Skip to main content

Home/ GAVNet Collaborative Curation/ Group items tagged bets

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Bill Fulkerson

Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18 - No Cached
  •  
    "With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
Bill Fulkerson

It's not all Pepes and trollfaces - memes can be a force for good - The Verge - 0 views

  •  
    "How the 'emotional contagion' of memes makes them the internet's moral conscience By Allie Volpe Aug 27, 2018, 11:30am EDT Illustration by Alex Castro & Keegan Larwin SHARE Newly single, Jason Donahoe was perusing Tinder for the first time since it started integrating users' Instagram feeds. Suddenly, he had an idea: follow the Instagram accounts of some of the women he'd been interested in but didn't match with on the dating service. A few days later, he considered taking it a step further and direct messaging one of the women on Instagram. After all, the new interface of the dating app seemed to encourage users to explore other areas of potential matches' online lives, so why not take the initiative to reach out? Before he had a chance, however, he came across the profile of another woman whose Tinder photo spread featured a meme with Parks and Recreation character Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Ben Schwartz) leaning into the face of Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) with the caption: hey I saw you on Tinder but we didn't match so I found your Instagram you're so beautiful you don't need to wear all that makeup ahah I bet you get a lot of creepy dm's but I'm not like all those other guys message me back beautiful btw what's your snap "I was like, 'Oh shit, wow,'" Donahoe says. Seeing his potential jerk move laid out so plainly as a neatly generalized joke, he saw it in a new light. "I knew a) to be aware of that, and b) to cut that shit out … It prompted self-reflection on my part." THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MEMES STRIKE A CULTURAL CHORD AND CAN GUIDE AND EVEN INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR Donahoe says memes have resonated with him particularly when they depict a "worse, extreme version" of himself. For Donahoe, the most successful memes are more than just jokes. They "strike a societal, cultural chord" and can be a potent cocktail for self-reflection as tools that can guide and even influence behavior. In the months leading up to the 2016 US
Bill Fulkerson

Team warns negative emissions technologies may not solve climate crisis - 0 views

  •  
    team led by researchers at the University of Virginia cautions that when it comes to climate change, the world is making a bet it might not be able to cover.
Steve Bosserman

Which Industries Are Investing in Artificial Intelligence? - 0 views

  • The term artificial intelligence typically refers to automation of tasks by software that previously required human levels of intelligence to perform. While machine learning is sometimes used interchangeably with AI, machine learning is just one sub-category of artificial intelligence whereby a device learns from its access to a stream of data.When we talk about AI spending, we’re typically talking about investment that companies are making in building AI capabilities. While this may change in the future, McKinsey estimates that the vast majority of spending is done internally or as an investment, and very little of it is done purchasing artificial intelligence applications from other businesses.
  • 62% of AI spending in 2016 was for machine learning, twice as much as the second largest category computer vision. It’s worth noting that these categories are all types of “narrow” (or “weak”) forms of AI that use data to learn about and accomplish a specific narrowly defined task. Excluded from this report is “general” (or “strong”) artificial intelligence which is more akin to trying to create a thinking human brain.
  • The McKinsey survey mostly fits well as evidence supporting Cross’s framework that large profitable industries are the most fertile grounds of AI adoption. Not surprisingly, Technology is the industry with highest AI adoption and financial services also makes the top three as Cross would predict.Notably, automotive and assembly is the industry with the second highest rate of AI adoption in the McKinsey survey. This may be somewhat surprising as automotive isn’t necessarily an industry with the reputation for high margins. However, the use cases of AI for developing self-driving cars and cost savings using machine learning to improve manufacturing and procurement efficiencies are two potential drivers of this industry’s adoption.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • AI jobs are much more likely to be unfilled after 60 days compared to the typical job on Indeed, which is only unfilled a quarter of the time. As the demand for AI talent continues to grow faster than the supply, there is no indication this hiring cycle will become quicker anytime soon.
  • One thing we know for certain is that it is very expensive to attract AI talent, given that starting salaries for entry-level talent exceed $300,000. A good bet is that the companies that invest in AI are the ones with healthy enough profit margins that they can afford it.
Steve Bosserman

Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform - 0 views

  • Crispr, the powerful gene-editing tool, is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including human cells. So many people want to use it—from academic researchers to agtech companies to biopharma firms—that new companies are popping up to staunch the demand. Companies like Synthego, which is using a combination of software engineering and hardware automation to become the Amazon of genome engineering. And Inscripta, which wants to be the Apple. And Twist Bioscience, which could be the Intel
  • They’re betting biology will be the next great computing platform, DNA will be the code that runs it, and Crispr will be the programming language.
  • “Being able to do that in a parallel way is the novel part,” says Paul Dabrowski, who estimates that Synthego cuts down the time it takes for a scientists to perform gene edits from several months to just one.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • his company’s first move was to release a different gene-editing enzyme called MAD7—you can think of it like a Crispr/Cas9 knockoff, but legal—free for R&D uses. Inscripta will charge a single-digit royalty, far below market standards, to use MAD7 in manufacturing products or therapeutics.
  • We’re trying to get more people into the game now, by democratizing access to this family of enzymes,” he says. It’s a page from the Steve Jobs playbook; get them hooked on the MADzyme platform, down the line sell them personal hardware.
1 - 14 of 14
Showing 20 items per page