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New Report Reveals Clean Energy Is Winning Based on Historic Shift in Energy Investments

10/20/2024

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A new report reveals the exciting trajectory of clean energy investments. According to a recent articlepublished in CleanTechnica, investments in clean energy have nearly doubled compared to dirty energy investments in 2024.

The report also notes that as more businesses and homes move to renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, investments in dirty energy appear to have peaked.

“What is perhaps most notable and jumped out to me is how much was being invested in energy efficiency (which typically offers the best return on investment) and power grids and storage,” commented CleanTechnica’s Zachary Shahan. “At the same time … we really shouldn’t be investing in fossil fuels at all at this point!”

The new analysis emphasizes how important solar energy is compared to other renewable energy sources. According to CleanTechnica, solar power investments are outpacing investments in all other generation technologies put together since solar panel costs have decreased by 30%.

Countries all across the world may contribute to reducing atmospheric pollution as they move toward renewable energy sources. Clean energy sources, including solar and wind power, don’t produce any hazardous pollutants when they are installed.

Large-scale installations of renewable energy also help lower local populations’ energy costs.

For instance, large solar projects can, in accordance with EnergySage’s predictions, cut local communities’ energy expenses by 5-20%. According to Forbes, households can save anywhere between $25,500 and $33,000 on electricity costs after solar panels are paid for.
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“Clean energy is winning and will keep on winning, led by solar energy,” Shahan said. “The future appears promising. (However, unless we speed up this shift considerably, it’s also hot.)”
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Microsoft Announces Copilot's Wave 2

10/6/2024

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Microsoft Copilot is a competitive alternative to ChatGPT since its inception, sometimes even surpassing OpenAI’s product. But Copilot trailed behind ChatGPT’s advancements—until now.

In a live event last week called “Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2,” Microsoft revealed all the next improvements to its AI assistant, catering to both business and individual users.

The enhancements were striking, including cooperative methods to use AI as a team, group, or family, as well as further interaction with Microsoft 365 apps.

Copilot Pages. You should see a tab option to switch from Work to Web if you log into Copilot using your work or organization’s account. What Microsoft calls the “Work” tab is actually BizChat, a Copilot workflow that retrieves responses from your work data in Microsoft 365 apps. A new feature called Pages has been added to BizChat in an update.

Using Pages, you may update and add insights that Copilot generated for you based on your business data, then share them with your team so that you can work together. Pages are accessible via a shareable, editable link, much like any other type of editable document.

This section highlights multiplayer AI, a trend observed in recent releases from various AI businesses, including Salesforce’s Agentforce, a suite of collaborative and autonomous AI agents, and You.com’s collaborative AI assistants.

Customers of Microsoft 365 Copilot will be able to access the pages starting today, and in the upcoming weeks, free Microsoft Copilot users who are logged in with their Microsoft Entra account will access them as well.

Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. The ability of Microsoft Copilot to assist users within the Microsoft 365 apps—which have grown to be a reliable mainstay of many people’s workflows—is one of its greatest benefits. Microsoft is leveraging user feedback in Wave 2 to enhance user accessibility and expand its Copilot support within the applications.

To begin with, Copilot in Excel is widely accessible to all users and offers support for conditional formatting, data visualization, calculations, and more.

Microsoft also revealed the public preview of Copilot in Excel with Python, which enables users to interact with Python in Excel only through natural language. This implies that users don’t need to know how to write code to perform sophisticated analysis in Excel using Python, such as risk and forecasting analysis.

Microsoft released Narrative Builder for PowerPoint to all users. With the help of this function, you can quickly create an outline for your presentation by simply typing in a topic.

Now, Copilot in Teams can combine the information shared in the chat window with the contents of a real meeting to produce a summary of the entire meeting. For instance, everything from the chat will be included in the response if a user asks Copilot what they missed during the meeting. Next month, this feature will be made available to everyone.

Copilot in Outlook was too important to ignore: The tool that allows you to “Prioritize my inbox” now includes an analysis of your inbox and a flag for the most critical emails, along with a synopsis and the rationale for the flag. According to Microsoft, users will “soon” direct Copilot on what subjects or phrases to prioritize.

Microsoft states these capabilities will be made accessible to all users in late 2024, although they are not currently available.

Microsoft is releasing a new feature later this month that will enable users to reference web and work material quickly, including emails, PDFs, PowerPoints, and more, since users frequently accessed external resources when working in Microsoft Word. Another update for Copilot in Word is the “on-canvas start experience,” which lets users work together in real time while editing different areas of the text. These two Word features are currently accessible to most users.

Finally, Microsoft introduced Copilot in OneDrive, enabling users to search for items in their OneDrive repository, get summaries, and even perform file comparisons. OneDrive’s Copilot feature began trickling out to users last week and will soon be available to the public.

Copilot Agents. Microsoft unveiled Copilot agents, artificial intelligence (AI) assistants that can complete activities with as little or as much help from a user as needed. Microsoft, for instance, reports that while some agents are more basic “prompt-and-response” agents, others can operate entirely on their own.
Using the new agent builder, which is powered by Copilot Studio and enables users to create agents in Sharepoint or BizChat, users may create Copilot agents. Then, just like any other teammate, these agents can be called upon via the “@” symbol in the 365 applications.
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The agent builder in BizChat and Copilot agents are accessible right now and will be made available to all clients in the upcoming weeks. Microsoft has announced that the public preview of Copilot agents and the agent builder in SharePoint will begin in early October.
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Thomson Reuters Unveils Al-Powered Audit Intelligence Solutions

9/29/2024

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Thomson Reuters, a global content and technology company focused on the public accounting profession, announced last week the launch of Thomson Reuters Audit Intelligence. This suite of Al-powered data-driven audit solutions is designed to transform audit practices by reducing errors and enhancing confidence, while enabling auditors to realize efficiency gains.

The first tool to debut in the suite, named Audit Intelligence Analyze, employs Al and machine learning to simultaneously enhance both audit quality and efficiency. The solution focuses on high-risk areas by efficiently segmenting audit testing populations based on risk level and reducing the overall number of items to be tested. With advanced anomaly detection, Analyze integrates directly within existing workflows, identifying unusual items often overlooked by humans and automatically generating all necessary audit documentation.

Dave Wyle, general manager of Audit at Thomson Reuters, emphasized the importance of using technology to modernize audit practices to stay competitive. "Today's announcement underscores our commitment to investing in and developing products that enable data-driven, Al-powered audits. We aim to provide these solutions swiftly to our customers, maximizing the benefits of Al in their audits, while supporting firms to implement solutions at a pace that works for their businesses," he said. "Our new solution, Analyze, can cut sample sizes by half, saving valuable time for auditors and their clients. This makes audits more efficient and allows auditors to focus on higher-risk areas, improving overall audit quality."

The Audit Intelligence suite will integrate CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters professional-grade GenAl assistant, from next year, as part of the company's broader vision to provide a GenAl assistant to every professional it serves. Auditors will be able to leverage CoCounsel alongside Thomson Reuters Guided Assurance to automate the completion of audit program steps and checklists.

Future additions to the suite will include Audit Intelligence Test, which automates substantive testing and verification by dynamically tracing accounting transactions to banking activity and supporting documentation, and Audit Intelligence Plan, which merges full data populations with technology-driven analytics to empower auditors' planning and risk assessment processes.

Key benefits of Thomson Reuters Audit Intelligence Analyze
• Increased efficiency: Automation of manual processes allows for smaller, risk-focused samples. This enables auditors to concentrate on high-risk areas, enhancing efficiency and reducing overall firm risk while improving audit quality. Time savings of 30 minutes to two hours are achieved in both client data provision and auditor sample selection and documentation.

• Enhanced accuracy: Automated analysis using Al and machine learning increases confidence in audit results, integrating seamlessly into existing audit processes without requiring new methodologies.

• Improved transparency: The solution is fully configurable, providing a clear and transparent process for selecting and understanding advanced risk identification techniques.
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Available now as part of an early adopter program, Audit Intelligence Analyze is expected to debut in the United States in the fall of 2024, followed by the UK in 2025. The solution is integrated into both Thomson Reuters Cloud Audit Suite and directly into audit methodologies and workflows. It can also be used as a standalone by firms with their own methodologies.

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New Warehouse Robot May Obsolete the Forklift

8/11/2024

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​The warehouses of the world are surprisingly empty spaces. There’s a lot of material in these vital nodes of the complex global commodities transportation system, but there’s also a lot of vacant space on the floor between their racks. The space is there to make room for the forklift, the workhorse of the warehouse, which must have room to maneuver when lifting and carrying pallets loaded down with hundreds or thousands of pounds of merchandise. A forklift needs a lot of space and a professional driver to do a mundane but dangerous task.

A new robotics firm recognizes an improved approach to warehouse management. Mytra, a company created by former employees of Tesla and Rivian, wants to automate and combine warehouse activities by using a robot and a storage rack system to improve the efficiency of products moving. It can also make the forklift obsolete.

The system has a complicated yet basic design. Mytra, which consists of a pallet-sized robot and a three-dimensional steel cell matrix, picks up and moves objects using specially made mechanics and software to speed up moving them into and out of the warehouse while optimizing how they’re stored.

According to Chris Walti, cofounder and CEO of Mytra, “we wanted to go after the simplest problem in the whole industry, which is just moving things around from one place in the factory or warehouse to another.” He also points out that between 40% and 80% of the work done in a typical facility is done within the warehouse. He had direct familiarity with it from his prior position managing Tesla’s warehouse logistics, which, like many warehouse operations, depended on pallet racks and forklifts.

Walti realized a fresh approach was required. He recognized the potential benefits of new robotics and automation technologies in his capacity as the leader of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot project. Walti founded Mytra with Ahmad Baitalmal, who oversaw factory software at Tesla and Rivian. The robot in the company’s system is specially made to move in three dimensions and lift up to three thousand pounds. It operates inside a grid of cells that resembles a cage. Last month, the network of Albertson’s supermarket stores started using Mytra’s initial system.

Warehouse robots are already transporting and hauling things for businesses, ranging from DHL to Amazon, so this is not completely new ground. However, Walti claims that Mytra’s method automates a lot more of the movement and tasks that occur in a normal warehouse, most of which require assembling mixed pallets. Worker activity in the warehouse resembles a shopping run. And that calls for a great deal of manual labor. Going to every station and lifting a sack of concrete or a case of Coca-Cola is backbreaking, according to Walti. “Most of this can be automated by our system.”

A New Kind of Warehouse Robot. According to Walti, the robot at the center of this system is a significant advancement for the sector. He claims that no mobile robot can move over 100 pounds in a vertical direction. The steel grid structure that comprises Mytra’s racks, and a specially created screw-drive mechanism at each of the robot’s four corners, which employs mechanical leverage to ascend and descend, work together to enable Mytra’s 3,000-pound vertical load limit.

The company’s unique selling point is the grid system, which eliminates the need for the aisles that take up valuable space in forklift-based warehouse operations. The rack system’s cellular nature allows for any size or shape configuration. There are 36 cells in Albertson’s initial installation. According to Walti, Mytra is in discussions with other clients about possible uses involving tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of cells. He claims, “We’re bringing software re-configurability to physical space.”
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The traditional warehouse might change thanks to Mytra’s robot-based approach. However, according to Walti, “forklifts are still superb at loading things in trailers and stacking pallets on a dock,” so the forklift’s day may not be over entirely. All it does is make a great deal fewer of them necessary.

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New Citigroup Study Finds AI Displacing More Bank Jobs Than Other Sectors

7/7/2024

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According to Citigroup Inc., more positions in the banking sector will probably be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) than in any other. Technology is going to transform consumer finance. It will also make employees more productive.

According to Citigroup’s most recent AI assessment, which was published last week, roughly 54% of banking professions might be automated. AI technology has the potential to enhance an additional 12% of jobs within the business.

The biggest banks in the world have been using artificial intelligence (AI) more frequently over the past year because of its ability to boost output and cut expenses. According to a recent analysis by Citigroup, artificial intelligence (AI) might boost the banking sector by $170 billion by 2028.

Citigroup intends to let its 40,000 programmers experiment with different AI tools. The business has already reviewed hundreds of pages of regulatory submissions swiftly using generative AI, which can generate content from basic prompts.

“We’re currently focused on bringing it from the lab to the manufacturing floor,” CEO of Citigroup Jane Fraser stated during the digital money symposium held by the organization. She continued by saying that the bank is investigating the use of AI to improve cybersecurity and offer affluent clients individualized investing advice.

CEO Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. thinks AI might reduce the workweek to just 3.5 days, which is why the bank is employing AI specialists. While ING Group uses AI to find possible defaulters, Deutsche Bank AG uses it to evaluate the portfolios of wealthy clients.

According to David Griffiths, Chief Technology Officer of Citigroup, generative AI “has the potential to revolutionize the banking industry and improve profitability,” in a statement released alongside the new findings. “At Citi, our goal is to leverage AI in a responsible and safe manner to increase the power of Citi and our people.”
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According to Citigroup, AI may not cause a decrease in the total number of workers in the banking sector, even if it replaces some occupations. It is likely that financial institutions will need to employ a large number of AI managers and compliance officers to make sure that rules are observed when using AI technology.
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Microsoft Goes Atomic and Hires a Director of Nuclear Development Acceleration

2/11/2024

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Data centers are recognized for using an astonishing amount of energy; it is estimated that they account for 1.5% to 2% of all electricity used worldwide.

In an effort to become more environmentally conscious and to combat climate change, IT companies have mostly concentrated on powering these through sustainable and renewable energy sources. However, the effort is becoming more difficult because of the growing energy demand brought about by introducing new technologies like AI, since this field alone uses around four times as much power as servers use for cloud applications.

Microsoft has appointed a Director of Nuclear Development Acceleration, a rather contentious move, in recognition of the impending challenges on its data centers.

The power needs of US data centers are expected to increase from 17 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 35 GW by 2030, according to McKinsey. there are other issues than just electricity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) GPUs require more cooling than traditional servers, and Microsoft's water use in data centers increased by 34% in 2022. This number is expected to rise as the tech company continues to invest more in AI.

Stepping into this job is Erin Henderson, PhD, MBA, PMP, who brings a lot of experience from her 13-year tenure with the Tennessee Valley Authority, where she served as the General Manager of Transmission Projects.

Henderson's responsibilities will include developing a global plan for Microsoft's data centers to be powered by microreactors and small modular reactors (SMR). Yes, you are correct—the business is going nuclear.

Henderson announced her new position on LinkedIn, writing, "I am very excited to share that I've joined Microsoft in a new role, Director of Nuclear Development Acceleration. Microsoft is leading the way in advocating for a clean and sustainable energy future. I am looking forward to contributing to the data center R&D team's success."

According to a recent report by Data Center Dynamics, Microsoft worked with Terra Praxis, a nonprofit that promotes converting abandoned coal plant sites into contemporary SMR homes, for six months.
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Microsoft's nuclear aspirations are clear from the two companies' joint work on a generative AI model to expedite the drawn-out and costly nuclear regulation and licensing procedure.
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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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Phishing Attack Hackers Have a New Trick and It’s Working

2/19/2023

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Cybercriminals are experimenting with a new method of delivering the dangerous payload and employing specially prepared phishing emails to infect users with malware.

According to a study by Proofpoint, digital OneNote notebooks (denoted by “.one” extensions) are increasingly being used by cyber-attackers to spread malware. OneNote is included in the Microsoft 365 office software bundle and a widely used piece of software.

OneNote documents are rarely misused in this manner, according to cybersecurity professionals, and there is only one clear reason attackers are experimenting with them: they can more readily avoid threat detection than other attachments. And it seems to be effective.

According to statistics from open-source malware repositories, initially observed attachments were not identified as dangerous by several anti-virus engines. As a result, it is likely that the original campaigns had a high success rate if the email was not stopped, according to Proofpoint.

Proofpoint expanded on the study findings by saying, ”Since Microsoft began blocking macros by default in 2022, threat actors have experimented with many new tactics, techniques, and procedures, including use of previously infrequently observed file types such as virtual hard disk (VHD), compiled HTML (CHM), and now OneNote (.one)."

The phishing emails are attempting to deliver one of several malware payloads, including AsyncRAT, Redline, AgentTesla, and DOUBLEBACK, all of which are designed to steal sensitive information from victims, including usernames and passwords. The phishing emails were first sent in December 2022, with the number significantly increasing in January 2023.

Researchers from Proofpoint also report that a cybercriminal organization they track by the name of TA577has used OneNote in campaigns to distribute Qbot. TA577 operates as an initial access broker, selling stolen usernames and passwords to other cybercriminals, including ransomware gangs, as opposed to stealing data for its own use.

There have been over 60 of these campaigns found so far, and they all have the same traits. Emails and file attachments are connected to topics like invoicing, remittances, shipping, and seasonal themes, such as details on a Christmas bonus, among others.

For instance, attachment names in a phishing letter addressed to targets in the manufacturing and industrial sectors included references to machine parts and specifications, showing that the lure had undergone extensive investigation.

Other OneNote efforts target thousands of potential victims all at once and are a little broader. One of these efforts used fake invoices to target the education industry, while another was more broadly disseminated and promised a Christmas bonus or present to thousands of unsuspecting victims.

The victim must open the email, open the OneNote attachment, and click on any harmful links for the phishing scam to succeed in each instance. OneNote does include a warning message regarding dangerous URLs, but users who have received an email that has been specially tailored to appeal to them or who believe they may be receiving a bonus may attempt to ignore this warning.

Researchers caution that additional cyber-threat groups will probably use this strategy successfully to distribute phishing and malware campaigns because it is expected that these efforts will succeed frequently if the emails are not stopped.
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"Proofpoint has increasingly observed OneNote attachments being used to deliver malware. Based on our research, we believe multiple threat actors are using OneNote attachments to bypass threat detections," said researchers, who warn that this is "concerning" because, as demonstrated by TA577, this tactic can become an initial entry point for distributing ransomware, which could cripple a whole organization and its networks.
"This is a phishing technique that convinces a victim to open a document with an embedded malicious attachment and then bypass a security prompt to run the attachment. We encourage customers to practice good computing habits online, including exercising caution when clicking on links to webpages or opening unknown files," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

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Microsoft and Google React to ChatGPT in Different Ways

2/12/2023

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Last Tuesday, Microsoft held a press briefing to announce two new web-based software upgrades. The same AI technology that powers the chatbot ChatGPT has been updated and included in the latest edition of Microsoft's Bing search engine. A fresh experience for exploring the web and getting information online is promised by the firm as it introduces the product alongside new AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser.

“It’s a new day in search,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event announcing the products. The paradigm for web search, according to Nadella, hasn't changed in decades, but AI can offer information more swiftly and fluidly than conventional techniques.

“The race starts today, and we’re going to move and move fast,” Nadella said. “Most importantly, we want to have a lot of fun innovating again in search, because it’s high time.”

Today, the company showed how "the new Bing" operated in a variety of settings. One of settings allows users to interact directly with the Bing chatbot by asking it questions in a chat interface like ChatGPT, while another mode displays conventional search results alongside AI annotations.

Microsoft demonstrated several sample searches, including looking for travel advice, recipes, and Ikea furnishings. Bing was instructed to "prepare an itinerary for each day of a 5-day trip to Mexico City" in one demonstration. The chatbot provided a complete response, including a general itinerary and providing links to more resources.

The new Bing, unlike ChatGPT, which is limited to information up to the end of 2021, can also find news about recent occurrences. In the demonstrations, the search engine could even respond to inquiries regarding its own launch by identifying news articles that had been posted within the previous hour.

Microsoft says these features are all powered by an upgraded version of GPT 3.5, the AI OpenAI language model that powers ChatGPT. Microsoft calls this the “Prometheus Model,” and says it’s more powerful than GPT 3.5, and better able to answer search queries with up-to-date information and annotated answers.

The new Bing is live today “for desktop limited preview,” but it appears users can only “ask” one of several preset queries and receive the same results each time. There is also a waitlist to sign up for full access in the future.

Microsoft is also introducing "chat" and "compose," two new AI-enhanced services for its Edge browser. They'll be integrated into Edge's sidebar.

While "compose" serves as a writing helper, helping to generate text, from emails to social media postings, depending on a few initial cues, "chat" enables users to summarize the webpage or document they're viewing and ask questions about its contents.

The launch of the new Bing coincides with a flurry of AI activity from rival Google and Microsoft. The popularity of AI text production has skyrocketed since ChatGPT went live on the internet last November. Microsoft is looking to capitalize on this enthusiasm and has already disclosed how this technology would be incorporated across its suite of office applications. Microsoft has a strong partnership with OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT.

Google, on the other hand, was unprepared for what some consider to be a fundamental shift in how users find information online. The introduction of ChatGPT is said to have set off a "code red" within the search engine behemoth, with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—who had been absent—being called in to help deal with what would pose a danger to the company's main source of income.

In an effort to beat Microsoft's launch, Google released on Monday, Bard, its own ChatGPT. The program was referred to as an "experimental conversational AI service" by CEO Sundar Pichai, who said that it was still being evaluated by a few users and will only be made available to a wider audience in the upcoming weeks. We’ll have more on where these technologies are headed in next week’s issue of the newsletter.

One pitfall to using this level of AI is that it will make mistakes and present the misinformation as though it were fact. Microsoft is well aware of this problem and had a warning placed in Bing’s user interface: “Let's study together. AI powers Bing, thus unexpected outcomes and errors are conceivable. Verify the information and provide feedback so we can grow and learn.”
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Finally, there will be other difficulties that haven’t been addressed yet. The income stream that keeps many websites afloat is removed if AI tools like the new Bing collect material from the web without people clicking through to the source. The effectiveness of this new search paradigm will depend on maintaining some of the previous agreements.
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Vector Databases—The Newest Tool for the AI Era

1/15/2023

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Making data-driven decisions is becoming more and more understood by companies in every industry as a requirement for competing today, in the next five years, in the next twenty, and beyond. According to current market research, the worldwide artificial intelligence (AI) market will "increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39.4% to reach $422.37 billion by 2028," driven by the exponential expansion of unstructured data in particular. The era of data overload and AI has arrived, and there is no turning back.
This reality implies that AI can truly sift and handle the deluge of data–not just for big giants like Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta with their massive R&D departments and tailored AI tools, but for the typical corporation and even some small and medium-sized businesses.

Well-designed AI-based systems quickly filter through enormously vast datasets to produce fresh insights, which fuel fresh sources of income, adding significant value to enterprises. But without the new kid on the block, vector databases, none of the data expansion really becomes operationalized and democratized. Vector DBs represent a paradigm shift in database management and a new category for using the exponential amounts of unstructured data that are currently untapped in object stores. In particular, vector databases provide a mind-numbing new degree of search capacity for unstructured data, but they can also handle semi-structured and even structured data.

Vectors and Search. Unstructured data, which can't be simply sorted into row and column relationships, rarely matches the relational database paradigm. Examples include photos, video, audio, and user actions. Unstructured data management methods that are incredibly time-consuming and unreliable frequently include manually labelling the data (think labels and keywords on video platforms).

The real problem is that human methods make it very hard to perform a semantic search that comprehends the context and meaning of a picture or other unstructured piece of data, in addition to a search query.
Enter embedding vectors, often known as feature vectors, vector embeddings, or just embeddings. They are numerical values, or sort of coordinates, that represent unstructured data features or objects, such as a part of a picture, a section of a person's purchasing history, a few frames from a video, geospatial information, or anything else that doesn't neatly fit into a relational database table. These embeddings enable scalable, snappy “similarity search.”

Quality Data and Insights. An AI model, or more precisely, a machine learning (ML) or deep learning model, trained on very large amounts of high-quality input data, produces embeddings as a computational byproduct. A model is the computational result of an ML algorithm (method or procedure) conducted on data, to further draw crucial distinctions. Sophisticated, widely used algorithms include STEGO for computer vision, CNN for image processing and Google’s BERT for natural language processing. The resulting models turn each single piece of unstructured data into a list of floating-point values—our search-enabling embedding.

Therefore, a neural network model that has been properly trained will produce embeddings that are consistent with particular content and may apply to a semantic similarity search. A vector database, specifically designed to manage embeddings and their unique structure, is the instrument to store, index, and search through these embeddings.

The fact that developers from everywhere may now incorporate a vector database into AI systems, with its production-ready features and lightning-fast unstructured data search, is crucial in the industry.
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Organizationally, a crucial component of standardizing the usage of vector databases is assisting business teams and their leadership in understanding why and how they can benefit. The concept of vector search has been around for quite a while, but only on a very small scale. Many businesses aren't really accustomed to having access to the kind of data mining and search capabilities that contemporary vector databases provide. Teams sometimes struggle with knowing where to begin. Therefore, their creators continue to place a high focus on spreading the word about how they operate and why they are valuable.
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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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