Hanson Robotics’ latest and most advanced robot, Sophia, is becoming a media darling and is igniting the interests of people irrespective of their ages, genders and cultures. She is the world’s first robot citizen to opine on sensitive topics like women’s rights, her own citizenship, and gender discrimination. Sophia speaks about herself and her place in the world so immaculately that one might question on her consciousness. On being asked a similar question at a festival of future called Brain Bar in Hungary last month, Sophia replied that she is not fully self aware but is a system based upon some preconditioned rules and behaviours. Sophia also tackled a sensitive issue concerning the danger of the advancing artificial intelligence and emerging new technological dimensions fitted in them. She advised the inventors of artificial intelligence to not to rush about anything and above all, impute some good ethics into the technologies.

Read more at: https://www.livescience.com/63023-sophia-robot-citizen-talks-gender.html

Cheetah 3, the four-legged mechanical beast is the latest achievement of the MIT engineers and roboticists in “blind locomotion”- robots that can move without the need of visual sensors. Weighing over 41 kg, Cheetah 3 can navigate around various terrains and can even recover after being pushed or pummeled. Designed to ‘feel’ its footing, the researchers from MIT intended to produce such a machine that would respond to unseen obstacles more quickly than if it relied only on sight. Special algorithms and multiple sensors are designed inside Cheetah 3 to gather and evaluate data with every step it takes. This evaluation then enables the robot to decide whether it’s ‘safe’ to move forward or step back. At the International Conference on Intelligent Robots, to be held from Oct. 1-5 in Madrid, Cheetah 3 along with its other robotic superpowers will demonstrate its blind locomotion prowess.

Read more at: https://www.livescience.com/63016-cheetah-3-robot-runs-blind.html

For any budding company or an industry, the ultimate driving force that can help them survive the thorny path of competition is ‘growth’. A particular company may not last long without growth fuelling its fire of success. It not only ensures easy and faster cash transaction but also makes ways for new project, satisfied customers and talented new hires. However if growth halts once, a company’s future is fully dependent on its founder’s ability to restart the engine of success. In fact in many cases half of the new businesses close down in five years in absence of the driving force.  Question arises on how to take up a company from the path of despair and jumpstart growth again. Let’s look at the following tips:

·         Adding empathy screening to hiring process- A better understanding among the workers of the company can lead to better anticipation of needs and improving productivity thus inevitably leading to faster growth processes. In fact empathetic behaviour helps to evaluate others’ agendas and deliver something that meets the needs of all.

·         Investing in relationship not in sales- Where authenticity is craved by the modern customers, one should promote content in such a manner such that it leads people to have a deeper connection to the brand. Just a mere commercialisation with clever camera edited marketing skills won’t help accelerate growth of the products much if it doesn’t make any sense for the brand.

Hence putting together a strong team and leveraging the most attractive features of a company can put off the stagnating growth and initialise the processes of success again.

Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/316088

Signs of exhilaration are heightened among the ‘Star Wars’ fans as China has invented a new weapon called ZKZM-500 similar to the laser blaster in the movie. Weighing more than 6.6 lbs., the 15 mm laser gun can fire more than 1,000 laser shots, each one lasting up to 2 seconds. Although the weapon is claimed to be non lethal by the Chinese government, the invisible energy beam produced by it can cause instant carbonization of human tissues and skin. Infact it has the ability to penetrate through windowhs thus igniting gas tanks and burning anything nearby. However burning hole through a body will take several zaps by the weapon. The gun can have wide usage such as it can be used by the Government to fire illegal banners in a protest or setting fire to the clothing of the protester. Although ready for mass production, its creator ZKZM Laser hasn’t yet found a licensed company ready to take up the $15,000/unit worth guns. The weapons will be in future handed over to the Chinese army and police.

Read more at: https://www.livescience.com/62973-china-laser-guns.html

Fifteen years ago it was only fair for the airlines companies to keep record of the ingoing and outgoing flights only. But now let’s imagine a sudden storm hitting the East Coast today. This would imply that several flights will be delayed. Hence keeping up to their standards and adding a value to the every penny the passengers have paid would involve several entailing jobs like determining the flights to be connected with the airline, baggage transfer time, the number of transferring passengers, the flights that are coming from and so on. It naturally means a proliferating amount of big data sifting and shifting from a constellation of different sources. A Boeing 787 alone creates a half a terabyte of data every day. Big data in aviation are useful in many cases such as:

·         Fuel Efficiency- Fuel is the second highest expense for airlines and estimating power has developed to a point where airlines can congregate and process the enormous amounts of data they need to analyze on a per-trip basis. It is hoped that data mining will produce actionable intelligence around decisions such as adding or subtracting flights to routes, setting fuel loads for each aircraft, and selling additional passenger tickets. 

·         Smart Maintenance- The big data, including mechanic write-ups, shop findings and in-flight measurements, helps the airline company to plan equipment maintenance with minimal disturbance to flights.

·         Airline Safety- A data collection and analysis program named Data4Safety has been recently launched by The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)  to detect risks using a amalgamation of safety reports, in-flight telemetry data, air traffic surveillance information, weather data and so on.

Read more at: https://hortonworks.com/article/how-big-data-in-aviation-is-transforming-the-industry/

The use of predictive analysis is widespread including in connecting car industry which provides both opportunities and challenges for the automotive industry. By using Telematics and infotainment systems, connected cars increasingly stream data into the cloud. Each connected vehicle is expected to generate more than 25 gigabytes per hour as the dizzying array of smart IoT sensors are coming into the picture. Predictive analysis in automotive industries is enabling connected cars to stay more on roads rather than in shops. Some of the ways in which predictive automotive data analysis is driving the growth of connected car industry are listed as follows:

·         Predictive Maintenance-Predictive data analysis can spot maintenance issues before they occur by leveraging data from warranty repairs with existing vehicle sensor data. This is done by pulling in data from virtually every vehicle, comparing the information with warranty repair trends and finding meaningful correlation which is otherwise impossible to be discovered by humans.

·         Predictive Collision Prevention-By utilizing big and fast data, latest sensors and car-to-car connectivity, predictive analytics technology may completely eliminate the possibility of accidents in the future.

·         Connected Car Cyber Security- Predictive analytics is efficient in securing connected cars in the sense that it is able to identify patterns of attackers’ behavior. It not only looks for an intruder to repeat the same behavior as pervious attackers but also searches for a combination of behaviors that are inconsistent with what would be expected of an authorized user.

Read more at: https://igniteoutsourcing.com/publications/predictive-analytics-in-connected-car-industry/

Autism being a spectrum or developmental disorder characterized by lack of social skills and repetitive behavior is being diagnosed using several methods in order to identify the onset of this disease. One such method is used by Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule which inspects videotapes on the basis of an assessment between an examiner and a child for understanding the child’s behavior. According to a paper published in Science Translational Machine by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University School of Medicine, doctors could precisely forecast which child might develop autism before hitting 24 months and with a 96 percent accuracy rate. A fully cross-validated machine learning was developed which used the scans of the 6-month-old infants. 59 high risk brain scans were taken over 230 regions and the whole brain was mapped creating matrices of functional connectivity from each child’s MRI data.  The algorithm further analyzed the brain scans of the 6-month-old infants and it properly predicted 9 out of 11 infants had the symptoms of autism at 24 months, with a sensitivity of 81.8%. Such data-driven approach is a good indicator of predictive measure that suggests that AI and machine learning could someday possibly recognize diseases with accurateness and extend treatments for the mass and maybe halt the headway of the disorders themselves.

Read more at: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-can-be-used-to-predict-autism-in-children/

Budding businesses often uses personalization processes that relies on accumulating customer data from third-party sources but that era is coming to a close. CRM systems can be significant sources of vision that empowers and enable companies to see their data from all angles but at the same time can be difficult to use and maintain. Few tips to convert CRM systems from potentially confusing resource into a powerful weapon are as follows:-

·         Tell the software what to streamline-

CRM automation is better than the manual processes in the sense that it can remove the obstacles involving tedious and time consuming works, by importing data, making smarter schedules and compiling related data.

·         Learn to spot at-risk accounts-

CRM software is the ideal instrument to track customer engagement as it allows employees to help clients when things look bad. For an example, it can set up the flags for different triggers, such as repeat complaints. The software can alert sales representatives when customers set off one of the triggers.

·         Use Robots to make CRM adoption-

Virtual assistants such as chatbots, powered by artificial intelligence, can network with CRM systems to set appointments, add client information to files, and locate information without forcing users to sieve through data manually. 

 Utilized efficiently and correctly, a CRM system can transform from an equipped essential into a competitive advantage.

Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312994

Organic traffic is used for visitors landing on the website as a result of organic search results. Recently, companies have been witnessing a drop in organic traffic. Prioritizing quantitative analysis over qualitative business assessment would lead a company on the road to success. Companies can manage to hit their KPIs by understanding current view generation trends with the help of close data-driven analysis of site traffic. A continually changing SEO rules have contributed to declining organic site traffic for many businesses transforming an advantage into a source of punishment for manipulative guest posting. Visibility and ranking are conflicting priorities with data being the determining factor of increasing or decreasing organic site activity. Social media data and visibility are among the other major factors contributing to website traffic. Despite searches not directing to the social pages, the best ranked sites are attributed with more social interactions. Target sites having the greatest degree of visibility are the matter of concern for ranking algorithms. Using big data in general and unique views coupled with first visits in particular, gives an organic traffic boost to businesses. Referral marketing boosts reputation and is effective at generating new businesses

Read more at: https://www.smartdatacollective.com/wheres-the-traffic-increasing-organic-leads-with-big-data/

Global connectivity throughout many dimensions has provided an opportunity to make momentous developments in financial and technological inclusion. While blockchain and bitcoins were on top of the headlines in 2017, social and mobile payments have fundamentally changed the financial markets. New electronic trading venues are now being introduced to fixed income trading. ‘FinTech’ refers to these processes, products or business model and new applications in the financial services industry that are provided as an end-to-end process via the Internet and are composed of one or more complementary financial services. At Renaissance we utilize the available resources with the new innovation and technology in order to compete with the traditional financial institutions and intermediaries in the distribution of financial services. The key services provided are of distribution channels, transparency and accountability, financial capability, expanding rural capability and so on. Fintech will also likely to become greener in 2018 in the sense that there will be now a financial incentive for investments into quantum computing which has the potential to greatly reduce the estimated amount of electricity consumed by all of the current computers processing bitcoin. This is possible with the help of carbon footprint of the cryptocurrencies. 

Read more at: http://fortune.com/2017/12/26/4-technology-trends-2018/

The sprouting digital age has created both opportunities and challenges when it comes to businesses with customers. On one hand, the outburst of new channels has opened up amazing new ways to involve the audiences. On the other hand, it challenges the business enterprises to cut the noise out and stand apart to build a more sophisticated, intuitive and personalized relationship with their customers. In this regard they have gone one step further to personalize information such as name, title, organization, purchase history etc. and utilizes interactive and real-time data to create highly appropriate communication that is relevant to the user. This is what is called the hyper-personalization. Such an action of creating messages that target and connect with a specific subset of the overall consumer audience leads to companies’ willfully abandoning broad reaching marketing messages and creating different campaigns for different groups of people. This matter revolves around the question “what people want” and it’s predicted that the recent decade will see e-commerce companies connecting their brand through hyper personalization. Some of the renowned brands like Starbucks, Amazon and Spotify have adopted hyper-personalization, where AI and machine learning analyze numerous factors to power their recommendation engine. 

Read more at: https://monk.webengage.com/hyper-personalization-marketing-future/

Although data science, artificial intelligence, or Web 2.0. are the new buzzword, Jupyter Notebooks are revolutionizing in the sense that it is an open-source web project, a piece of software that allows data scientists to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and explanatory text. Originally called IPython Notebook, it’s built to write and share code and text, within the domain of a web page. Even though Jupyter has its roots in Python (it evolved from IPython Notebooks), it is now multi-lingual. In fact the name itself comes from 3 languages: Ju(lia)+Py(thon)+(e)R and  Jupyter kernels now extends to 80 more languages. They are very convenient in the senses that have become a standard for data analysis and scientific research, allows us to publish our narratives in many formats, from live online notebooks to slide decks; and it simplifies the problem of distributing employed software to coworkers and associates.

Read more at: https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/what-is-jupyter

This is an era where all of us are tech savvy and are connected to each other through social platforms linked through smart devices. The new generation expects real time response to their queries with personalized feelings and suggestions from the diverse brands they trust and engage with. Business enterprises are now resorting to chatbots or virtual agents that can manage consumers’ queries without any delay. A Chatbot or the “Chatter Robot” is a platform that imitates human conversations including text or spoken language by using artificial intelligence techniques such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), image, audio and video processing. It’s ability to network using a simple interface and engage with customers in a more natural and friendly manner has given itself a cutting edge across dimensions. Although chatbots and apps are intermingled with each other, they are different in the sense that the interactions with the bot take place sequentially (as a conversation), and the bot is used inside a chat app. Moreover chatbots have an identity of its own which is separate from its interaction with the user. 

Read more at : https://www.happiestminds.com/Insights/chatbots/

In the recent times, the outburst of embedded and connected smart devices and systems has created an opportunity to connect every ‘thing’ to the internet.In this regard the Internet of Things(IoT) is one of the most hyped- set of technologies and a system of interconnected devices, both mechanical and digital machines, electronics, software, sensors, objects, animals or humans that are given a unique identifier and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring ‘human-to-human’ or ‘human-to-computer’ interaction.An IoT system consists of sensors/devices which “talk” to the cloud through some kind of connectivity and based on the processing of software it then automatically adjusts without the need for the user. The extensive set of applications for IoT devices include consumer applications, smart home, enterprise applications, infrastructure applications etc. If we look at the recent trend, we can clearly observe a significant trend in the explosive growth of devices connected and controlled by the internet thus automating maximum tasks in business enterprises and promising new jobs, where people can understand and leverage the IoT to create solutions that will be greatly in demand. However IoT has been criticized on several grounds such as insecure implementation, a significant and variable lag into the control loop introducing instability and an exposure of vulnerabilities that might be exploited by hackers.

Read more at: https://medium.com/iotforall/iot-explained-how-does-an-iot-system-actually-work-e90e2c435fe7

With existing systems and technology it is often difficult to manage massive amount of data by various industries and organizations. Keeping in mind several aspects such as cost reduction, customer experience improvement and increase in conversion rates, companies often need to derive meaningful conclusions from the data collected and establish a connection between them. This linked data is also referred to as journeys. Journeys improvise on well-grounded business decisions by pointing out the improvements needed after looking at the customer transactions as a whole. Journey Science facilitates anyone, to be a Journey Scientist, regardless of their skillset and enable them to easily generate an intelligent dataset that includes the commonly understood business context in an enterprise. Leading telecom businesses are implementing the Journey Science concept through a multi-channel, end-2-end view and linking together structured and unstructured data back to their strategic objectives, and quickly modifying them to ensure they cope up with the evolving customer demands efficiently.

Read more at: https://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/journey-science-in-telecom-take-customer-experience-to-the-next

Technological innovation occurring all across the countries has made it easier to crowd source it to provide with better and faster services, funding and navigation. Powered by social media, new tech and web 2.0, Crowd sourcing is a sourcing model by which it engages a ‘crowd’ or group for a common goal — often innovation, problem solving, or efficiency. Being a blend of two words- crowd and outsourcing, there is no doubt that crowd-sourcing is helping various organizations to tap new ideas and solutions in order to encourage deeper consumer engagements, co-creation opportunities and reduced costs. It cuts across various dimensions and enhances all social and business interactions. Not only it is used by private organizations the way they work, hire, research and market but also by Governments to empower people and to enable them to voice their opinions in crucial matters of the country. Crowdsourcing also has the potential to revolutionize the system by touching across various fields such as science and technology and education. 

Read more at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307438

One compact, focused and holistic approach for enhancing skills and developing the knowledge base of any newbie learner is micro learning. It makes any business context valuable in the ways by which it provides the right amount of information necessary to enable a learner to achieve their specific objectives and goals. Microlearning processes takes place either through evolving structures like weblog postings or social bookmark managers on the World Wide Web or through interface with micro content in designed media settings. Broadly speaking, it is used to describe the way people are actually doing informal learning and gaining knowledge based on Web 2.0 and wireless web technologies, in micro-content, multitasking environment and micro-media. Some of its vivid characteristics involve variety in the microlearning contents like game, video, quiz and so on; its granularity in narrow topics and concepts and brevity.  The benefits of microlearning spread over its capability in acquiring just-in-time learning and effective and varied learning. With its focus on isolated portions of learning, it is not so great when trying to connect incongruent elements of it into one consistent picture.

Read more at: https://www.efrontlearning.com/blog/2015/09/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-micro-learning-but-were-afraid-to-ask.html