Intel Delivers Neural Network Chips

Intel delivers Nervana Neural Network Processor chips for AI workloads  By Mike Wheatley

After pushing the concept of using Field Programmable Gate Arrays as accelerators for artificial intelligence and deep learning neural networks, Intel Corp. is taking the next step with the launch of its first batch of dedicated AI chips.

The chip giant today announced it will soon ship what it says are the first processors built specifically for AI workloads. Intel said its new Nervana Neural Network ... "

More on Bixby, AI on Appliances Everywhere

I was at the local Lowe's recently and saw some of their Smart  Frig's.  A sign mentioned  assistant Bixby, but not that it was available there yet.  But first time I had seen Bixby mentioned at all in a retail setting.   They have the platforms,  just need the value in context.  Our innovation research indicated there was a place for it.

SiliconAngle reports on Bixby:
 AI everywhere: Samsung aims to bring updated Bixby digital assistant to every device

Bixby, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s smart digital assistant, no longer will be trapped inside the Korean giant’s smartphones, as the company today announced plans to make it available on its own smart TVs and refrigerators and eventually other companies’ products. .... "

By Robert Hof in SiliconAngle.

Forecasting Challenge

I had mentioned superforcasting  again, was brought to my attention that they have had a hybrid competition under way for a while.  Are looking for volunteers.  Worth a look.

Samsung Does 8 Nanometer

Samsung has the hardware.  Will neural chips follow?  Implications for Bixby?

Samsung leapfrogs Intel again with 8-nanometer chips
Working with Qualcomm, Samsung can "rapidly ramp up" to production.

By Steve Dent,  @stevetdent in Engadget .... "

Samsung Announces Bixby 2.0 for IOT

Today announced Bixby 2.0 and SmartThings Cloud. Been following for a long to see what they might do with smart home appliances.  They have the appliances in many homes that could be the platform. Even hear some hints of that we hosted early Samsung smart appliances;   But have seen nothing to indicate it will happen.

Samsung is all talk about the IoT with Bixby 2.0 and SmartThings
Samsung talked up an ambitious vision, but it's all theoretical for now.
By Samuel Axon 

Samsung's annual developer conference at Moscone West in San Francisco doesn't always get a lot of public attention; in past years it has often focused on things like Tizen app development. But at this year's conference, the company focused on launching a new platform for connected devices in the home, the car, and elsewhere—or at least, a collection of previously existent platforms that are getting updated and combined into a new one.

That new platform is called SmartThings Cloud, and it unites existing Samsung IoT services like SmartThings, Samsung Connect, ARTIK, and Harman Ignite. Frankly, Samsung's offerings have been a confusing mess of different platforms and services with overlapping functionality and purposes. It's a rebranding, which could mean little, but developers may be hopeful that it also means an actual restructuring of resources and products to unify what Samsung is doing across all of these. .... " 

Also comments in TheVerge. 

Online and Amazon Continue Move Forward

With interesting data and comments on the topic by retail experts.  And even with some classic retail help:  Kohl’s opens Amazon shops in Chicago  ....

Online and Amazon to grow more dominant over the next decade
By George Anderson  In RetailWire

Consumers will continue to make more purchases online while cutting back on in-store purchases over the next decade, according to a report by FTI Consulting, which forecasts total online spending in the U.S. to surpass $1 trillion by 2027.

Online sales, which now account for roughly 12 percent of total retail sales, excluding auto and gas, will grow to 22 percent over the next 10 years, according to the estimates.

“The impact of accelerating online sales growth has been evident in the past two years, with elevated levels of retail bankruptcies and announced store closures amid a non-recessionary environment,” said Christa Hart, a senior managing director in FTI’s retail & consumer products practice, in a statement. “If online sales double by 2023, as we expect, stores will have to contend with the prospect of losing the same amount of sales to the online channel in the next six years as they did in the previous 16. The frustration for many retailers is that even building a complex and expensive omnichannel enterprise has just kept them in the game instead of leading to renewed profitability.”

The biggest beneficiary of the shift from stores to online will be Amazon.com, according to FTI. The e-tailer, which currently accounts for 34.2 percent of online sales, will see its share grow to more than 50 percent of the market by 2027, the firm estimates. .... " 

Amazon Suggests Apartment Hubs

An you might take this beyond to other sectorizations, like retirement centers.   And imagine using assistant leverage to extend this into every apartment.  We experimented with a number of 'locker' solutions in our innovation centers.  Other sectors?

Amazon Has a New Way to Get Stuff Into Your Apartment
The final mile of the logistics chain is being conquered.
By Keshia Hannam  in Fortune.

... Amazon has taken another step toward consolidating control over the process that leads goods from the warehouse floor directly to the doors of its customers. To that end, the retail giant has just introduced Hub by Amazon, which are Amazon-owned locker systems installed in apartment buildings.

By partnering with some of the nation’s largest apartment building owners and managers, the e-commerce giant has already signed contracts to install Hubs in buildings with more than 850,000 units across the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal.

The lockers are able to receive packages from any major carrier, such as FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service. The physical modular unit, which is about 7 feet by 7 feet and has 42 lockers in various sizes, is accessible 24 hours a day and costs landlords $10,000 to $20,000 upfront with no further monthly fees. According to the Journal, “most landlords said they don’t plan to charge residents but to offer it as an amenity. They could also make back some of that cost in savings on staff labor.”  .... " 

China IQ Test for Assistants?

Am somewhat skeptical about such tests, its not raw 'IQ" , but rather how well a system provides value in context.  Still it will be interesting to see how such a system could be a starting point for assistance systems.  Aiming to take a look at this.   Measures are always important, but in specific useful contexts.

Now There's an IQ Test for Siri and Friends 
Technology Review   October 13, 2017

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have developed an intelligence test that both machines and humans can take, and used it to rank intelligent assistants such as Google Assistant and Siri on the same scale used for humans. The test is based on the "standard intelligence model," in which systems must have a way of obtaining data from the outside world. They must be able to transform the data into a form they can process, they must be able to use this knowledge in an innovative way, and they must feed the resulting knowledge back into the outside world. The researchers found that even a six-year-old human outperforms the most advanced digital assistant, which according to this test is Google Assistant. However, machine intelligence is rapidly improving. In 2014, Google Assistant scored 26.4 on this test, compared with a score of 47.28 in the most recent test.  .... "

Soft Robotics from Liquid Metals

Been intrigued by 'soft robotics' that can change shapes    Here new work out of U of Sussex, that can transform.    Applications?   Programmable materials in changeable environments. 

Researchers at the University of Sussex and Swansea University in the U.K. say they have applied electrical charges to manipulate liquid metal into two-dimensional shapes such as letters and a heart. The team notes the results mark an "extremely promising" new class of materials that can be programmed to seamlessly change shape, a breakthrough they say could lead to new possibilities in soft robotics and shape-changing displays. "This is a new class of programmable materials in a liquid state which can dynamically transform from a simple droplet shape to many other complex geometry in a controllable manner," says University of Sussex researcher Yutaka Tokuda. The team says the electric fields used to shape the liquid are created by a computer, meaning the position and shape of the liquid metal can be programmed and controlled dynamically. The research was presented this week at the ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS 2017) conference in Brighton, U.K. .... " 

Apple and GE Join for Industrial Mobile IOS

Apple isn't known for industrial, so this is an interesting spin.   Note also the predictive spin using I assume machine learning.  Much more about the work at the link.   I was an early tester of GE Predix, and its aimed at this kind of application.   See much more at tags on it here.

Apple and GE join forces to build industrial apps for mobile devices   By Maria Deutscher

 Apple Inc. and General Electric Co., two companies that have vastly different business priorities most of the time, are joining forces in the mobile market.

With a new partnership announced this morning, the two companies will collaborate on targeting professionals in the industrial sector who use iOS devices for their work. The alliance revolves around Predix, the cloud platform that GE has developed to help organizations analyze sensor data from physical assets such as manufacturing equipment. According to the company, this information can be employed for everything from usage tracking to predicting technical problems in advance.  .... " 
And more in TechRepublic.

Amazon Show vs Google YouTube

Brought to my attention weeks ago.  Just because they are in competition with assistants?  Or is it some technical aspect of how marketing value is shared in Youtube videos.  We need to know that channels, especially new ones, are stable.    Below look is thoughtful.   Including comments.  Supposedly being negotiated now,  will be following that.

Google pulls YouTube off the Amazon Echo Show
Goodbye, cooking lessons and music videos    by Dieter Bohn    ....  "

Amazon, Microsoft and Healthcare

Will it be head to head or collaborative?  Microsoft  has already said they were collaborating with Alexa systems in their recent meeting.  Future health systems may need to do more listening than speaking.    More below:

Amazon may be going head-to-head with Microsoft in healthcare
Amazon isn't the only one of the big cloud vendors looking to expand its healthcare footprint. Microsoft's been there, done that, and is continuing to invest in the space.....   

 By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft

Intelligent Workflow Drones

Logical, first I had seen this stated this way. But then anything that does work to perform useful tasks or gather data should ideally be integrated into a workflow. Formally or informally.

Intelligent Workflow Drones  by Biren Gandhi   in Cisco Blog

Commercial drones are moving from a novelty item to an indispensable business tool, with PwC pegging the potential opportunity size at $127B in its report, “Clarity from Above”. However, there is a key element that is needed before drones can be successful in enterprise applications: they must be integrated into regular workflow systems, instead of existing in their own silos.

It’s like saying “let’s talk” instead of “let’s talk over a telephone” in the world of voice communication.

An example of this is showcased below. A few months ago, Cisco’s Enterprise Routing and Mobility team partnered with FlytBase and AeroTestra to showcase end-to-end enterprise workflows involving fleets of drones. Cisco’s Spark, WebEx and Drone ASAP products were integrated with Built.io’s Digital Transformation Platform to create this unique solution .... "

Algorithms teaching Algorithms

The ultimate AI play has devices teaching each other in context.

AI Algorithms Are Starting to Teach AI Algorithms

Automating machine learning will make the technology more accessible to non–AI experts.   by Will Knight,  Technology Review

At first blush, Scot Barton might not seem like an AI pioneer. He isn’t building self-driving cars or teaching computers to thrash humans at computer games. But within his role at Farmers Insurance, he is blazing a trail for the technology.

Barton leads a team that analyzes data to answer questions about customer behavior and the design of different policies. His group is now using all sorts of cutting-edge machine-learning techniques, from deep neural networks to decision trees. But Barton did not hire an army of AI wizards to make this possible. His team uses a platform called DataRobot, which automates a lot of difficult work involved in applying such techniques. ... " 

Garmin Speak Adds Alexa Option

Garmin Speak puts Amazon Alexa in your car,  It's now available for $150.   By Mariella Moon, @mariella_moon

Gamin's GPS devices already feature voice control, but if you'd prefer to have Alexa onboard, its latest product is more your jam. The GPS device maker has just released Garmin Speak, which it says is the first in-vehicle device with hands-free access to Alexa. It's a tiny little thing, measuring just around an inch-a-half with a LED light ring and an OLED display that shows turn-by-turn directions. You can talk to the voice assistant through it the same way you'd talk to Alexa through an Echo: just say "Alexa" and follow it up with a voice command. ... "

Report from the Smart Kitchen Summit

Used to attend these kinds of meetings,  to feed our own innovation center experiments, always had to separate the reasonable from the outlandish.  In say a decade long frame.  I am a cook from way back so I do appreciate what is useful and is not.  Even for volume or time stressed situations.   Good piece, with useful links, note the considerable number of Alexa enabled appliances, but how to make voice control a generally useful capability will be a creativity challenge.

Your Future Kitchen has a Smart Oven, a Burger flipping bot, and 36 Bacon Programs   By Jenny McGrath from DigitalTrend.

Last year, we predicted some of the changes that we’d see in cooking over the next decade, including precision cookware. The Smart Kitchen Summit, which was held this week in Seattle, brings together device makers, chefs, and other experts to discuss the future of food. And based on some of the items that were featured at the annual event, we may be able to get precisely cooked, hyper personalized dishes from our ovens sooner than we thought.

Major appliance brands such as Kenmore and Whirlpool are on board with embracing the smart kitchen. Both announced Alexa-enabled appliances, including fridges, dishwashers, and ranges earlier this year. There aren’t a ton of ways for Alexa and these appliances to interact yet, but manufacturers see including smart technology as a way to continuously add new features to old machines. But even people who swear they’ll never talk to their oven will see a benefit.... "

Put Humans at the Center of AI

Worked with the Stanford AI lab, and a number of the startups and students that came out of it.

Put Humans at the Center of AI  in Technology Review

At Stanford and Google, Fei-Fei Li is leading the development of artificial intelligence—and working to diversify the field.     by Will Knight  

As the director of Stanford’s AI Lab and now as a chief scientist of Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li is helping to spur the AI revolution. But it’s a revolution that needs to include more people. She spoke with MIT Technology Review senior editor Will Knight about why everyone benefits if we emphasize the human side of the technology.

Why did you join Google?

Researching cutting-edge AI is very satisfying and rewarding, but we’re seeing this great awakening, a great moment in history. For me it’s very important to think about AI’s impact in the world, and one of the most important missions is to democratize this technology. The cloud is this gigantic computing vehicle that delivers computing services to every single industry.

What have you learned so far?

We need to be much more human-centered. If you look at where we are in AI, I would say it’s the great triumph of pattern recognition. It is very task-focused, it lacks contextual awareness, and it lacks the kind of flexible learning that humans have. We also want to make technology that makes humans’ lives better, our world safer, our lives more productive and better. All this requires a layer of human-level communication and collaboration.

How can we make AI more human-centered?

There’s a great phrase, written in the ’70s: “the definition of today’s AI is a machine that can make a perfect chess move while the room is on fire.” It really speaks to the limitations of AI. In the next wave of AI research, if we want to make more helpful and useful machines, we’ve got to bring back the contextual understanding. We’ve got to bring knowledge abstraction and reasoning. These are all the most important steps. .... " 

Google Improves, Automates Pet Tagging

We were involved in work that sought to autotag pictures of people and pets in still images and video.  So this is quite a step forward.  Not too long ago this was not achievable.   Some details at the link below. 

Meow it’s even easier to find your furry friends in Google Photos
By Lily Kharevych,  Software Engineer, Google Photos

If you have a bunch of photos of your furry friends, you now have the oppawtunity to see them all in one place in Google Photos.

When you want to look back on old photos of Oliver as a puppy or Mr. Whiskers as a kitten, you no longer need to type “dog” or “cat” into search in Google Photos. Rolling out in most countries today, you’ll be able to see photos of the cats and dogs now grouped alongside people, and you can label them by name, search to quickly find photos of them, or even better, photos of you and them. This makes it even easier to create albums, movies, or even a photo book of your pet.   .... " 

Facebook Releases Video Neural Training Data

More generally available training data for Deep Learning systems.

Facebook debuts new video datasets for training neural networks  by Maria Deutscher

 Facebook Inc. unveiled its latest contribution to the artificial intelligence ecosystem at the GitHub Universe conference on Thursday.

Researchers from the social network have put together two datasets designed to help with creation of machine learning models that process video content. Typically, the information used in AI projects doesn’t receive as much attention as the sophisticated technologies that underpin the development process. But it’s an equally important component that in many cases can be harder to obtain .... " 

Seeking Voice Assistants in the Workplace

Now been involved in a number of brainstorm meetings addressing now virtual assistants can be used in the workplace.  Especially how voice can be used without disrupting a typical workplace.    Makes sense to use these for mundane topics.   Handsfree and non disruptive.   Probably with chatbot like feedback on alternatives.   Contact to talk this with me.  Here the first general example I have seen suggested:

In ComputerWeekly:
" ... Within the next three years, workers will be using Alexa-style devices to book time off, update their addresses, and file their expenses.

Voice recognition, powered by intelligent software bots, will take off as companies look to make their IT systems easier for employees to use, according to a specialist on the future of work. ... "