communication – Page 3

AI, Artificial Intelligence, communication, Microsoft, Science & Technology News

Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots

June 10, 2020

Users of the homepages of the MSN website and Edge browser will now see news stories generated by AI

Dozens of journalists have been sacked after Microsoft decided to replace them with artificial intelligence software.

Staff who maintain the news homepages on Microsoft’s MSN website and its Edge browser – used by millions of Britons every day – have been told that they will be no longer be required because robots can now do their jobs.

Around 27 individuals employed by PA Media – formerly the Press Association – were told on Thursday that they would lose their jobs in a month’s time after Microsoft decided to stop employing humans to select, edit and curate news articles on its homepages.

Continue reading… “Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots”

2020 Predictions, communication, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News, Trending

4 ways work will change after the COVID-19 pandemic

June 8, 2020

The CEO of Skylum notes that we will now understand how things can work when people are purely focused on productivity and communication, and that is going to change everything.

To say the coronavirus has had an impact on the way the world “works” would be an understatement.

In a matter of weeks, we’ve gone from a society that sees remote work as a luxury, or even a “freelancer lifestyle,” to realizing the vast majority of jobs today can be done from home. Companies that hadn’t moved the majority of their assets to the cloud are now doing so at a rapid rate. Video calls have gone from being a suboptimal alternative to a core function of the way we communicate. The list goes on and on—and the impact is here to stay.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve noticed several shifts in our company, Skylum, as more than 100 of us around the world have adjusted to the new rules of society.

Many have never worked from home before, which comes with a unique learning curve. Many have never had the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other employees who work out of offices on different continents—which is now easier since everyone is “remote.” Many have also never viewed their job descriptions through the lens of being quarantined, where tasks left unfinished become more obvious to the rest of the group (in an office setting it’s easier to appear “busy”).

Continue reading… “4 ways work will change after the COVID-19 pandemic”

Augmented Reality, communication, Coronavirus, Internet, Science & Technology News

These are boom times for Augmented Reality

May 30, 2020

There’s no escaping the pandemic, but bizarre Instagram filters and Zoom backgrounds give us the illusion that we can.

I am alone in my apartment, as always, and I’ve just replaced my left eyeball with an orange springing out of its peel.

A mile away, a friend, also home alone, is taking her seat—every seat, actually—at the table in The Last Supper, yelling as the camera pans down the row of disciples and her face replaces that of one man after another. Another friend is watching a mouse dressed as the Pope dance across her kitchen floor. A third is smiling while a strange man wraps his arms around his throat.

Many of us have nowhere to go, no one to see, no communal experience to be a part of, no shared feelings other than dread. But the platforms of the pandemic—Zoom, Instagram, Snapchat, FaceTime—all let us pretend that our life is more than just four walls. With augmented-reality filters, users can mess with their appearances in elaborate ways. Before the coronavirus hit, out-there virtual effects were something of a novelty, but now they’re becoming a major mode of passing the time, giving us the technology to make our faces interesting enough to keep on sharing.

Continue reading… “These are boom times for Augmented Reality”

2020 Predictions, communication, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News

Meetings industry survey : Re-engagement expected by June

April 26, 2020

“COVID-19 has had a substantial financial impact on the tourism industry, and destination organizations have responded quickly by deferring marketing funds in a responsible manner,” said Craig Compagnone, chief operating officer, MMGY Global commenting on the results of a recent meetings industry survey.

MMGY Travel Intelligence, in partnership with Destinations International Foundation, has released the findings from the third wave of a series of bi-weekly tracking surveys of North American destination professionals. The surveys assess how this sector has been affected by COVID-19 and what shifts organizations are making during a period of very fluid change. The latest findings reveal that while almost the entire sector (95 percent) has moved to reduce or postpone paid promotional advertising, and 80 percent have shifted sales, marketing or messaging, half of destination organizations expect to return to several forms of paid promotional advertising within the next 60 days.

“However, search data is telling us that there is still a strong desire to travel, and we believe this pent-up demand will result in a high volume of shorter booking window trips when bans are lifted and consumers believe it is safe to get out and explore again,” added Compagnone.

Continue reading… “Meetings industry survey : Re-engagement expected by June”

Analysis, communication, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News

8 charts on internet use around the world as countries grapple with COVID-19

April 24, 2020

A man in Bologna, Italy, chats online with his grandparents on March 19. A nationwide lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19 has been extended to at least Easter.

People in the United States and around the world are turning to the internet to do their work and stay connected with others as the COVID-19 outbreak forces people to stay home and away from the office and crowds. A median of 77% across 34 countries use the internet at least occasionally or own an internet-enabled smartphone, according to a spring 2019 Pew Research Center survey. But there are stark digital divides. Younger people, those with higher incomes and those in wealthier countries are more likely to be digital technology users. Many people surveyed also use social media, but social media usage is not ubiquitous, even in economically advanced nations like Germany and Japan.

Here are eight charts on digital connectivity worldwide.

Continue reading… “8 charts on internet use around the world as countries grapple with COVID-19”

brain hacking, communication, cutting edge, Science & Technology News

Scientists develop AI that can turn brain activity into text

April 12, 2020

Researchers in US tracked the neural data from people while they were speaking

Reading minds has just come a step closer to reality: scientists have developed artificial intelligence that can turn brain activity into text.

While the system currently works on neural patterns detected while someone is speaking aloud, experts say it could eventually aid communication for patients who are unable to speak or type, such as those with locked in syndrome.

“We are not there yet but we think this could be the basis of a speech prosthesis,” said Dr Joseph Makin, co-author of the research from the University of California, San Francisco.

Continue reading… “Scientists develop AI that can turn brain activity into text”

communication, Coronavirus, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Podcast listening sees decline with work-from-home requirements limiting commutes

April 11, 2020

As people adjust to shelter in place orders around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, new behaviors are impacting almost every industry and that includes podcasts. While at first, you might think podcast listener numbers would be up with the extra time many people have on hand, it’s actually the opposite, here’s why.

Reported by The New Consumer, in the US, podcast audiences are down 10% over the last two weeks according to data from Podtrac. While that might sound strange considering that many people have a lot more free time with shelter in place orders, what is likely happening here is that normal routines like listening to podcasts on the commute to work isn’t happening as day-to-day routines have been disrupted.

Continue reading… “Podcast listening sees decline with work-from-home requirements limiting commutes”

Business, communication, Coronavirus, Culture, Science & Technology News

Coronavirus upended the trillion-dollar events business. Here’s how it can come back

April 9, 2020

The global events industry generates more than $1 trillion in economic activity. Needless to say, it has been decimated by the coronavirus. After the lockdowns end and our health authorities tell us it’s safe to gather in groups, we need a plan to ease people back into real events. Virtual events won’t cut it in the long term — not just for participants but also for our economy.

The typically busy spring lineup of galas, receptions, multiday conferences, and fundraisers has been wiped out. Democratic convention planners last week announced they would delay until August, but questions abound about how exactly that would work and still keep people safe. Campaigns, advocacy groups, and charities, meanwhile, are scrambling to adapt and think about what the fall will look like — and whether they’ll have a fall at all.

The stakes are high. In the United States alone, the event planning business generates $325 billion of direct spending and helps support more than 5.9 million jobs with $249 billion of labor income. These jobs support the planners, audio-visual technicians, caterers, venues, cooks, waiters, and everyone else who helps produce the events we all enjoy.

Continue reading… “Coronavirus upended the trillion-dollar events business. Here’s how it can come back”

communication, Elon Musk, Internet, Science & Technology News, SpaceX

Elon Musk’s SpaceX: Now 1 million Starlink user terminals OKed for US internet service

April 3, 2020

The Federal Communications Commission has approved SpaceX’s application to roll out a million user terminals in the US to connect with its growing Starlink satellite broadband network.

The approval gives SpaceX a 15-year “blanket license for the operation of up to 1,000,000 fixed earth stations that will communicate with its non-geostationary orbit satellite system”.

Continue reading… “Elon Musk’s SpaceX: Now 1 million Starlink user terminals OKed for US internet service”

communication, cutting edge, Engineering, Science & Technology News

Cloud data speeds set to soar with aid of laser mini-magnets

March 14, 2020

Model of a single-molecule magnet

Tiny, laser-activated magnets could enable cloud computing systems to process data up to 100 times faster than current technologies, a study suggests.

Chemists have studied a new magnetic material that could boost the storage capacity and processing speed of hard drives used in cloud-based servers.

This could enable people using cloud data systems to load large files in seconds instead of minutes, researchers say.

A team led by scientists from the University of Edinburgh created the material—known as a single-molecule magnet—in the lab.

Continue reading… “Cloud data speeds set to soar with aid of laser mini-magnets”

Clothing, communication, Science & Technology News, Wearables

These ‘smart clothes’ conduct Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to link all your gadgets at once, and can boost your battery life by 1,000 times

February 23, 2020

The clothes can be washed, dried and ironed as with regular garments.

In recent years, wearable devices like smartwatches have become increasingly popular among those who want to keep track of their personal health and fitness.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore invented clothing that conducts Bluetooth and WiFi to connect all your different gadgets, turning the wearer into a pseudo-human circuit board.

The conductive material on the clothing is made from stainless steel in comb-shaped strips attached to the outer surface of the clothing, and can still be washed like any normal clothing.

The team is eventually looking to commercialize the meta-material, particularly in the athletics and healthcare industries where body performance and health monitoring are so important.

Continue reading… “These ‘smart clothes’ conduct Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to link all your gadgets at once, and can boost your battery life by 1,000 times”

AI, communication, Internet, Science & Technology News

AI can automatically rewrite outdated text in Wikipedia articles

February 23, 2020

It’s good to be skeptical of Wikipedia articles for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility of outdated info — human editors can only do so much. And while there are bots that can edit Wikipedia, they’re usually limited to updated canned templates or fighting vandalism. MIT might have a more useful (not to mention more elegant) solution. Its researchers have developed an AI system that automatically rewrites outdated sentences in Wikipedia articles while maintaining a human tone. It won’t look out of line in a carefully crafted paragraph, then.

The machine learning-based system is trained to recognize the differences between a Wikipedia article sentence and a claim sentence with updated facts. If it sees any contradictions between the two sentences, it uses a “neutrality masker” to pinpoint both the contradictory words that need deleting and the ones it absolutely has to keep. After that, an encoder-decoder framework determines how to rewrite the Wikipedia sentence using simplified representations of both that sentence and the new claim.

The system can also be used to supplement datasets meant to train fake news detectors, potentially reducing bias and improving accuracy.

Continue reading… “AI can automatically rewrite outdated text in Wikipedia articles”