Important Innovations

  Professional Soccer Clubs Using AI To Prevent Player Injuries Source:  Stock Image of Soccer Match Gamechanging Tech A California based, AI company Zone7 is using artificial intelligence to analyze performance data on elite professional soccer players to predict, and thereby prevent, when they are at risk for injury.  A number of professional soccer teams in Scotland, Spain and elsewhere are sending their training, game and health monitoring data to Zone7.  Zone7 uses their algorithm to analyze the data against their huge data base on sports injuries. As part of its analytical base, the company uses 200 million hours of soccer data going back one year. On a daily basis, the company sends their client teams emails warning if  any of their players are in the "danger zone" of being injured. Impressive Results Spain's soccer team Getafe has been using the system for more than a year.  They say their team injuries are down 66%.  For every 3 injuries they ...

Turning Brain Activity to Text Source:  Stock Image of the Brain 97% Accuracy Rate Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have created a new artificial intelligence system that literally reads the mind with 97% accuracy.  The AI translates brain activity into complete sentences.  This is a huge breakthrough in innovation.  Nothing has come close to this AI system.  Previous systems attempting to "read your mind" were only 70% intelligible.   Machine Translation The researchers developed their system by mimicking machine translation.  They realized there are strong parallels between translating brain signals to text and machine translations between languages using neural networks. Machine translation does an entire sentence at once.  They designed their  new  AI system to convert brain activity into full sentences.  In fact, it can translate from human brain ...

Grocery Shopping with No Checkout Lines Source:  Amazon Amazon Tech - Amazon Go Amazon is introducing a grocery shopping experience with no checkout lines.  Your grocery shopping is monitored by cameras, machine learning and a smartphone app.  When you leave the supermarket, you're automatically billed for your purchases by Amazon. There are no checkout lines, no cashiers.  It's grocery shopping ease through new Amazon technology which it's expected to rollout and expand store operations in the first quarter of 2020.  The base technology is Amazon Go. Amazon Go Amazon is a global retailing behemoth created by entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and his mother, first to sell books.  It's made Jeff Bezos, by expanding his retail lines way beyond books, into the #1 or #2 richest person in the world.  It's only natural that Bezos would target grocery shopping through his proprietary online technology in a big way.  It looks like he's ready to greatly ...

Artificial Intelligence Bringing Rapid Restaurant & Retail Change AI at the Point of Sale Experts forecast that artificial intelligence and machine learning will bring tremendous innovation and change to restaurants, retail and hospitality in the next few years.  Big changes are already happening in restaurants utilizing artificial intelligence.  For a great news story, go to Important Innovations Collection: Artificial Intelligence and Restaurants Future : Rapid Retail Change Source: Stock Image of  Fast Food Artificial Intelligence at the Point of Sale Artificial intelligence and ma...

MIT Robot Plays Jenga Source:  MIT Remarkable Robotics MIT's latest robot is being called a new kind of intelligent robot.  It uses vision and touch to play Jenga, which requires an understanding of the forces of physics such as push, pull and spatial arrangement.  Through machine learning, the  new robot has interactive perception and sophisticated manipulation.  For a great news story on this, go to Important Innovations Collection: Jenga Playing Robot : Highly Advanced, New Kind of Robot Courtesy:  MIT MIT Robot Has Interactive Perception & Sophisticated Manipulation to Play Jenga ...

Geospatial Cloud Analytics Photo:  Courtesy of Descartes Labs - Fishing Boats off Singapore A New Mexico startup company Descartes Labs is receiving up to $7.2 million from the US government to bring geospatial data from satellites to the Cloud.   The volume of data is huge, in the terabytes, unwieldy and of the highest value. Descartes has been tasked by the government to use machine learning to process massive amounts of visual data from satellites. Images of Earth and Space Images of the Earth including heat imagery are available in massive volume from many satellites.  They contain rich and compelling information on such dynamic issues as changing global oil supplies, potential food shortages and climate change.  This is very big data from many sources that can't be fully capitalized on because it's not organized and centralized. Cloud Infrastructure Descartes Labs will build out cloud infrastructure to import, store, process and curate the data....

DARPA's AI Exploration Program The Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is aiming for an artificial intelligence & machine learning system that enables scientists and researchers to push the limits of science. Full Speed to Beat Global Competitors This DARPA push is on full speed.  They want to establish the feasibility of new AI concepts within 18 months.  The goal is to outpace AI scientific and technology discovery efforts globally. The program is called ASKE or Automating Scientific Knowledge Extraction. Fundamentals of Superpowered AI DARPA wants an AI system that rapidly aggregates scientific data and automatically identifies new data.  The system should automatically verify published scientific results and monitor in real time "fragile economic, political, social and environmental systems undergoing complex events."  The info will be integrated into a machine-curated model that generates top of the line hypotheses.  All t...

DARPA Goes After Practical, Competitive Uses for Quantum Computing Exponential Computing Power thru Quantum Computing The US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA wants to know how quantum computing can help the US surge ahead of technology competitors like China and Russia. Quantum computing uses the laws of quantum mechanics to accomplish complex data operations.  Unlike traditional computers that use bits, it uses qubits and delivers exponential computing power. DARPA Questions and Challenge DARPA specifically wants to know how quantum computing will practically impact AI, physical systems, machine learning, data analytics and enhancing distributed sensing.  This is a leading indicator of the future of technology and innovation as DARPA views it. Leading Edge of Where Quantum Computing is Taking Us - Harbinger of The Future DARPA is asking industry and academics for proposals to research the real possibilities of quantum computing.  The...

Computers Learn from Talking with You In Japan, researchers at Osaka University have developed a novel, computer learning technique.  Computers can learn new words during conversations with humans. Computer Knowledge Thru Dialogue The Japanese system works this way.  When a new word comes up in a conversation with a human, the computer guesses the category.  The computer makes confirmation requests to the human.  The computer uses the responses from the human to determine if its guess prediction was correct.  It does all of this thru machine learning techniques. The computer also uses previous learning from past conversations with humans. Dialogue Systems Between Humans & Computers Experts believe there's a big future for dialogue systems between computers and humans.  Computers will grow increasingly smarter by talking with humans.  It's forecasted that computers will also have the ability to customize their responses to the users' situ...

DARPA's SafeDocuments Program for Internet DARPA's newest project is targeted at ensuring the integrity of documents that move over the web.  The goal is to improve the ability of software to spot when documents, whether text, video or image, have been maliciously tampered with.  DARPA is the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency.  It's the moving force behind the creation of the internet, cloud computing, drones and much more. Safer Internet Requires Safer Electronic Documents DARPA's looking for better ways to detect and reject invalid and hacked data without impacting the functioning of the data formats themselves.  As DARPA officials put it, to create a safer internet requires safer electronic documents.  According to DARPA SafeDocs Manager Sergey Bratus:  "We're looking for ways to reduce the complexity of electronic document exchange and minimize the means of exploitation from cybercriminals to nation states." Increasing Problem ...

Gentle Electric Pulse Boosts Memory University of Pennsylvania Innovation Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated that gentle, imperceptible electric impulses passing through the brain improve memory and information retention. 15% Improvement In fact, the electric pulses increase memory and information retention up to 15%.  The electrical stimulation is precisely timed and targeted to the left side of the brain in the left lateral temporal cortex. Real-Time The Penn team developed a system to monitor the brain's activity real-time and trigger stimulation based on the activity.  The electrical pulses are unfelt and at a safe level. Exciting, Personalized Machine Learning Models Twenty five neurosurgical patients being treated for epilepsy participated in the study at clinical sites around the US.  The scientists developed patient-specific, personalized machine learning models. They programmed the stimulator to deliver pulses only when me...

New AI Tech Spots Pneumonia and Eye Disease AI Speeding Treatment Scientists at the University of California San Diego have developed an artificial intelligence system that accelerates treatment of pneumonia and retinal disease.  The diagnoses take 30 seconds and the accuracy is close to 100%. Transfer Learning on 200,000 Patient Scans It's a computational tool using AI and machine learning techniques.  The technique is called transfer learning in which knowledge gained in solving one problem is stored in the computer and applied to a different but similar problem.  The AI system reviewed 200,000 patient scans. Highly Accurate Results This new AI system, first reported in the journal Cell, has spot-on accuracy.  The accuracy rate for eye disease is 95% and for pneumonia, differentiating between viral and bacterial pneumonia, is 90%.  The turnaround time is 30 seconds. Future of AI in Medicine The UC San Diego researchers say the future of better, co...

No Programming, AI Learns from Experience - Radical New Approach Researchers are developing a novel platform for artificial intelligence that can teach computers to learn like humans do.  The program is being developed by scientists at the University of Texas at San Antonio.  It's cognitive learning that is teaching computers to learn without specifically programming them to do it.  This is a very radical AI system and approach that's based on the human ability to learn from experience. Cloud Based System Built on 5 Centuries The scientists say this involves an entirely new platform for machine learning to teach computers to learn like we do.  They built a cloud-based platform based on their studying how education and understanding have evolved over the past 5 centuries.  This to help computers develop deductive reasoning. Goal - Smarter Machines to Help Humans Their goal is to teach machines to be smarter.  To do that they studied ...

Summer Sun Effects Skin Cancer An artificial intelligence system detects skin cancer better than leading dermatologists.  That's the conclusion of a study done by researchers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.  The accuracy of the AI system and the opportunity it provides to detect skin cancer early is highly significant. Globally, 232,000 new cases of melanoma are reported every year. AI Deep Learning The researchers trained a form of artificial intelligence or machine learning known as a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN). The system was trained to identify skin cancer by showing it more than 100,000 images of malignant melanomas, which is the most deadly form of skin cancer, as well as benign moles. Revealing Results The CNN was tested on 300 images to determine if they were melanomas or benign.  58 top international dermatologists from 17 nations made the same evaluations.  The AI CNN system was 95% accurate in diagnosing melanoma...