AI Podcast Interviews Articles and Reports

Have you ever wondered why some startups get loads of hype immediately after their launch and others don't? Is it down to an auspicious alignment of the planets or just sheer luck? The answer is neither; it's all down to virality. And according to leading expert in internet virality, Emerson Spartz, you have to create your own.

If you suspected that bioengineering is the new frontier of human endeavor, the experts agree. Genomics - with its proliferation of metaphors - scientists as pioneers and bioengineering as the home of innovation and rugged individualism - is the new Wild West. Consumer genomics, made possible by the plummeting costs of DNA testing and its growing popularity via the internet, is already a reality. Its current and future value in medical diagnostics, as well as a timetable within which it can become widely available as a healthcare tool for the general population, are the topic of much debate.

Tute Genomics is part of a grand shift towards the leveraging of genetic information towards better health and better treatments. One of the "holy grails" of this transition from one to the other is the advent of

Dr. Charles Sidman started off getting his Masters and PhD in Immunology and Harvard, and dove into research and professorship. It was thinking about the applications and possibilities of his research that brought him to the world of business and investments. "There's a part of grant writing where you have to mention significant - why your project matters in the world... that's what got involve with consulting activities, application and commercialization." This yearning to step outside the lab has resulted in hundreds of speeches, presentations and consulting jobs with companies and organizations around the world, eventually landing Charles in position as a Managing Partner of ECS Capital Partners, LLC.

Artificial intelligence has it’s advantages. Systematically, over decades of research and development, AI has come to dominate human intelligence in a number of specific and often limited tasks. Yet, AI - at least thus far - has still lagged human intelligence in certain types of rich pattern recognition. For example, AI programs are still comparatively inept with regards to picking up and handling different kinds of objects, and until recently, AI seemed to struggle vehemently in discerning a “cat” from a “dog” on a screen (see: Kaggle).

In the animal kingdom, Darwin’s explanation of evolution seems relatively straightforward. The strong survive, the fittest member finds a mate, and beneficial genes are passed along in this manner, always adjusting to the traits - sometimes swiftly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution), sometimes slowly (http://www.preceden.com/timelines/68990-evolution-of-the-alligator). How might this processed be modeled in robots, or to teams of robots?

Apple’s Siri represents much of humanity’s first exposure to pocket “intelligence.” Asking questions, getting directions, and making calls / communications via voice opens up new possibilities for mobile technology, possibilities that Atooma CEO Francesca Romano thinks can go much farther, much faster.

In an industrial environment, machine downtime is a big deal. Keeping machines humming for longer means greater production and maximized use of the asset. Managers understand this, entrepreneurs understand this, but it’s possible that researchers do not. Admittedly, their work is not always geared directly toward profit, and the researchers themselves were usually not the actual investors in the actual equipment, but the overlap from research to industry is still a large one.