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AI May Find Diseases in MRI Scans That Doctors Might Miss

9/3/2023

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An artificial intelligence (AI) platform developed by a British health tech business can analyze MRI data to look for early signs of sickness. The company's strategy, which employs imaging biomarkers, promises better disease diagnosis and treatment decision-making.

Twinn Health claims to be advancing longevity and preventive healthcare thanks to a $500 million venture capital fund from Saudi Aramco.

Using MRI technology in the medical field is nothing new. Developments in AI have made it easier to identify specific disorders in MRI scans. Their wider applicability in disease detection and lengthening lifespan is still in its infancy.

“Usually, when you do an MRI today, it’s one MRI scan for one single diagnosis,” Wareed Alenaini, founder and CEO of Twinn Health, explains in an interview with Longevity Technology, citing kidney stones as an example.

“You do the MRI. The doctor looks at the kidney stones, writes the report, and then the scan data gets archived, and will probably never be checked again,” Alenaini continues. “That’s where Twinn comes in: we’re extracting additional insights from MRI scans that may not have been the primary focus of the physician.”

By combining MRI and AI, Twinn Health hopes to usher in a new era in healthcare by identifying and treating age-related disorders at an early stage. The company's aggressive strategy calls for addressing liver disease and age-related weakness.

“We’re using technology to make chronic disease prevention scalable,” Alenaini told the website, which is published by First Longevity and backed by Marco Polo Securities.

Alenaini, a Saudi native with a doctorate in bioimaging from Imperial College London, developed the idea for Twinn Health while researching the patterns of the human body in MRI pictures and their relationship to illness progression.

Twinn's primary area of interest is metabolic disease, which is a trifecta of diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. Because of how susceptible these disorders make people are to serious health problems like coronary heart disease and stroke. Twinn's AI platform examines MRI pictures for potentially dangerous hidden fatty deposits surrounding organs, which are an important sign of heart disease even in healthy people.

Alenaini asserted initial tests had produced encouraging findings, with a 95% accuracy rate in 2021, which were later corroborated by actual data and NHS doctors in the UK in 2022.

Alenaini claims that Twinn's patented artificial intelligence algorithm can predict metabolic abnormalities up to a half-decade in advance.

Alenaini told Longevity Technology that the company aims to hold four additional patents, address three more conditions, and amass a million data points to showcase their scalability and accessibility.

Twinn's idea is completely in line with the growing global interest in longevity.

“As the longevity field evolves and with the emergence of more healthy longevity clinics, we see ourselves as the most accurate diagnostic platform that can support this,” she said. “We are currently focusing on getting FDA approval for the American market, but our next focus will be the Middle East because we have seen a very significant push into longevity in that part of the world.”

Future disease targets include age-related frailty (sarcopenia) and liver disease.
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Twinn Health is currently looking for more funding as it aims to expand into more illness indications. Early funding efforts were concentrated on metabolic disease, but the company is now prepared to expand into additional disease pathways, further solidifying its dedication to longevity.

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Generative AI Is Coming to Word, Excel, and More

8/6/2023

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Microsoft has recently dominated the tech news cycle as a result of its $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, and a flurry of new products like Bing Chat. The Redmond behemoth isn't done either; it's getting ready to introduce a brand-new AI-powered assistant to its office suite. Dubbed Microsoft 365 Copilot, the feature will automate tasks like writing emails, summarizing meetings, and even making beautiful PowerPoint presentations. Even though it all seems too good to be true, Microsoft's initial demos show promise.
Microsoft Copilot 365 is a brand-new generative AI technology that helps with office chores including document drafting, spreadsheet updating, and meeting summaries. It can be found in a number of Microsoft 365 applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Here is a brief summary of Microsoft 365 Copilot's features:
  • Copilot may generate a whole document from a brief prompt. Write a cover letter for the position of a senior software developer, for instance.
  • Copilot for PowerPoint can assist cut down on text in slides, add AI-generated visuals, and condense a lengthy presentation into a small number of slides.
  • If you're working with a lot of data in Excel, Copilot can swiftly analyze it and produce a comprehensible graphic.
  • If your company utilizes Microsoft Teams, Copilot lets you ask about specific team members, catch up on unread chats, and summarize meetings.
  • In Microsoft's email software Outlook, Copilot can change the tone of your writing to appear formal, approachable, or any other way you like.
  • Microsoft has also incorporated Copilot into OneNote and Loop for digital note-takers. This integration might be compared to a virtual assistant you can ask to rapidly categorize, search for, and summarize your notes.
In addition to these instances, Microsoft has created Copilot to operate throughout the whole app library. As an illustration, you could ask Copilot to produce a report based on a different Excel file in a new Word document that you have created. Similar to this, you may request that Copilot import Microsoft Teams notes into OneNote and condense the text before adding it to a new note.
Microsoft 365 Copilot's approach may sound familiar because Google already offers Duet AI for Workspace, a service that competes with it. It's not as feature-rich as the Microsoft examples shown thus far, though. Here is a brief comparison of the AI-powered productivity features offered by Google and Microsoft today. Things may change in the future.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Google Duet AI for Workspace
Supported apps
Entire Microsoft 365 Office suite plus Microsoft Teams
Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Google Meet

Interoperability
Can reference files across other Microsoft apps
Currently limited; Duet AI cannot see the contents of a different document or file

Image generation
Yes, via OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 image generator
Yes, presumed via Adobe Firefly

Language model
OpenAI GPT-4
Google PaLM 2

Current availability
Closed, private testing for paid customers
Available to general public for free via waitlist

 
On paper, Microsoft 365 Copilot appears to be quite promising, but the company hasn't yet made it available to the public. When the feature was first revealed in March 2023, a specific release date was not specified. A few months later, Microsoft has only recently begun distributing the functionality to a select set of trusted testers. In the beginning, Google used a similar approach with their generative AI feature.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program has been publicized by the firm thus far. However, Microsoft isn't allowing members of the general public to sign up for access to Copilot, in contrast to the Bing Chat waitlist or Google's Bard chatbot that slowly became live. Instead, it's a limited-access program open exclusively to 600 paying users. That's correct, neither you nor I can just sign up to utilize Microsoft 365 Copilot for nothing.

It's unclear if Microsoft 365 Copilot will be free to use.

It's not yet known if Microsoft 365 Copilot will ever be available for free. It might nevertheless occur given the firm's aggressive AI effort with its chatbot and Bing Image Creator. Google is another rival of Microsoft, where anyone may freely sign up for a waitlist to immediately get generative AI in Google Search, Gmail, and Docs.

On the other hand, operating Microsoft's AI features is expensive. Large language models use up a lot of computational power, especially sophisticated ones like GPT-4. So it's simple to understand why using Copilot could require a revised Microsoft 365 subscription.
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How to Prepare to Thrive Professionally in an AI-Integrated Workforce

7/16/2023

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The complicated relationship that humanity has had with its own technological creations throughout  time has shaped many executive’s views on how to adapt to change and remain in demand in any industry or profession. The various cycles of emerging technology always enlighten, frighten, and inspire the masses until we adjust and change our mindsets to embrace the disruption.

Even though it has been present for decades, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently being promoted as the dramatic change that threatens to upend our society. People are terrified as they try to imagine how it will change the way they live their lives, how they view their employment, and what the future of their professions might bring.

The emergence of the desktop computer occurred in the 1990s, the internet and digital media in the 2000s, and streaming, the cloud, and instant content availability emerged in the 2010s.

Each transformation had a big impact on many job markets in addition to how people consumed media. It is simple to understand where the healthy dosage of anxiety is coming from because, in a capitalist society, it is assumed that most businesses will take advantage of every opportunity to maximize profits while utilizing the least amount of human resources. However, these significant changes also present a chance for individuals who can develop into the new roles that will unavoidably be formed during periods of widespread innovation.

Your ability to contribute significantly is continually being redefined. The most crucial thing for people to do to protect themselves in their careers after any new digital wave is to be ready to upskill their current professional repertoire.

Change is not inherently good or bad, it's just change, and humans have always adapted, for better or worse.

When a new standard is established, a revolution takes place, opening up limitless possibilities for what follows. In the case of the automotive industry, the enormous benefits of a technology-driven shift were obvious: Workplaces became safer, decision-making became more efficient, and, despite the loss of traditional assembly jobs, a variety of new roles were created to meet needs for maintaining and improving the machinery as well as facilitating integration within the workforce.

It was the beginning of a new era as much as it was the conclusion of the previous one.

This can be observed in other industries as well. Technology has improved our ability to work throughout history, but it has also given us the chance to explore brand-new, interesting job choices that just weren't possible before.

Automation and other technological developments make it possible to eliminate physically hard or hazardous occupations, potentially increasing accessibility and allowing some individuals to move into positions that they find more rewarding and intellectually engaging.

The worry that AI would supplant humans in the workforce is exaggerated and bombastic. One of the fundamental things to understand about automation and AI is that these technologies can only function to their full potential when operating inside a set of predetermined parameters. In the AI-integrated future of work, some human input—and controlling the chaos that results from human nature’s unpredictable nature—will still be essential, but it will be up to us to decide how we fit into that evolution.

Many people will have more job possibilities if more people are consciously made to invest in their own ongoing growth. Finding methods to integrate AI into your workflow to improve what you can already create will be the new "cheat code" for a career; doing so will be essential to being relevant in a job market that is fast changing.

Ironically, the rise of AI and automation in the white-collar sector will promote better emotional intelligence at work. AI and automation will improve white-collar workers' talents by automating tedious and repetitive jobs, allowing them to concentrate on more complex tasks that call for creativity, critical thinking, and emotional quotient (EQ).

Theoretically, because workers will have more free time to pursue initiatives that call for a higher degree of strategic thinking, they will have a higher possibility of discovering passion within their place of employment.
One of the most crucial skills white-collar professionals will need to have in the future is the ability to engage with AI tools and algorithms effectively. This requires developing digital literacy and technological competency. The acquisition of ever-valuable transferrable skills, such adaptability, sophisticated problem-solving, and interpersonal communication, will be stressed even more because of the changing nature of the work market.

The larger conversation on how to enter the new era without making the same mistakes as in the past should center on the significance of government, educational, and commercial partnerships to enable a seamless transition to a future that embraces AI and automation.

It's crucial to exert pressure on legislative authorities for regulations that promote and, in some circumstances, require firms to invest in job reskilling and upskilling projects as AI becomes the dominant emerging technology.

The discussion about the future of work in an AI-integrated society must include the development of easily accessible, lifelong learning opportunities to enable people to adapt to the changing job market and the support of strong pathways for blue-collar workers and others to build livelihoods in trades and fields projected to endure.

If a wider support system of retraining and relocation opportunities can enable a transition away from the costs of employer-provided healthcare and student loan debt, perhaps AI will one day be remembered as a catalyst for improvements in the freedom found through career and social mobility. One can only hope.
While it's normal and even prudent to be concerned about how automation and artificial intelligence will affect the way we work, we must also look forward to this future with hope. Whether or not we're ready for it, it's coming. We can influence a future in which people and technology collaborate to build a more affluent and fulfilling society by acknowledging the potential benefits, preparing ourselves via constant learning, and lobbying for favorable policies.

The secret is to embrace change and seize the upcoming chances. We should all be prepared to embrace the idea that disruption and change always hold the promise of a better future.

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New Thomson Reuters Research Reveals Legal, Tax and Accounting Professionals Are Cautiously Optimistic About Generative AI

7/9/2023

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Thomson Reuters, a global content and technology company, recently released new research on generative AI that gauged the sentiment of professionals across legal, tax, and accounting firms in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The research sought to better understand how the technology is perceived and applied within the professional services industry. The report uncovered a mix of optimism and caution in the adoption of generative AI. 

"Generative AI has the capacity to disrupt and redefine the professional landscape, but it is clear from our findings that there is a trust gap with professionals," said Steve Hasker, President and CEO, Thomson Reuters. "The future of professional work is set to be revolutionized by generative AI, and as an industry, we need to work together to find the right balance between the benefits of technology and any unintended consequences. We believe this will help our customers to first trust the transformative power of generative AI, and then harness the opportunity to shape the future of their professions." 

Amongst the professionals surveyed, the potential for generative AI is undeniably recognized; 78% of respondents believe generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can enhance legal or accounting work, with the proportion slightly higher for legal (82%) than for tax (73%). About half (52%) of all respondents believe generative AI should be used for legal and tax work.  

However, despite the research sharing strong feelings about generative AI’s potential utility, many within the legal and tax fields are still weighing their options before adopting the technology. Only 4% of respondents are currently using generative AI in their operations, with an additional 5% planning to do so. Interestingly, tax and accounting firms are more open to the idea, with a 15% adoption or planned adoption rate. 

Among those who have adopted or are planning to adopt generative AI technologies, research was the primary use case cited by respondents; about two-thirds of those in corporate legal and 80% of those in tax identified it as the most compelling use. Knowledge management, back-office functions, and question answering services were also cited as use cases of interest. 
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Risk perception seems to be the major stumbling block in the adoption of generative AI tools. A significant 69% of respondents expressed risk concerns, suggesting that fear may hold back a more widespread adoption. While the potential of generative AI tools is recognized, there is an air of uncertainty, underlining the need for establishing trust, as well as furthering education and strategic planning in its implementation. 

Despite concerns around the risks to privacy, security, and accuracy, very few organizations are actively taking steps to limit the use of generative AI or ChatGPT among employees. Twenty percent of respondents said their firm or company has warned employees against the unauthorized use of generative AI at work. Only 9% of all respondents, meanwhile, reported their organization had banned the unauthorized use of generative AI.  
 
Research Methodology 
The Thomson Reuters Institute conducted three separate online surveys for legal and tax professionals in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The respondents were invited to take the survey via an online invitation, or as part of the Thomson Reuters Influencer Coalition panel.
  • First survey: Aimed at mid-size and large law firms, ran between March 21-31, 2023, and received 443 applicable respondents.  
  • Second survey: Aimed at corporate legal departments, ran between April 11-25, 2023, and received 587 applicable respondents.  
  • Third survey: Aimed at tax and accounting firms and corporate tax departments, ran between May 3-15, 2023, and received 771 total applicable respondents. 




In total, the sample for the report is 1,801 respondents, of which 25% are from law firms, 33% are from corporate legal departments, 24% from tax and accounting firms, and 18% from corporate tax departments. Most of the respondents, 70%, were from the U.S., with 20% from the U.K. and 10% from Canada. 

Most respondents from law firms and tax firms were from mid-sized firms, representing 62% of law firm respondents and 55% of tax firm respondents. For corporate legal and tax, most respondents were from small or midsize departments: 88% of corporate legal respondents and 87% of corporate tax respondents were from departments of 50 people or fewer. 
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Those respondents completing the survey were also asked selected open-ended questions concerning their opinions on why generative AI should not be used for legal or tax work, as well as the potential risks of generative AI, and if they believed those risks existed. The Thomson Reuters Institute also conducted additional qualitative interviews to further expand generative AI beliefs, in addition to the survey responses. 
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ChatGPT Passes CPA Exam on Second Attempt

6/25/2023

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An improved and better-trained version of ChatGPT retook a simulated CPA test after an earlier failure and passed, similar to the roughly half of human applicants who fail on their first attempt. But does this trial suggest that ChatGPT will soon compete for accounting positions?

“This calls into question the 'competitive advantage' of the human accountant relative to the machine. To our knowledge, for the first time, AI has performed as well as most human accountants on a real-world accounting task. This raises important questions of how machine and accountant will work together in the future,” the study's authors said.

The worry around artificial intelligence (AI) is that it will eventually replace human labor. There are some tasks that a machine simply cannot perform, but there are others that will adapt to take advantage of AI's efficiency. The question is, do accounting jobs fall into that category? That may be the case, according to the most recent test, but only after certain AI system adjustments.

How ChatGPT Did It. Although ChatGPT has showed its abilities in a variety of applications, the researchers aimed to improve its effectiveness in student examinations like the CPA exam.

The chatbot was changed by the researchers using “chain of thought” prompting and a “10-shot” scenario, where it was taught with 10 examples. These techniques helped the AI become more knowledgeable about the topic and keep important concepts.

The upgrade from the initial version, ChatGPT 4.0, was the one that passed the CPA exam. Newer ChatGPT models, which have stronger training and reasoning capabilities, outscored older models on average by 16.5%, according to the study.

The most recent Version 4.0 averaged a score of 85.1 out of 100 and successfully completed all four sections of the exam, in contrast to the prior Version 3.5's average score of merely 53.1. The chatbot received an 87.5 in the part that rated highest, auditing and attestation (AUD).

Version 3.5 of ChatGPT took the CPA Exam in early May under the direction of trade publication Accounting Today. The chatbot got a pitiful 35% in financial accounting and reporting (FAR), its weakest category, and just 48% in business environment and concepts (BEC), its strongest category.

The researchers' test results show that ChatGPT's most recent iterations, which have the most sophisticated reasoning capabilities yet can handle virtually every evaluation. This finding could have significant ramifications for important areas, like accounting and auditing.
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ChatGPT has demonstrated its talents in several well-known exams, such as the Wharton MBA exam, the bar exam, and many AP exams.
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ChatGPT Unlikely to Replace Accountants

5/21/2023

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Even while there is rising concern about how generative AI can disrupt the world's labor markets, accountants may be able to sigh with relief, even if only temporarily. Recent studies show that my chosen profession may be spared replacement since the ChatGPT language model doesn’t do well with math!

The fastest growing and most well-known AI platform to date, ChatGPT's artificial intelligence language model, which excels at behavioral learning, storytelling, and other creative tasks, has prompted questions about its potential to enable students to cheat on assignments and exams. The bot passed the bar exam with a 90th percentile score, completed 13 out of 15 AP tests, and scored almost perfectly on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).

"When this technology first came out, everyone was worried that students could now use it to cheat," Brigham Young University accounting professor David Wood noted. "But opportunities to cheat have always existed. So, for us, we’re trying to focus on what we can do with this technology now that we couldn’t do before to improve the teaching process for faculty and the learning process for students. Testing it out was eye-opening."

However, as a later study led by Wood discovered, the platform often has trouble comprehending mathematical procedures and frequently embellishes data to hide errors when they occur!

According to Wood's research, ChatGPT's ability to pass accounting tests was compared to that of actual accounting students. 186 academic institutions from 14 countries submitted 25,181 questions on information systems, auditing, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and taxation. Undergraduate students at BYU added 2,268 more textbook test bank questions to the repository used for the study.

A combination of multiple choice, true/false, and written response prompts were used to deliver the questions in various formats with varied degrees of difficulty.

According to the survey, students outperformed ChatGPT by almost 30%, scoring an average of 76.7% compared to ChatGPT's 47.4%.

Only 11.3% of the questions were answered correctly by ChatGPT, mostly in the areas of auditing and accounting information systems. The chatbot scored substantially worse on short-answer questions, only scoring between 28.7% and 39.1%. It also performed better while answering multiple choice and true/false questions, earning 59.5% and 68.7% on each format, respectively.
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According to a press release from Jessica Wood, a BYU student who took part in the study, "It's not perfect; you're not going to be using it for everything. Using ChatGPT alone to learn is a fool's errand,"
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4 of Today’s Technologies That Should Be a Big Deal in 20 Years

4/23/2023

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Twenty years ago, the idea of smartphones and electric automobiles looked like a pipe dream, yet as of today, 86.4% of the world's population, or roughly 6.92 billion people, own their own smartphones. Governments all around the world are promoting the use of electric automobiles rather than vehicles with combustible engines to move toward a greener future.

We’re all trying to add that start-up stock to our portfolio, which will blossom into a blue chip cornerstone of our retirement. Here are four exciting innovations that seem poised to become an assumed part of our life in the next two decades.

3D Printed Infrastructure. The use of 3D printing has been quietly increasing in the background and is gradually becoming more prevalent in people's daily lives. While 3D printing is now being used for anything from electronics to shoes, it is rapidly advancing. Today, contractors can use 3D printing to create a house.

For instance, Apis Cor employs enormous 3D printers and their proprietary concrete blend to build entire homes. The company holds the world record for the largest 3D-printed building on earth.

You might not even be aware of the many creative ways 3D printing is influencing your life. Tens of thousands of 3D printers that 3DOS has installed all around the world are being used to build a global, localized, and on-demand logistics network. Hence, you may order a product online and produce it at home. Perhaps it might be produced nearby or at a local facility, then transported locally rather than internationally. The trillion-dollar logistics industry's carbon emissions and expenses will be significantly reduced if 3D printers can produce most materials on their own.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). This technology has become considerably more prevalent in daily life in only the last few months. Curriculums are being revised by ChatGPT, which is used by companies like Buzzfeed, Inc. But that's only the start. While ChatGPT has become more well-known, other facets of the subject have received less attention.

For instance, RAD AI is a start-up that makes use of generative AI to optimize marketing campaigns using the first emotion-aware AI marketing platform ever created. The firm has secured over $2.5 million from regular investors through the startup investment platform Wefunder.

Generative AI is being used to create photos, paintings, sketches, text-to-speech, and even films. Because ChatGPT is launching an internet-based plugin, it will include search engine-like features to compete with Alphabet Inc.'s Google and function similarly to Microsoft Corp.'s new Bing.

ChatGPT’s plugin page notes companies like Expedia Group Inc and Instacart are already working on solutions using generative AI

Commercial Space Exploration. The year 2021 marked a turning point for commercial space exploration, with companies like Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin LLC successfully launching commercial space travel. The first fully crewed voyage to the edge of space was also launched by Virgin Galactic in July 2021, with funding from billionaire Richard Branson.

By 2024, these businesses hope to launch the first commercial space flights. Yet, no firm arrangements have been established due to supply chain challenges and worries about a possible recession. As the macroeconomic headwinds worsened, many businesses had to postpone their plans by at least a year.

Commercial space flight is now only available to high-net-worth persons because tickets cost close to $500,000. Yet as businesses invest extensively in creating sustainable space stations and other infrastructure, you may expect a decrease in prices over the next 20 years. According to China Business Knowledge, during the next 15 to 20 years, space travel will become more affordable, and “Many people alive today will have a real chance of traveling to space in their lifetimes.”

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) & Brain Enhancements. Neuralink, a pioneer in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) founded by Elon Musk, is a well-known leader in the field. Many well-known figures in finance are also investing billions in this sector. Recently, the $75 million Series C raise for Synchron, a rival to Neuralink, received funding from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Trubrain, a firm that makes wearables and supplements for brain health, has already received over $1.2 million from retail investors. Microsoft also makes its BCI research and development efforts well known.

The multibillion dollar investments made into the metaverse by Meta Platforms Inc. are well known. While much of that is focused on developing augmented reality and virtual reality systems, this also includes extensive study into how the brain functions as it seeks to enhance the functionality of its headsets. According to some reports, Meta wants to develop its technology so that it can read your brain activity.
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To some, twenty years is a long time. They refer to it as two decades. To others, it’s a surprisingly short period for the development of life-changing technologies. As we all watch the future unfold, be sure your tray-table is put away and your seat belt is fastened!
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Adobe Announces “Creator-Friendly” Generative AI Tools

4/9/2023

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Adobe has unveiled Firefly, a new suite of generative AI tools it hopes will encourage more design professionals to embrace rather than fear this cutting-edge technology.
Why it matters. As generative AI has swept the globe, artists have had a difficult time adapting to it. While some view it as a useful tool, others see it as a threat to jobs and a kind of thievery.
Adobe wants to address two obstacles that are preventing business usage of the technology with Firefly: worries about copyright issues and the absence of professional-grade tools.
  • On top of Adobe's extensive font library, the initial Firefly model provides both a text-to-image engine and the ability to create visual text effects.
  • Besides pictures from Adobe Stock, the model was trained on pictures that were in the public domain or distributed under an open license.
  • Although Adobe hopes to incorporate Firefly into its family of creative tools, starting with Adobe Express, Photoshop, and Illustrator and the Adobe Experience Cloud, it is initially only available in beta form on the web.
There is intense disagreement within the art community about how to react to introducing generative AI tools like Stable Diffusion and OpenAI's Dall-E 2.
A few of artists who embrace technology the most are already using generative AI in their creations, including some whose work has been on show in a San Francisco gallery.
Stable Diffusion has been sued by Getty Images, which claims that their engine was inappropriately trained on copyrighted images.
Training the AI system on stock imagery offers Adobe a couple of advantages for avoiding intellectual property infringement.
  • Compared to search engines that are trained on content from throughout the Web, Adobe has more rights and control over images from its Adobe Stock database.
  • Brand names and logos, as well as other forms of copyrighted content, are frequently absent from stock pictures.
According to Adobe, anyone that submits their work to Stock will be able to take advantage of generative AI's revenue opportunities. But the corporation has provided no information about how this will operate. David Wadhwani, president of Adobe's digital media division, summarized by saying, “We want it to be safe for creative usage.”

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Within Next Decade 39% of Domestic Chores Will Be Done by Robots

3/19/2023

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In a recent research study published in PLOS ONE, 65 experts in artificial intelligence (AI) from the UK and Japan were consulted by researchers to make predictions about how much common household work will be automated in the next ten years.

While care for the young or elderly was expected to be least likely to be affected by AI, experts showed that grocery shopping was likely to witness the most automation.

Researchers from Britain’s Oxford University and Japan’s Ochanomizu University were interested in the potential effects of robots on unpaid domestic labor. "If robots will steal our jobs, will they at least also take out the trash for us?" they posed.

The researchers noted that the most often created and marketed robots worldwide are those used for "domestic household duties," such as robot vacuum cleaners.

For their predictions on robots in the home, the team consulted 29 AI specialists from the UK and 36 AI experts from Japan.

Researchers found that male UK experts tended to be more optimistic about domestic automation compared with their female counterparts, a situation reversed in Japan.

But the tasks which experts thought automation could do varied: "Only 28% of care work, including activities such as teaching your child, accompanying your child, or taking care of an older family member, is predicted to be automated", said Dr Lulu Shi, postdoctoral researcher, Oxford Internet Institute.

On the other hand, technology was expected to cut 60% of the time we spend on grocery shopping, experts said.

Technology is more likely to aid humans than to replace them, according to Dr. Kate Devlin, reader in AI and Society at King's College, London, who was not engaged in the study. "It's difficult and expensive to make a robot that can do multiple or general tasks. Instead, it's easier and more useful to create assistive technology that helps us rather than replaces us," she said.

The research suggests domestic automation could free up a lot of time spent on unpaid domestic work. In the UK, working-age men do around half as much of this unpaid work as working-age women, in Japan the men do less than a fifth.
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According to Ekaterina Hertog, associate professor in AI and Society at Oxford University, women's incomes, savings, and pensions are negatively impacted by the disproportionate amount of household labor they must do. Therefore, the researchers suggest, greater gender equality could arise from increased automation.
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What Technologies Will Invade Our Lives This Year

3/12/2023

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Now that we have two months of the new year under our belts, it’s time to look out to the remaining ten months to see what areas of technology are going to have the biggest impacts on our lives. 

Before we look forward, let’s look back to the end of 2022 and see the trends that were forming and how they will affect our world in 2023. 

From a hardware perspective, it was an unexciting year. Both Apple and Samsung refreshed their flagship smartphones, but most reviewers rated the changes as incremental upgrades. Mark Zuckerberg, with his eyes on changing the way people work, introduced a $1,500 virtual-reality headset. But, with only a two-hour battery, most users will strap the new headset on for gaming.

From the online world, we saw huge changes at Twitter after Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy the company. In the last few months, he has gutted the staff, suspended accounts for some journalists and reinstated several questionable users. All of this had driven Twitter users to seek alternative sites. Another social media company, TikTok, has been banned on government-issued devices at both the federal level and in several states.

Finally, in November, OpenAI introduced a chatbot called ChatGPT. In the first month of its availability, the online AI tool registered more than one million users. Given that is can produce seemingly intelligent responses to questions posed by users. Unfortunately, it can produce totally incorrect responses and couch those responses in wording that appears authoritative. 

This is just a taste of what's in store for us in the upcoming year. Together with the same trends that have persisted over the past few years, like developments in electric cars and the metaverse, we can anticipate many intriguing innovations in A.I.-powered, language-processing technology. Social media might even have a resurgence.

Here are the tech developments that will invade our lives in 2023.

1.New Embedded AI Assistants. Early adopters who were astounded by ChatGPT's verbal proficiency were equally astounded by how inaccurate it can be, especially with basic mathematics. Despite their flaws, it is reasonable to expect that software developers, led by Microsoft, will embed AI technology within familiar apps like Word, Excel, Google Sheets, Craft and others. It's important to note that many of the tasks these new AI modules will tackle will be summaries with a particular interest point in mind. 

Here’s an example. You’re writing a research paper on warfare and you have come across a 100-page essay on World War II. Imagine asking the AI tool to read the full document and highlight the key points regarding a certain facet of the war.

Yoav Shoham, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who contributes to the AI Index, an annual assessment on the development of artificial intelligence, said: "If you want to supplement your writing with a historical fact, you won't need to go and search the web and locate it. With just the click of a button, it'll be there."

2. Virtual reality, a.k.a. the metaverse. Tech firms have been advertising virtual reality headgear for gaming for most of the last decade, including the Quest 2, HTC Vive, and Sony PlayStation VR. Tech companies are making grand claims that these headsets will eventually transform our lives similarly to what smartphones have done so now that technology has advanced to become more potent and wireless.

One person who envisions the metaverse as a place where we may work, collaborate, and create is Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. The business thought the technology could be used as a multitasking tool for employees juggling meetings while skimming through emails and other duties when it unveiled the Quest Pro headgear this year. It remains to be seen whether Meta can realize its vision for the metaverse, given that the device's initial reception was unfavorable.

The VR drumbeat will continue in 2023. It is widely believed that Apple will unveil its first headgear, despite having previously stated that it would never use the term "metaverse." Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, has provided hints about the device even though the business has released no information about it. Cook has expressed his excitement about employing augmented reality to use digital data in the real world.

“You’ll wonder how you lived your life without augmented reality, just like today you wonder: How did people like me grow up without the internet?” Mr. Cook said in September to students in Naples.

Yet, he continued, the technology will not suddenly become significant. The first version of Apple's headgear will probably be used for gaming, just like many others before it, as wireless headsets continue to be large and only used inside.

In other words, 2023 will probably still not be the year that these headsets become widely used, according to Carolina Milanesi, a consumer tech analyst for the research firm Creative Strategies. However, there will be plenty of talk about the metaverse and virtual, augmented, and mixed goggles.

“From a consumer perspective, it’s still very uncertain what you’re spending your thousand bucks on when you’re buying a headset,” she said. “Do I have to do a meeting with V.R.? With or without legs, it’s not a necessity.”

3.Electric Vehicles Beyond Tesla. Last year, Tesla continued to dominate the market for electric vehicles (EVs), but 2023 might mark a turning point for the sector. Since Mr. Musk's takeover of Twitter, Tesla's shares have fallen precipitously this year, and its reputation has suffered. The market's competitiveness is also escalating as EV manufacturers, including Ford Motor, Kia, General Motors, Audi, and Rivian, increase their output of electric vehicles.

Tesla also declared in November that it would allow other electric vehicles to use its charging port design. That would make it possible for owners of other makes of vehicles to refuel at Tesla's charging stations, which are much more numerous than other kinds of chargers.

Also, sales of gas-powered cars will be prohibited in both California and New York by 2035. All of this creates the ideal conditions for the electric car market to grow significantly beyond just one brand in 2023.

4.New Social Media Choices. Most of 2022 saw Twitter in disarray, and 2023 is expected to be no different. Last month, in reaction to the criticism, Mr. Musk conducted a Twitter "poll" asking his fans if they thought he should step down as the company's CEO. Ten million users, or a majority, chose yes, but Mr. Musk said he wouldn't leave until someone "foolish enough to do the job" was found.

TikTok is still in trouble after its Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, revealed that an internal probe had revealed that staff members had improperly collected user data from American users, including that of two journalists. The information puts pressure on the Biden administration to think about imposing even stricter limitations on the app in the US.

Whatever happens to Twitter and TikTok, it's certain that social media is undergoing a significant change. A social network called Mastodon, which resembles Twitter in appearance, has attracted many journalists, techies, and influencers. Yet many younger people have already switched to more recent apps like BeReal, where pals can keep in touch by simultaneously taking and sharing selfies.
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Which new social networking app will be a huge deal in 2023 is a mystery. Mastodon has lost about 30% of the million users they gained because of changes at Twitter. Yet, one thing is for certain: Those who are offended by Twitter are looking for a friendly environment where they can hang around.

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    Rick Richardson, CPA, CITP, CGMA

    Rick is the editor of the weekly newsletter, Technology This Week. You can subscribe to it by visiting the website.

    Rick is also the Managing Partner of Richardson Media & Technologies, LLC. Prior to forming his current company, he had a 28-year career in technology with Ernst & Young, the last twelve years of which he served as National Director of Technology.

    Mr. Richardson has been named to the "Technology 100"- the annual honors list of the 100 key achievers in technology in America. He has also been honored by the American Institute of CPAs with two Lifetime Achievement awards and a Special Career Recognition Award for his contributions to the profession in the field of technology.

    In 2012, Rick was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame by CPA Practice Advisor Magazine. He has also been named to the 100 most influential individuals in the accounting profession in America by Accounting Today magazine.

    In 2017, Rick was inducted as a Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achiever, a registry of professionals who have excelled in their fields for many years and achieved greatness in their industry.

    He is a sought after speaker around the world, providing his annual forecast of future technology trends to thousands of business executives, professionals, community leaders, educators and students.

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