Quick reads on the latest buzz in AI

September, 2023

AI is crossing new boundaries everyday . It is giving new work opportunities to a workforce who were on the margins, it’s making robots more efficient, it’s flying with the US Airforce, truth is that AI’s reach is getting more diverse, even eclectic, it’s magic is getting more pervasive.

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AI. Europe wants its own.

The European bloc’s politicians are sick of regulating American tech giants from afar. They want Europe to build its own generative AI, which is why so many people are rooting for Jonas Andrulis, an easy-going German with a carefully pruned goatee.

Ask people within Europe’s tech bubble which AI companies they’re excited about and the names that come up most are Mistral, a French startup that has raised $100 million without releasing any products, and the company Andrulis founded, Aleph Alpha, which sells generative AI as a service to companies and governments and already has thousands of paying customers.

Skeptics in the industry question whether the company can really compete in the same league as Google and OpenAI, whose ChatGPT launched the current boom in generative AI. But many in the European Union are hoping that Aleph Alpha can counteract American dominance in what some believe will be an era-defining technology. The interest Aleph Alpha has received so far—the company claims 10,000 customers across both business and government—shows it is able to compete, or at least coexist, with the emerging giants of the field, says Jörg Bienert, who is CEO of the German AI Association, an industry group.

Will an European AI prevail…time will tell.

AI. Drafted into the US Airforce

It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range.

But what really distinguishes the Air Force’s pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon

Essentially a next-generation drone, the Valkyrie is a prototype for what the Air Force hopes can become a potent supplement to its fleet of traditional fighter jets, giving human pilots a swarm of highly capable robot wingmen to deploy in battle. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats and then, after getting human sign-off, to move in for the kill.

AI Re imagining Neurodiverse employment with Mentra

Neurodiversity refers to the variation in neurological function that affects how individuals interact and understand the world. This includes people with Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette Syndrome, and more, whose brains operate differently.

Shockingly, 80% of this population is either unemployed or underemployed. And that’s where Mentra comes in - a company reframing the conversation around neurodivergence. With a revolutionary platform that helps these professionals find work by showcasing their strengths and potential to companies and matching them to great roles where they can thrive.

Mentra’s Microsoft AI-powered job-matching platform connects neurodivergent job seekers with suitable opportunities, emphasizing their strengths and skills. The platform aims to create a gamified environment for talent showcasing, upskilling access, and personalized career planning.

With Microsoft AI for Accessibility support, Mentra’s AI evaluates over 76 data points, including skills, accommodations, sensitivities, interests, and goals, surpassing traditional job fit criteria to prioritize long-term career success.

Mentra is making sure that many neurodiverse professionals are finding life far more fulfilling.

AI. Making robots more like humans when it comes to heavy lifting.

Imagine you want to carry a large, heavy box up a flight of stairs. You might spread your fingers out and lift that box with both hands, then hold it on top of your forearms and balance it against your chest, using your whole body to manipulate the box.

Humans are generally good at whole-body manipulation, but robots struggle with such tasks. To the robot, each spot where the box could touch any point on the carrier's fingers, arms, and torso represents a contact event that it must reason about. With billions of potential contact events, planning for this task quickly becomes intractable.

Now MIT researchers found a way to simplify this process, known as contact-rich manipulation planning. They use an AI technique called smoothing, which summarizes many contact events into a smaller number of decisions, to enable even a simple algorithm to quickly identify an effective manipulation plan for the robot.

While still in its early days, this method could potentially enable factories to use smaller, mobile robots that can manipulate objects with their entire arms or bodies, rather than large robotic arms that can only grasp using fingertips.

ChatGPT. Not so popular.

For all the talk of ChatGPT and its ilk representing a turning point in the world of work, few Americans think chatbots will have much of an impact on their jobs. New Pew research suggests only 24% of U.S. adults have even heard of ChatGPT, and just 19% of those people think their own roles face upheaval in the coming years. Well!