Beyond Limits, an artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing company, says that it has secured $20 million in Series B funding from BP Ventures, the corporate investment arm of BP.
The company says that the investment will accelerate the delivery of industrial-grade AI software, previously used in deep space exploration missions, to combine human knowledge with machine learning and provide the energy sector with new levels of operational insight, business optimization, and process automation across all operations.
Launched in 2012, Beyond Limits was created to commercialize cutting edge IP developed by the team after over 20 years of supporting NASA and the space program. With technologies proven in the unknown and extreme environment of space, Beyond Limits says it will adapt and deliver AI software that tackles industrial and enterprise challenges here on earth.
Meghan Sharp, managing director BP Ventures–Americas, will join the Beyond Limits board. Commenting on the investment, Sharp said: “BP Ventures is excited to help Beyond Limits grow into new verticals, as we bring forward the pioneering work they have developed with the space program to our industry and throughout our businesses. Our investment in Beyond Limits is an example of BP’s ongoing support of entrepreneurs and innovators not only inside the traditional world of oil and gas but those looking toward a new energy future.”
The BP/Beyond Limits partnership could enable a step change in the way BP locates and develops reservoirs, produces and refines crude oil, and markets and supplies refined products. Beyond Limits says it will bring its expertise to the world of oil and gas where its AI software could support improvements in the speed and quality of decision making, manage operational risks, and harness the collective knowledge and experience of its team.
AJ Abdallat, CEO of Beyond Limits, said; “Our goal is to create automated solutions that can think like humans and augment human capability. We are the AI company that provides solutions for problems that cannot be solved using traditional approaches.”
Morag Watson, chief digital innovation officer at BP said: “Our strategic cooperation with Beyond Limits is a perfect fit with BP’s vision of using digital technology to help transform our organization. We believe artificial intelligence will be one of the most critical digital technologies to drive new levels of performance across the industry.”
7 June 2017 – Artificial intelligence (AI) is responsible for self-driving cars and voice-recognition smart phones, but the United Nations this week is refocusing AI on sustainable development and assisting global efforts to eliminate poverty and hunger, and to protect the environment.
Starting today in Geneva, the AI for Good Global Summit, which is co-organized by the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the XPRIZE Foundation, with support for some 20 UN agencies, brings together key innovators in the field with humanitarian actors and academics.
“Artificial Intelligence has the potential to accelerate progress towards a dignified life, in peace and prosperity, for all people,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “The time has arrived for all of us – governments, industry and civil society – to consider how AI will affect our future.”
In a video message to the summit, Mr. Guterres called AI “a new frontier” with “advances moving at warp speed.”
He noted that that while AI is “already transforming our world socially, economically and politically,” there are also serious challenges and ethical issues which must be taken into account – including cybersecurity, human rights and privacy.
Mr. Guterres noted that developing countries can gain from the benefits of artificial intelligence, but are also at the highest risk of being left behind.
“This Summit can help ensure that artificial intelligence charts a course that benefits humanity and bolsters our shared values,” he underscored.
The opening session of the summit is expected to give voice to the leading minds in AI, with breakout sessions focusing on issues such as sustainable living and poverty reduction.
Today, we've gathered here to discuss how far AI can go, how much it will improve our lives, and how we can all work together to make it a force for goodITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao
ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, said the event “will assist us in determining how the UN, ITU and other UN agencies can work together with industry and the academic community to promote AI innovation and create a good environment for the development of artificial intelligence.”
He called the summit a “neutral platform for international dialogue” which can build a common understanding of emerging technologies and how they can apply to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adding that the divers array of thought leaders gathered for the event will weigh in on such topics as “how far AI can go, how much it will improve our lives, and how we can all work together to make it a force for good.”
The summit will run through Friday, with a closing session on “applying AI for good.”
An abundance of cheap and powerful computing capacity is bringing artificial intelligence to bear on an ocean of data, across a range of industrial applications.
Complex mathematical modelling has always been part of the data-driven financial world, but today professional money managers are exploring a new range of techniques: machine learning, deep learning, neural networks. They have also become familiar with the relatively new discipline of data science – really an intersection of software engineering, statistical modelling, research analytics, data mining, data warehousing etc.
Newsweek’s AI and Data Science in Capital Markets event in London provided participants with a clear view of what exactly these new tools are, and how they can capture value in the financial realm. This forthcoming event in New York will likewise bring together the best minds in quantitative finance and data science to discuss how advanced computing, when applied to vast and varied datasets, can help predict the price of financial instruments.
This will involve an exploration of new and exciting data sources currently being swooped upon by hedge funds and asset managers seeking an alpha edge. For example, in London we looked at cube satellite imagery, which can provide a cheap and accurate picture of commercially significant activity anywhere on the planet; automatic identification system (AIS) data, which map the whereabouts of all vessels on the ocean via inbuilt transponders; IoT data on farming yields; heterogeneous shopping data – the list was long.
The process of capturing, cleaning and formatting these large and sometimes noisy datasets is examined in detail, both from the proprietary perspective of large financial players, and also how this is done by third party vendors.
Portfolio management enhancements and risk management using machine learning will also be discussed, as will the regulatory response to algorithms that adapt to changes in market conditions; building trust in the industry and wider public, rather than the putative ‘black box’.
The event will also consider the extent to which advancements in AI happening in areas such as computer vision, voice recognition and self-driving cars can usefully be applied to finance. And at a higher level there will be discussions about human capital and the impact machines might have key roles within finance such as discretionary traders and research analysts.
Newsweek’s second AI and capital markets conference in NYC will also see the introduction of a session of pre-event seminars and primers, which will give participants classroom time with leading data scientists from industry and academia.
Interest in artificial intelligence has exploded, with some predicting that machines will take over and others optimistically hoping that people will be freed up to explore creative pursuits.
According to Arizona State University Professor Subbarao Kambhampati, the reality will be more in the middle—but the technology will certainly bring about a restructuring of our society.
AI will accomplish a lot of good things, Kambhampati said, but we must also be vigilant about possible ramifications of the technology. And yes, some jobs will be lost—but maybe not the ones people most often think of.
The professor of computer science and engineering in ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering is well qualified to enter the debate. He has been doing work in the area—commonly called "AI"—for more than three decades, and he is at the midpoint of a two-year term as president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the largest organization of scientists, engineers and others in the field.
Kambhampati, whose current research focuses on developing "human-aware" AI systems to enable people and intelligent machines to work collaboratively, is also on the board of trustees of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (PAI), which aims to help establish industry-wide best practices and ethics guidelines.
The following interview is edited from a recent conversation with him.
Question: You became president of the AI association at a time when public awareness of these technologies and the issues they raise has exploded. What's sparking the widespread interest?
Answer: AI as a scientific field has actually been around since the 1950s and has made amazing, if fitful, progress in getting machines to show hallmarks of intelligence. The Deep Blue computer's win over the world chess champion in 1997 was a watershed moment, but even after that, AI remained a staid academic field. Most people didn't come into direct contact with AI technology until relatively recently.
With the recent advances of AI in perceptual intelligence, we all now have smartphones that can hear and talk back to us and recognize images. AI is now a very ubiquitous part of our everyday lives, so there's a visceral understanding of its impact.
Q: Plus, it's a big driver of major industries, right?
A: In 2008, for instance, few if any tech companies were mentioning investments and involvement in AI in their annual reports or quarterly earnings reports. Today you'll find about 300 major companies emphasizing their AI projects or ventures in those reports.
The members of the Partnership for Artificial Intelligence, which I am involved with, include Amazon, Facebook, Google's Deep Mind, IBM and Microsoft. So, yes, AI is now a very big deal.
Q: The big question about AI is what it means for not only business and the economy, but what it portends for society when AI machines are doing more jobs that people used to do. What's your perspective on that?
A: Elon Musk (the prominent engineer, inventor and tech entrepreneur) started this trend of AI fears by remarking that what keeps him up at night is the idea of super-intelligent machines that will become more powerful than humans. Then Stephen Hawking (renowned physicist and cosmologist) chimed in. Statements like that, coming from influential people, of course make the public worry.
I don't take such a pessimistic view. I think AI is going to do a lot of good things. But it is also going to be a very powerful technology that will shape and change our world. So we should remain vigilant of all the ramifications of this powerful technology and work to mitigate unintended consequences. Fortunately, this is a goal shared by both AAAI and PAI.
Q: Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who was defeated by the Deep Blue computer, writes that we should embrace AI, that it will free people from work so that they can develop their intellectual and creative capabilities. Others are saying the same. Do you agree?
A: I think Kasparov and others who say this are maybe too optimistic. We see from the past that new technology has taken away certain jobs but also created new kinds of jobs. But it's not certain that will always be the case with the proliferation of AI.
It seems clear that some professions are going to disappear, and not just blue-collar jobs like trucking, but also high-paying white-collar jobs. There are going to be many fewer radiologists, because machines are already doing a better job of reading X-rays. Machines can also be much faster and better at doing the kind of information gathering and research now done by paralegals, for instance.
This is why we have to start thinking about how society is going to be restructured if AI technologies and systems are doing much of the work that people once did.
Q: What would such a restructuring look like?
A: This is quite an open question, and organizations like AAAI and PAI are trying to get ahead of the curve in answering it.
I do want to emphasize that I don't think it is solely the job of AI experts, or of industry, to think about these issues of long-term restructuring. This is something that society at large has to contend with. We also have to realize that AI consequences play into already existing social ills such as societal biases, wealth concentration and social alienation. We have to work to make sure that AI moderates rather than amplifies these trends.
Q: What can those in the AI field do proactively to produce the most positive outcomes from the expansion of the technology?
A: We can take potential impacts into consideration when deciding in what directions we want to take our research and development. Much research now, like mine, is focusing on systems that are not intended to replace humans but to augment and enhance what humans are doing. We want to enable humans and machines to work together to do things better than what humans can do alone.
For AI systems to work with humans, they need to acquire emotional and social intelligence, something humans expect from their co-workers. That's where human-aware AI comes into play.
Q: What keeps you excited about your research?
A: I've always thought that the biggest questions facing our age are about three fundamental things: the origin of the universe, the origin of life and the nature of intelligence.
AI research takes you to the heart of one of them. In developing AI systems, I get a window into the basic nature of intelligence. That's why I tell my students that it takes a particularly bad teacher to make AI uninteresting.
That is what hooked me into this work. And now I'm getting the opportunity to go beyond the technical aspects of the field and have a voice on issues of ethics and practices and societal outcomes. That is energizing me even more.
File photo: FILE - In this April 30, 2015, file photo, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils the company's newest products, in Hawthorne, Calif. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)
The performance of humans’ puny brains will be outmatched by computers within just 13 years, billionaire Elon Musk has claimed.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder said that artificial intelligence will beat us at just about everything by 2030.
He made the comments on Twitter, where he was responding to a new study which claims our race will be overtaken by 2060.
“Probably closer to 2030 to 2040 in my opinion,” he wrote.
According to the terrifying research from boffs at the University of Oxford, it’s not looking good for us humans.
Machines will be better than us at translating languages by 2024 and writing school essays by 2026, they claimed.
Within ten years computers will be better at driving a truck than us and by 2031 they will be better at selling goods and will put millions of retail workers on the dole queue.
AI will write a bestselling book by 2049 and conduct surgery by 2053, the researchers suggested.
In fact, every single human job will be automated within the next 120 years, according to computer experts the university researchers quizzed.
It's unlikely to trouble the billionaire tech entrepreneur, however.
Musk already has plans to plug our brains into computers.
He recently launched a new neuroscience company which aims to develop cranial computers that can download thoughts and possibly even treat disorders such as epilepsy and depression, the New York Post reported.
Over the years, the 45-year-old has conjured up new ideas for space rockets and electric-cars, proven that they can work efficiently, and then rolled them out for public and private use.
He's even hoping to start a human colony on Mars by 2030.
He's not alone in his estimations for the great computer takeover, either.
Scientists reckon humans are on the brink of a new evolutionary shift – and man as we know it "probably won't survive".
In a terrifying advance, some have warned that computers are so advanced, those developing the complex formulas that make them "tick" aren't even sure how they work.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most popular technology trends in the global market right now. Rocking all major headlines, it’s expected to grow to a $70BN industry by 2020 and an estimated 2600 startups worldwide develop AI related technology. News ranges in all directions: from doomsday scenarios of robots eradicating humans, or eliminating all our jobs, to fascinating stories about the potential of AI technologies either saving the lives of millions of patients, or helping to protect our environment. The potential of AI is enormous, but it can be hard to pierce through the hype and figure out where to begin — how to start applying AI.
Lets elaborate on the relevance. The time lines and severity of the impact of AI are ferociously discussed in the community, but whether you believepredictions of Ray Kurzweil or you are a skeptic, there is no denying that the current level of application is unprecedented. A major reason for this is the exponential growth of data and computing power — two of the driving enablers behind AI and more specifically machine learning. As usual we are drowned in statistics and speculations: By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human and 20% of business content is going to be created by agents as soon as 2018 according to Gartner. Bank of America argues that the rise of AI will lead to cost reduction and new forms of growth that could amount to $14-$33 trillion annually and the last years have consistently been record years in terms of AI funding with 2016 amassing $5B in venture capital spread over 550 startups using AI as a core part of their product according to CB Insights.
AI is still a poorly understood and ambiguous term, but, without going into definitions, it’s actually easier to get started than you might think. First of all, there is an increasing amount of platforms out there and one of the quickest ways to integrate AI into a new or existing business is making use of API’s. The most important question is what kind of service you want to create, or which process you want to optimize. The big players include IBM Watson, Google Prediction, Alchemy API, Wit.ai and many more. For an excellent overview written by Ray Kurzweil, check out this article.
API’s might be quick, but for long term solutions building an intelligent model yourself could be much more interesting. There has been an enormous rise of open-source AI platforms in 2016. The tech giants have their own open-source libraries: e.g. Amazon (DSSTNE), Microsoft (DNTK), or Baidu (WarpCTC). Commercial platforms with support and higher quality include Dato and H20. Other free and popular platforms include Google’s deep-learning platformTensorflow and Elon Musk’s OpenAI released OpenAI Gym as well as open-source libraries such as Seldon, Theano, Torchand Caffe. Want to build a chatbot? Check out API.ai & Motion.ai for a quick and easy start.
What happens when we teach a computer how to learn? Technologist Jeremy Howard shares some surprising new developments in the fast-moving field of deep learning.
Hugo Larochelle shares his observations of what’s been made possible with the underpinnings of Deep Learning.
Even though the amount of online resources to learn from and get inspired by grows exponentially, face to face knowledge exchanges are important to people. Events or gatherings enable people to connect with peers & experts whilst providing new insights. The energy you receive from personal connections often triggers the inspiration needed to get started or improve.
At City.AI together with World Summit AI we want to enable more people to apply AI globally. We work with different city chapters to identify leading practitioners locally and encourage them to share their lessons learned. We want them to learn from one another and in turn also help others to get started in the right way. There is so much noise in the space and only few people are openly sharing their failures when it comes to implementing AI technologies and the business impact. Sharing lessons in person is extremely powerful and therefore we bring different AI communities together via quarterly local events. Thats also the reason we are doing a large scale dedicated AI conference this year called World Summit AI. Feel free to get in touch to start a city chapter, join one of our local events and visit our Summitin Amsterdam!
At the end of the day, even though AI seems to be all about technology, we forget that it’s people who shape our future. The mystery around AI has a fantastic effect in terms of getting more people interested in the topic. It inspires people. However, the hype also causes unrealistic expectations. What is needed is the awareness to focus on the right things (e.g. sustainable building blocks and frameworks) and transparency around failures as well as successes. In the news we are reading about the breakthroughs, but we should focus more on the people and the lessons learned. Embrace transparency and educate enthusiasts. We don’t just need developers and data scientists, we need more people to experiment and create new use cases. This will only happen if we make AI more accessible and take part of its mystery away whilst revealing its potential.