services are its main driver of revenue for the e-commerce giant, so as more procurement officers leave outdated software behind and switch over to more streamlined and efficient options, the result will be tighter competition for other software providers, cloud services, retailers and third-party sellers.

    Furthermore, as procurement departments let go of old software systems and embrace AI-run systems, virtual assistants and chatbots, procurement departments will begin to streamline and automate purchases, there will be a shift in labor and talent demand for those roles.

    https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/gartner-trends-2018-AI-b2b-marketplaces-chatbot/514389/

  • How to Win with Game Theory & Defeat Smart Opponents
  • 5 Habits For Staying Productive In The Dreariest Months Of The Year

    2. FEEL GRATEFUL FOR SOMETHING EVERY DAY
    The holiday season can feel like a giant, blinking neon sign telling you to practice gratitude and cherish those around you. But without the sugary-sweet commercials and Netflix holiday rom-coms as reminders, it’s easy to fall back into your day-to-day routines, forgetting to notice the everyday magic around you.

    A daily gratitude habit is strongly correlated with increased happiness and overall well-being, not to mention with strengthening your relationships. For the next month or two, give it a shot. You can go as a big as writing in a physical gratitude journal once a day, or as small as remembering to reflect on a good moment before you go to bed tonight.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40515213/5-habits-for-staying-productive-in-the-dreariest-months-of-the-year

  • With all 49 Democrats on board, Senate leaders sound off on plan to restore net neutrality

    Forcing a vote means everyone in the Senate has to officially weigh in on this issue, and that makes it a very simple matter, come election season, to say whether they support net neutrality or not. Sure, they can blow smoke and attempt to obfuscate the issue, but ultimately people understand that the new rule vastly reduces the protections they have, and to support it is to support that reduction. It’s not going to be a popular decision.

    If it gets into the House, the same thing happens there — so that’s a good reason to root for its success in the Senate, even if it doesn’t really get it any closer to becoming law.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/16/with-all-49-democrats-on-board-senate-leaders-sound-off-on-plan-to-restore-net-neutrality/?ncid=rss

Photo: Thought Catalog

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News You Can Use: 12/13/2017

  • The Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death.

    You didn’t need permission for any of this stuff; some of these innovations ruined traditional industries, some fundamentally altered society, and many were legally dubious. But the internet meant you could just put it up, and if it worked, the rest of the world would quickly adopt it.

    But if flexibility was the early internet’s promise, it was soon imperiled. In 2003, Tim Wu, a law professor now at Columbia Law School (he’s also a contributor to The New York Times), saw signs of impending corporate control over the growing internet. Broadband companies that were investing great sums to roll out faster and faster internet service to Americans were becoming wary of running an anything-goes network.

    Some of the new uses of the internet threatened their bottom line. People were using online services as an alternative to paying for cable TV or long-distance phone service. They were connecting devices like Wi-Fi routers, which allowed them to share their connections with multiple devices. At the time, there were persistent reports of broadband companies seeking to block or otherwise frustrate these new services; in a few years, some broadband providers would begin blocking new services outright.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/technology/internet-dying-repeal-net-neutrality.html

  • China’s Tech Giants Have a Second Job: Helping Beijing Spy on Its People

    Users of Tencent’s WeChat app who run large group chats say they have received automated warnings about politically sensitive content. Some political activists say their WeChat accounts have been suspended or closed for posts critical of the government.

    During important political events, staffers with China’s internet regulator set up shop at Chinese content providers to catch anything that might slip through the cracks, people familiar with the operations said. The regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Along with access to online data, China’s government wants something else from tech companies—the cloud computing prowess to sort and analyze information. China wants to crunch data from surveillance cameras, smartphones, government databases and other sources to create so-called smart cities and safe cities.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-tech-giants-have-a-second-job-helping-the-government-see-everything-1512056284

  • The real reason American health care is so expensive
  • Amazon is putting Alexa in the office

    The first focus for Alexa for Business is conference room. AWS is working with the likes of Polycom and other video and audio conferencing providers to enable this.

    In addition, AWS also worked with Microsoft to enable better support for its suite of productivity services, as well as other enterprise services likes of Concur and Splunk to bring their services to Alexa. Other partners include Capital One, WeWork and JPL.

    Just as developers can build skills for Amazon Echo users, businesses can now build out Alexa skills for use within their own company. You could imagine voice access to an employee directory, Salesforce data on various clients and accounts, or company calendar information.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/amazon-is-putting-alexa-in-the-office/?ncid=rss

  • Verizon to Sell Wireless Home Broadband, Challenging Cable

    Verizon said Wednesday it would sell high-speed internet access in three to five cities, starting in Sacramento, Calif. The cities are all expected to be outside Verizon’s existing landline footprint in the Northeast, where it sells high-speed fiber-optic internet called Fios. The company said more details, such as its price, would be unveiled later.

    The wireless giant will use fifth-generation, or 5G, technology, which is capable of delivering significantly faster internet speeds than existing 4G technology, also known as LTE. Customers will likely have to place a box in their windows that will convert Verizon’s wireless signals into Wi-Fi inside the house.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-sell-home-broadband-over-wireless-network-1512037801

Photo: Pana Vasquez