We worry about face recognition just as we worried about databases - we worry what happens if they contain bad data and we worry what bad people might do with them.
My favourite example of what can go wrong here comes from a project for recognising cancer in photos of skin. The obvious problem is that you might not have an appropriate distribution of samples of skin in different tones. But another problem that can arise is that dermatologists tend to put rulers in the photo of cancer, for scale - so if all the examples of ‘cancer’ have a ruler and all the examples of ‘not-cancer’ do not, that might be a lot more statistically prominent than those small blemishes. You inadvertently built a ruler-recogniser instead of a cancer-recogniser.
The structural thing to understand here is that the system has no understanding of what it’s looking at - it has no concept of skin or cancer or colour or gender or people or even images. It doesn’t know what these things are any more than a washing machine knows what clothes are. It’s just doing a statistical comparison of data sets. So, again - what is your data set? How is it selected? What might be in it that you don’t notice - even if you’re looking? How might different human groups be represented in misleading ways? And what might be in your data that has nothing to do with people and no predictive value, yet affects the result? Are all your ‘healthy’ photos taken under incandescent light and all your ‘unhealthy’ pictures taken under LED light? You might not be able to tell, but the computer will be using that as a signal.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: face recognition is a very powerful solution that machine learning has made possible. This very good post describes what happens if we do not carefully determine what is allowable and what is not with this new technology.
Technology is changing the face of the energy industry. Communities are using blockchain to sell solar power to each other. Big oil and gas companies are using artificial intelligence to map out potential extraction points. Disaster zones and emerging markets are moving directly to microgrids and away from centralized grid models.
In this briefing, we cover:
Major corporates that are backing blockchain technology to improve energy transactions, like Siemens, which has partnered with LO3 to launch the Brooklyn Microgrid
The implications of startups like Bidgley that are helping utilities disaggregate the massive deluge of data that has come from a new wave of connected devices
The role that artificial intelligence can play in the industry, from making grids smarter and more responsive to improving storage efficiency
What a sturdy cybersecurity offering might look like in the energy industry
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the impact of blockchain goes way beyond bitcoin fiasco and has potential to help in energy trading for example. Of cours AI will impact energy as all other sectors. more in this research briefing.
Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has plans to colonize Mars, and thinks AI may turn humans into its pets. Here's how Musk's companies are actually taking on virtually every industry.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: impressive to see how ar and wide his impact has been.
When it comes to specific start-up sub-sector leadership, we see Montreal emerge as one of the global hotspots for artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups. Since 2016, more than $1 billion has been invested in AI companies located there (including notable startup Element AI), and it has the largest concentration of AI academic researchers in the world. Montreal also hosts the NeurIPS conference, the largest AI event held annually in the world.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I am part of the dotcom startups of late 1990s in Montreal. I see a much more vibrant ecosystem to support startups and find this article from the World Economic Forum spot on. Most notably, the list of 12 cities only has one in North America, all others are Asia Pac (+Melbourne!). So we are in a good place here in Montreal, otherwise I advise my kids to GO WEST (beyond California...)!
Machine learning is the process of a machine attempting to accomplish a task, independent of human intervention, more efficiently and more effectively with every passing attempt i.e learning phase.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: in recent discussions I needed to place the current AI hype in context of the computer revolution. The concept dates back to the early computer days in the 1950s but the current hype is only 10 years old, tracing back to the time when CPU power and data became available in large volume at cheap prices, circa 2008.
Amherst Holdings CEO Sean Dobson made a fortune in the housing crash. Now he's profiting from properties that most investors wouldn’t touch.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: often people wonder why AI is such a big thing. The reason is simple: it will impact *Everything*. This story is about using data and AI to drastically change the home renovation business. Can't get more low tech than that...!
In the near future, all media buying will be automated. Being good at buying media will no longer be a competitive advantage.
Based on my research and work I’m doing with some of the top CMOs in the world, here are my bold predictions for what advertising will look like in Canada by 2025:
Bold prediction #1: Because of the continuing shift to online advertising, rapid improvements in Machine Learning (ML), and the rise of programmatic, almost all media buying will be digitized and fully automated.
Bold prediction #2: Driven by this digitization, most paid ads—across most channels—will be measurable and optimizable in real time.
Bold prediction #3: This will transform brand marketing, which will start to look a lot more like performance marketing.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: if you went into marketing because you did not like math or science, well I think the future will be very very painful... ;-)
The retail industry is rewriting the laws of physics. Change is coming at an ever faster rate each year and 2030 will be upon us before we know it. Explore the world in 2030 and the future of retail 2030.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the report is not available for free but the 42 slide summary is a great overview of key trends that are presented with observations and outcome.
LUMA is the leading investment bank focused on digital media and marketing. We provide strategic advice, proven M&A expertise, and extensive industry knowledge to optimize outcomes for our clients.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a clever overview of the digital media world that highlights the importance of digital technology and in particular of unified customer data to break down silos. Very true indeed!
These are the top 10 skills you will need in the workplace in 2020.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: workers skills must evolve as the digital transformation sweeps across the market. A good combination of social and technical skills appears to be the winning combo.
There is strong evidence that the supply of top-tier AI talent does not meet the demand. Yet there is little visibility on precisely how scarce this talent is or where it is concentrated around the world. This report summarizes our second survey of the scope and breadth of the worldwide AI talent pool.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: always good to know where we stand on AI and this report from element.ai jfgagné provides the data. However, one must be careful as he only looks at researchers - the field of qualified professionals moving into AI is growing FAST. And tools, frameworks and systems to enable AI use is growing at an even faster clip, making AI development much easier even though researcher numbers are limited. Interesting to notice the large presence of Canada in the numbers...
This document is intended to help those with a basic knowledge of machine learning get the benefit of Google's best practices in machine learning. It presents a style for machine learning, similar to the Google C++ Style Guide and other popular guides to practical programming. If you have taken a class in machine learning, or built or worked on a machine-learned model, then you have the necessary background to read this document.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Google is arguably one of the most advanced organizations in the world in their use of machine learning to improve and augment their tools. Learn from their experience in this very detailed 43 rule document on how to tackle your first AI project.
The Cheapest ( Only 25$ ) and luxurious Asus 6 mobile has been launched you guys must see this mobile and also but this mobile in a very cheap rate only in 25$.
A toolkit for teams building human-centered AI products.
The People + AI Guidebook recommendations are based on data and insights from over a hundred individuals across Google product teams, industry experts, and academic research. As our research continues to evolve, so will the way we approach product design. Expect updates to the Guidebook as the field of AI moves forward—think of it as a living document.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: AI is maturing so that we are starting to see emerge some best practice, including this one from Google.
We focus in this paper on the long run impacts over the next 20 years. Given a base year of 2017, our projections therefore focus on impacts in 2037. This long time horizon also allows us to ignore short term ups and downs in employment rates linked to the economic cycle. We estimate that AI and related technologies could displace around 26% of existing jobs in China over the next two decades.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this report from PWC provides an interesting viewpoint on the impact of AI on jobs within 20 years. The ripple effect of this work displacement will create opportunities and challenges for governments, cities and businesses alike as many workers will have to move from manual work in agriculture and manufacturing to the service industry. This will impact emerging countries like China more than the UK or Canada because our transition has started a long time ago. It is interesting to see that in reality job loss will be quite important in certain industries.
“We chose right from the very start to not hide the technology,” Hanrahan explained.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: when I ask about what the "store of the future" looks like I often get descriptions of a robot-filled location with huge displays and computer kiosks. In fact the trend is to HIDE the technology to make the store experience more and more about what you had when you visited the general store of the past. Walk in and speak to an employee that is very knowledgeable about you, your needs and the products they have to sell. The only difference is that this knowledge comes from AI, cameras, sensors, and all kind of technologies that support and enhance the retail employee to make you believe they know you and their products. THAT is the magic of the store of the future. Get used to it.
A superb case study for the way Industry 4.0 is impacting the retail sector. Great for use in the study of technological impacts as part of a PESTLE analysis looking at a business' macro operating environment.
This artefact explores Walmart's new technology and its aims to improve the customer shopping experience. Named the 'Intelligent Retail Lab, or 'IRL' for short, this utilises Artificial Intelligence (AI) to track inventory availability and compare to upcoming promotional demand. In brief, it ensures that customers can confirm that their desired item is in stock prior to visiting the store via the app. Walmart is exploiting AI for competitive advantage, aiming to improve customers' perception of reliability and overall experience. However, the article doesn’t actually mention the words ‘competitive advantage’, which will necessitate students adopting critical thinking skills to evaluate where the advantage occurs and justify why. Within the unit, this artefact will be utilised as a stimulus item for students to discuss competitive advantage through embedding it as a link to Flip Grid. Flip Grid is an amazing website and app that allows a teacher to create a closed community topic where students respond to set discussion questions through posting authentic videos explaining their answer. Students will first view the artefact, reading through Walmart’s new Artificial Intelligence technology and then read the related questions displayed on Flip Grid. Students will then respond to each question through Flip Grid’s unique video features to respond to the questions in the topic through recording videos of themselves answering these designated questions. The learning is transformed as students will utilise the higher order cognitive verbs of evaluation and justification when viewing this article to answer a number of questions on competitive advantage within this scenario. These questions and the article are embedded within Flip Grid, allowing the task to be redefined, engaging students.
The Technology Radar is an opinionated guide to technology frontiers. The Radar captures the output of the Technology Advisory Board’s discussions in a format that provides value to a wide range of stakeholders, from developers to CTOs. The content is intended as a concise summary.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: an update to the technology radar - always good to stay abreast of the new tools for software development.
I found this visual of the software development landscape appealing and interesting as one perspective of seeing the forest through the trees. Download the free PDF report for a thorough review.
This conversation happened after the release of the paper from our group at MIT on driver functional vigilance during use of Tesla's Autopilot. The Tesla team reached out to me offering a podcast conversation with Mr Musk. I accepted, with full control of questions I could ask and choice of what is released publicly. I ended up editing out nothing of substance. This was an insightful discussion on various aspects of Tesla Autopilot that I hope catalyzes further nuanced conversation on the future of AI-assisted driving. Starts at 2:35. The full outline of the video is as follows: 0:00 Introduction 2:35 Start of conversation: Autopilot motivation 4:01 Display the vehicle's perception of the driving scene 7:11 Algorithms, data, and hardware development 10:23 Edge cases and common cases in driving 12:18 Navigate on Autopilot 13:57 Hardware and software path toward fully autonomy 17:08 Driver supervision of Autopilot 20:13 Human side of Tesla Autopilot (driver functional vigilance) 23:13 Driver monitoring 24:30 Operational design domain 26:57 Securing Autopilot against adversarial machine learning 28:29 Narrow AI and artificial general intelligence 30:10 Physics view of love 31:53 First question for an artificial general intelligence system
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this is a very geeky interview with Elon Musk on autopilot and the future of self-driving cars. Thoughtful, structured and informative it brings to light a very strong point: the value of a car lies in its capacity to self drive and every Tesla has this feature already builtin. Basically it means that cars will soon cross the threshold of autonomy, opening a whole new era for personal transportation. But more importantly I believe for businesses that rely on delivery logistics: ecommerce of course but also groceries, medical supplies, etc.
Driverless vehicles are hardly a novel concept anymore, but what is really going on in the autonomous car industry? How do self-driving cars work? Who are making these cars? Why is it taking this long? This article will answer these questions.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this article provides a good overview of the current state of the art in self-driving cars, the players involved, an idea of the investments required and a list of challenges that explains why we are where we are and still have to drive our cars on the road today...
At the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas this week, billed as the world’s largest conference for retail and e-commerce innovation, fashion tech startup Heuritech launched the world's first artificial intelligence (AI) service that can predict fashion trends based on the analysis of millions of images shared every day on social media.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: retailers do not need to worry about AI too much: all product vendors will include AI into their products. However retailers need to start collecting and cleanup their data because without it AI will not deliver expected results.
WHY IT MATTERS: retailers do not need to worry about AI too much: all product vendors will include AI into their products. However retailers need to start collecting and cleanup their data because without it AI will not deliver expected results.
Average open rates are between 15% and 25% range, depending on industry, so for the 75% to 85% of recipients who do not open any given email they receive, the subject line IS the email. The ultimate email marketing guide is free to discover the trends that will impact email marketing in 2019.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a recent survey provides numerous insights into email marketing tools and techniques. A great reference with numerous examples, tools and technologies. One highlight of the report are all the tools available that include AI and machine learning technologies to help craft the best content.
Beyond the world of email marketing in the wider world of business, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on productivity and employment has risen to prominence in the last two plus years as more affordable systems have become available from vendors. This has naturally prompted marketers to review the potential marketing applications of AI. To answer this question, in our guide to marketing applications of AI , Smart Insights has reviewed the opportunities and tools for AI across the customer lifecycle. This report highlights the critical trends and techniques that will help you transform your brand-customer relationships using the most powerful channel in your marketing mix: email!
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a recent survey provides numerous insights into email marketing tools and techniques. A great reference with numerous examples, tools and technologies. One highlight of the report is the role that AI plays in the creation and delivery of email campaigns in the coming years.
In 2019, email marketing remains one the most effective techniques for digital marketers, so keeping up-to-date with the latest trends, best practice techniques, and technologies for email marketing remains extremely important. Our recent Managing Digital Marketing in 2019 report shows that over two-thirds of marketers rated email marketing as providing the highest or medium return-on-investment (ROI) when compared to other channels.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a recent survey provides numerous insights into email marketing tools and techniques. A great reference with numerous examples, tools and technologies. One highlight of the report is the importance / ROI of email but also ads, SEO and content marketing: there is no silver bullet but rather a good mix of solutions.
The experts predict that AI will outperform humans in the next 10 years in tasks such as translating languages (by 2024), writing high school essays (by 2026), and driving trucks (by 2027). But many other tasks will take much longer for machines to master. AI won’t be better than humans at working in retail until 2031, able to write a bestselling book until 2049, or capable of working as a surgeon until 2053.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: we hear too much about AI with many experts fighting hard to make the difference between AI, machine learning and deep learning. My summary is that AI is a long way in the future but that machine learning impacts will be well within my lifetime - 10 to 25 years from now. This is what I prepare my customers for in my strategic plans.
The AI Index is an open, not-for-profit project to track activity and progress in AI. Our Mission is to ground the conversation about AI in data. The AI Index is an effort to track, collate, distill, and visualize data relating to artificial intelligence. It aspires to be a comprehensive resource of data and analysis for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop intuitions about the complex field of AI.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this reports helps understand where we stand regarding AI. As I read this report and others I realize how much effort is being devoted to AI yet how much work and road still lies ahead.
Automated Insights helps organizations make better business decisions, faster. By empowering data-driven organizations with their proprietary natural language generation (NLG) platform, Wordsmith, businesses are able to deliver the right insight, to the right person, at the right time and in the easiest-to-understand medium—the written word. Wordsmith makes exploring, discovering, and communicating insights easier than ever before.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: AI is becoming easier to use in real world applications, as evidenced by this recent forrester wave. It positions a number of tools for natural language generation to help with creation of analytics reports that present results in textual format instead of numbers and charts as is often the case with report generators. Good to know.
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WHY IT MATTERS: face recognition is a very powerful solution that machine learning has made possible. This very good post describes what happens if we do not carefully determine what is allowable and what is not with this new technology.