Category: Big Data

Impact Lab > Big Data
AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, China, Crime Prevention

Chinese ‘Gait Recognition’ tech ID’s people by how they walk

CHINESE ‘GAIT RECOGNITION’ TECH IDS PEOPLE BY HOW THEY WALK

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In this Oct. 31, 2018, photo, Huang Yongzhen, CEO of Watrix, demonstrates the use of his firm’s gait recognition software at his company’s offices in Beijing. A Chinese technology startup hopes to begin selling software that recognizes people by their body shape and how they walk, enabling identification when faces are hidden from cameras. Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, “gait recognition” is part of a major push to develop artificial-intelligence and data-driven surveillance across China, raising concern about how far the technology will go. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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Advertising, Analysis, Big Data, Latest Trend, Netflix

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

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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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Big Data, Culture, Higher Education

No cash needed at this cafe. Students pay the tab with their personal data

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At Shiru Cafe in Providence, R.I., students “pay” for coffee, but not with money.

Shiru Cafe looks like a regular coffee shop. Inside, machines whir, baristas dispense caffeine and customers hammer away on laptops. But all of the customers are students, and there’s a reason for that. At Shiru Cafe, no college ID means no caffeine.

“We definitely have some people that walk in off the street that are a little confused and a little taken aback when we can’t sell them any coffee,” said Sarah Ferris, assistant manager at the Shiru Cafe branch in Providence, R.I., located near Brown University.

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Big Data, Breakthrough Thinking, cutting edge, new technology

Umbra Composit could scan the world in 3D to the detail of a single grain of sand

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Umbra shows a scan of Helsinki.

Last year, Umbra unveiled a tool called The Composit that will let you upload a complex 3D model to the cloud and then view it on any device. Now, the Helsinki, Finland-based company is showing how it can create a huge web-based virtual model of a city that can put something like Google Maps to shame.

Umbra claims its tech could scan the whole world down to the detail of a single grain of sand. It could be done via a kind of crowdsourcing, using only people with smartphones who use their devices as scanners. That might sound outlandish, but the company is already well under way with that mission in its native Finland.

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Big Data, new technology, Record Breaker

Move over, China: U.S. is again home to the world’s speediest supercomputer

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Summit, the world’s fastest supercomputer, is made up of rows of black refrigerator-size units that weigh a total of 340 tons.

The United States just won bragging rights in the race to build the world’s speediest supercomputer.

For five years, China had the world’s fastest computer, a symbolic achievement for a country trying to show that it is a tech powerhouse. But the United States retook the lead thanks to a machine, called Summit, built for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

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Big Data, Economy, Employment, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

This is America’s hottest job

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Uber, Airbnb managers say ‘I’m hiring’ on LinkedIn profiles.

Job postings up 75 percent in past three years on Indeed.com.

Murray Webb had been a lackluster student more interested in sports than schoolwork while attending a small Virginia college. Then he transferred to Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta to pursue a master’s degree in applied statistics and landed four job offers upon graduation. Webb, 33, now earns $160,000 a year targeting health-care customers for hospitals and says he is approached weekly by companies and recruiters seeking data scientists.

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Big Data, China, government

China’s “social credit system” will rate how valuable you are as a human

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A Citizen Score in China

In a contentious world first, China plans to implement a social credit system (officially referred to as a Social Credit Score or SCS) by 2020. The idea first appeared in a document from the State Council of China published in June 2014. It is a technological advancement so shocking to modern-minded paradigms that many can do little but sit back in defeatist chagrin as science fiction shows us its darker side.

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AI, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News

AI adoption is limited by incurred risk, not potential benefit

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It’s tempting to think that adoption of AI is limited by the technology itself. Headlines declaring the rise of robot doctors and approaching technological singularity, contrasted with humorous memes of robots falling over, make us alternately fear and doubt AI’s capabilities. In practice, however, decades-old AI technologies could unlock significant value, although many companies still have yet to adopt them. This is because adoption of AI is determined by both trust and risk. Thinking about AI adoption in this way enables us to more accurately anticipate opportunities for AI startups.

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Analysis, Big Data, Science & Technology News

Why the promise of big data hasn’t delivered yet

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The ubiquity of big data is such that Gartner dropped it from their Hype Cycle of Emergent Technologies back in 2015. Across sectors, businesses are scrambling to make every function “data driven,” and there’s no shortage of firms lining up to help them. The big data analytics industry, dedicated to helping big businesses leverage the petabytes of information they now generate and store, is worth $122 billion — and growing.

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3D Printer, Analysis, Big Data, Big Problems, Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, cutting edge, Energy, Engineering, Environment, Future, Latest News, Latest Trend, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy, Space, Space Flight, SpaceX, Travel

The factories of the future could float in space

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This past summer, a plane went into a stomach-churning ascent and plunge 30,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. The goal was not thrill-seeking, but something more genuinely daring: for about 25 seconds at a time, the parabolic flight lifted the occupants into a state of simulated weightlessness, allowing a high-tech printer to spit out cardiac stem cells into a two-chambered, simplified structure of an infant’s heart.

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