Analysis – Page 18

Analysis, Business, government, Legal Issues

55% of America’s billion dollar startups have an immigrant founder

November 2, 2018

Uber logo seen on a car door in Kiev, Ukraine. Garrett Camp, an immigrant from Canada, is one of Uber’s founders. (Photo by Pavlo Conchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

What would America lose if we blocked refugees and family-sponsored and employment-based immigrants from coming to the United States? For starters, we would likely lose more than half of the billion-dollar startup companies in America.

A new study from the National Foundation for American Policy finds that 55%, or 50 of 91, of the country’s $1 billion startup companies had at least one immigrant founder. I conducted the research by interviewing and gathering information on the 91 U.S. startup companies valued at over $1 billion (as of October 1, 2018) that are not publicly traded on the stock market and are tracked by Dow Jones VentureSource and The Wall Street Journal.

Continue reading… “55% of America’s billion dollar startups have an immigrant founder”

AI, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Futurist

What if AI can make us more human in the age of robotic automation?

November 1, 2018

“We now live in a global, exponential world,” Steven Kotler tells my coauthor Michael Ashley and I from his Santa Monica office. We’re interviewing the New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur for our upcoming book: Uber Yourself Before You Get Kodaked: A Modern Primer on A.I. for the Modern Business. “You need to understand our brains evolved in a local, linear environment. We cannot process change at this speed or this scale; we’re bad at it. But in the 21st century, according to research done by Ray Kurzweil, we will experience over 20,000 years’ worth of change. To put it succinctly, over the next 80-something years we will go through the birth of agriculture to the industrial revolution — twice — in terms of our technological advancement.”

Much has been made of the fact that humans are poised to be replaced by artificial intelligence in the workplace, from home-care robots to robot waiters. However, what Kotler and his coauthor Peter Diamandis have asserted in such books as Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and the Impact the World, is that unprecedented technological abundance is also coming. Importantly, these thinkers suggest the future of prosperity depends not just on exponential technological innovation, but also on exponential creativity.

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Analysis, Futurist, Tom Frey

Every disaster has a beginning: In search of Anomaly Zero

October 30, 2018

Anomaly-Zero-2

In 2012, when 15-year old Jack Andraka’s uncle died of pancreatic cancer, he decided to look into it. He found that the current test for pancreatic cancer was over 60 years old, cost over $800, and wasn’t very reliable.

For this reason over 85% of pancreatic cancer cases were detected too late, when the chances of survival were only 2%.

As a bright and inspired young mind, Jack was able to devise a far better testing procedure, which he took to the researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The result is a new dipstick-type diagnostic test that uses a paper sensor, similar to that of the diabetic test strip. This strip tests for cancer biomarkers in blood or urine, is over 90% accurate and only costs 3 cents per test.

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AI, Analysis, Automation, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Google AI claims 99% accuracy in metastatic breast cancer detection

October 25, 2018

Above: Left: a slide containing lymph nodes. Right: LYNA identifying the tumor region.

Metastatic tumors — cancerous cells which break away from their tissue of origin, travel through the body through the circulatory or lymph systems, and form new tumors in other parts of the body — are notoriously difficult to detect. A 2009 study of 102 breast cancer patients at two Boston health centers found that one in four were affected by the “process of care” failures such as inadequate physical examinations and incomplete diagnostic tests.

That’s one of the reasons that of the half a million deaths worldwide caused by breast cancer, an estimated 90 percent are the result of metastasis. But researchers at the Naval Medical Center San Diego and Google AI, a division within Google dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) research, have developed a promising solution employing cancer-detecting algorithms that autonomously evaluate lymph node biopsies.

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Analysis, Money Talk, Robots

The first ever fund managed by a robot is here. So far it’s beating the market

October 23, 2018

As if professional mutual fund managers didn’t have it hard enough.

Not only do they have to contend with the growing popularity of low-cost index funds, which simply buy and hold the entire market, but now here comes another threat: robot stock pickers.

That’s right.

The San Francisco firm EquBot has launched the first retail ETF to be managed using IBM’s Watson supercomputing artificial intelligence technology.

The use of computers to buy stocks isn’t new. So-called “quant funds” (short for quantitative analysis) have been around for years, relying on computer algorithms to identify short-term trading patterns and opportunities in the market.

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AI, Analysis, Employment, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Future of jobs 2018 – Reports- World Economic Forum

October 26, 2018

Strategic Drivers of New Business Models

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds, companies are seeking to harness new and emerging technologies to reach higher levels of efficiency of production and consumption, expand into new markets, and compete on new products for a global consumer base composed increasingly of digital natives. More and more, employers are therefore also seeking workers with new skills from further afield to retain a competitive edge for their enterprises and expand their workforce productivity. Some workers are experiencing rapidly expanding opportunities in a variety of new and emerging job roles, while others are experiencing a rapidly declining outlook in a range of job roles traditionally considered ‘safe bets’ and gateways to a lifetime career.

Even as technological advancements pose challenges to existing business models and practices, over the coming years, these same dynamics of technological change are set to become the primary drivers of opportunities for new growth. For example, based on one recent estimate, even a somewhat moderately paced rollout of new automation technologies over the next 10 to 20 years would lead to an investment surge of up to US$8 trillion in the United States alone.

Continue reading… “Future of jobs 2018 – Reports- World Economic Forum”

Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Crime, Internet, Law Enforcement

Meet the internet researchers unmasking Russian assassins

October 21, 2018

Aric Toler is part of Bellingcat, an international Internet research organization that has meticulously investigated conflicts around the world. This week, the online group outed one of two Russian agents believed to have been involved in poisonings in the U.K.

Aric Toler isn’t exactly sure what to call himself.

“Digital researcher, digital investigator, digital something probably works,” Toler says.

Toler, 30, is part of an Internet research organization known as Bellingcat. Formed in 2014, the group first got attention for its meticulous documentation of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Toler used posts to Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, VK, to track Russian soldiers as they slipped in and out of eastern Ukraine — where they covertly aided local rebels.

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Advertising, Analysis, Big Data, Latest Trend, Netflix

Billboards — yes, billboards — are having a heyday in a digital world

October 16, 2018

It’s the era of internet advertising. The era of targeting that tracks you across browsers, platforms and across the city. The era of apps that know what you want before you do.

But surprisingly, a seemingly retro ad format — outdoor advertising — is also having its heyday.

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Analysis, Employment, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints

Four-day work week to be made permanent after company finds ‘no downside’

October 16, 2018

A four-day work week will be made permanent at a New Zealand company after a trial was so successful it found there was ‘no downside’. Staff reported better productivity, a better work-life balance and lower stress levels after working four eight-hour days a week for two months.

The trial at Perpetual Guardian – a financial services firm that manages trusts, wills and estates – involved almost 250 employees across 16 offices.

Staff reported a better work/life balance, having more energy and improved mental health (Picture: Getty)

They worked four days equalling 32 working hours instead of 40 across the week – but were still paid for five days.

Founder of the Auckland-based company, Andrew Barnes, said there was ‘no downside’ to the new system and that staff reported reaping the benefits of extra downtime.

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Analysis, DNA, Genes

Height, bone density, and more can be predicted using new DNA analysis algorithm

October 13, 2018

A new computer model could accurately predict a person’s height to within one inch just by analyzing their DNA

AI-driven diagnostic tools are undeniably on the precipice of revolutionizing how doctors treat and manage patients. The ability for machine-learning algorithms to crunch immense volumes of patient data and find patterns not visible to the eyes of human clinicians is revealing new ways to predict everything from breast cancer risk to a person’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Now, a team of scientists from Michigan State University claims to have built a computer algorithm that can analyze a person’s complete genome and accurately predict how tall they are with only around a one-inch (2.5-cm) margin of error. The machine-learning system was trained on a dataset of nearly 500,000 adults.

Continue reading… “Height, bone density, and more can be predicted using new DNA analysis algorithm”

AI, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Medicine

AI-Human “hive mind ” diagnoses pneumonia

October 5, 2018

First, it correctly predicted the top four finishers at the Kentucky Derby. Then, it was better at picking Academy Award winners than professional movie critics—three years in a row. The cherry on top was when it prophesied that the Chicago Cubs would end a 108-year dry spell by winning the 2016 World Series—four months before the Cubs were even in the playoffs. (They did.)

Now, this AI-powered predictive technology is turning its attention to an area where it could do some real good—diagnosing medical conditions.

In a study presented on Monday at the SIIM Conference on Machine Intelligence in Medical Imaging in San Francisco, Stanford University doctors showed that eight radiologists interacting through Unanimous AI’s “swarm intelligence” technology were better at diagnosing pneumonia from chest X-rays than individual doctors or a machine-learning program alone.

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Analysis, Children, DNA

In the 23 and Me era, kids of sperm donors are finding each other

October 1, 2018

Imaging discovering you have a half-sibling you’ve never met—or dozens of them. Customers of genetic-information services are uncovering family secrets, and then using social networks to make connections..

When you use 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, you get a message cautioning you that the information you’re about to see could be unexpected. For Danny-J Johnson, that couldn’t have been more of an understatement.

Continue reading… “In the 23 and Me era, kids of sperm donors are finding each other”