Last few days to Apply for MIT WPU’s Petroleum Engineering AI and ML program

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May 23, 2022

MIT World Peace University (WPU) is accepting applications for its undergraduate program in petroleum engineering (artificial intelligence and machine learning).

The BTech program is aimed at engineering enthusiasts and will produce highly trained professionals specializing in multiple fields such as exploration and economics, production engineering, drilling engineering, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data analytics, etc.

The 4-year BTech curriculum incorporates inputs from mathematics, physical, and geosciences, along with several engineering fields. In the most recent recruiting campaign, Cairn India – Vedanta offered the biggest package of Rs 20 LPA to the top 10% of the current batch, followed by ExxonMobil with Rs 11.5 LPA.

Dr. Rahul Joshi, Head, School of Petroleum Engineering at MIT WPU, said, “The necessity to obtain clean energy from the subsurface of the earth and to store crude oil, a significant ingredient for the production of medicines, agrochemicals and other petrochemicals (polymers and synthetic detergents), is inevitable.”

He further added that the field of energy and resources is expanding with technological innovation to adapt to modern demand, and MIT-WPU is constantly engaging with industry to equip its students with best-in-class skills and knowledge.

The program aims to develop industry-ready individuals with a thorough understanding of the interdisciplinary subject. Candidates must have completed XII grade with Physics, Mathematics, and English as compulsory subjects and a minimum of 50% in PCM group to become eligible for this BTech course.

Interested candidates can apply for this program from the official website of MIT WPU. The last date to submit applications is 25th May 2022.

SoundHound launches Voice AI Ordering service for Restaurants

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 23, 2022

SoundHoundVoice AI Ordering service Restaurants

Invoice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence technologies developing company SoundHound announces the launch of its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered voice ordering service for restaurants.

We're talking turkey (also salami, roast beef, & chicken)! Announcing our partnership with @Square for a first-of-its-kind service that will allow restaurants to automate phone ordering and integrate their POS system. 🥳

Explore the partnership – https://t.co/6ZynlNV5gJ
— SoundHound (@SoundHound) May 19, 2022

The technology will transform the way people order food in restaurants by making the process completely digital.

SoundHound and Square, the world’s most trusted software, payments, and hardware firm, have teamed together to integrate SoundHound’s conversational AI phone ordering automation with Square’s POS systems.

The company’s newly launched voice assistant answers every call, eliminating the busy signal and smoothly processing orders and payments using Square’s POS system.

Bryan Solar, Head of Restaurants at Square, said, “Our partnership with SoundHound allows us to offer innovative and cost-effective solutions to restaurants working with small profit margins and facing multiple challenges—including the high cost of rapid labor turnover and shortages.”

He further added that this integration with SoundHound provides their sellers with the tools they need to offer a consistently high level of customer service.

According to the company, SoundHound for Restaurants is suitable for restaurant owners looking for cost-effective strategies to deal with contemporary trends of increased consumer demand for take-out orders. Moreover, the simple and hassle-free integration process makes the solution scalable and deployable.

Using a natural language interface powered by SoundHound’s powerful conversational AI technology, customers can ask for what they want to order. The four-step deployment process required restaurateurs to link their Square POS to SoundHound for Restaurants, sync to the menu they like the voice assistant to utilize and input the phone number for the system to answer.

“We spoke with many restaurant operators to develop SoundHound for Restaurants and received overwhelming feedback about the need for automated solutions that help restaurants process more orders and meet growing consumer demands more efficiently,” said the Co-founder and VP of Products at SoundHound, James Hom.

He also mentioned that their partnership with Square has allowed them to offer the power of conversational AI to organizations that would otherwise be unable to benefit from the convenience and efficiencies of a voice-enabled solution.

Israel tests AI-powered Floating Solar Panels

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 23, 2022

Israel announces that it plans to test a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered floating solar panels system to generate clean energy, reports Nocamels.

Developed by Israeli startup Xfloat, the solar photovoltaic (PV) system is meant to move and monitor the sun while floating on reservoir water. The company has developed an intelligent water management system that accurately tilts and tracks water loads and pumps.

The data acquired from sensors is subsequently refined and directed to a knowledge-based machine learning process for PV performance prediction, and O&M. Countries across the globe are launching new initiatives to generate clean energy as a step to control global warming.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is one of a few energy choices helping usher in a greener future. As technology is rapidly advancing, this new system developed by Xfloat is a perfect example of integrating artificial intelligence with existing solar photovoltaic technology. The buoyancy tanks in Xfloat’s technology are organized in a grid of connected vessels that coordinate the rotation of the PV tracking tables.

“As part of the cooperation, Xfloat’s floating panels will be installed on Mekorot’s water reservoirs,” Shir Azaraf, a spokeswoman for the Finance Ministry, told the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

The new project is being carried out in collaboration with Israel’s national water provider, Mekorot. FPVs open up land that may be used for various environmental, residential, or commercial uses.

Xfloat’s technology will also help prevent evaporation from water sources, resulting in lesser chances of droughts in the region. Moreover, it will maintain improved efficiencies over time due to the water’s cooling impact.

Kerala Police trains special team in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 23, 2022

Kerala Police has successfully trained a team in artificial intelligence and data analytics to help them deliver their duties more efficiently.

The team included fifteen police officers who underwent a capacity-building program in AI and data analytics conducted by Digital University Kerala (DUK).

Kerala Police announced that it plans to conduct this program in March 2022. The goal of this new AI and data analytics training program is to reduce officers’ burden in police stations, allowing them to deliver better services to citizens.

Inspector-General of Police (South Zone) P. Prakash confirmed that the Kerala Police’s AI squad had gone live, saying that the team would immediately put their newly acquired policing talents to use. The police officers received a certificate for the completion of the 45-day Capacity Building in Responsible Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics program.

“We are looking at a series of projects for various government departments that are much more deep and hands-on with technology as a major component,” Vice-Chancellor of DUK, Saji Gopinath, said during the launch of the program.

He further added that they were elated to start this series with the Kerala Police department. Industry experts and researchers will lead the 150-hour training program in a classroom setting. According to officials, the new course will help the team in executing predictive policing and adopting measures to prevent crimes from happening.

The AI team would be able to use their newly acquired skills to develop tools needed for next-generation policing, like face recognition. Mr. Prakash believes that new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence and data analytics will help the police force use data more effectively to improve policing.

Wayve and Microsoft partners to Scale AI for Autonomous Vehicles

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 22, 2022

Wayve Microsoft scale AI Autonomous Vehicles

Artificial intelligence-powered self-driving technology developing company Wayve partners with global technology giant Microsoft to scale AI for autonomous vehicles.

With this collaboration, Wayve intends to use Microsoft’s supercomputing infrastructure to help with the global development of AI-based models for autonomous vehicles.

They hope to harness the power of deep learning systems for autonomy, which has the potential to scale quicker than rules-based techniques to new locations.

This development comes months after Wayve raised $200 million in its series B funding round, which received participation from Microsoft. Other investors such as Virgin, Baillie Gifford, D1 Capital Partners, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Linse Capital also participated in the funding round.

CTO of Azure at Microsoft, Mark Russinovich, said, “Supercomputing capabilities are key to processing the immense amount of data required for the simulation, validation, and training of AI models that enable safe and secure autonomous driving.”

He further added that Wayve is combining its deep learning-based autonomous vehicle systems expertise with the processing power of Microsoft Azure to provide self-driving mobility to more individuals and organizations faster.

The United Kingdom-based artificial intelligence-powered autonomous driving technology developing startup Wayve was founded by Alex Kendall and Amar Shah in 2017. The startup specializes in offering fully autonomous driving solutions, which are data-driven.

Wayve’s technology uses deep end-to-end learning to develop artificial intelligence that allows vehicles to move autonomously in multiple complicated environments.

“Joining forces with Microsoft to design the supercomputing infrastructure needed to accelerate deep learning for autonomous mobility is an opportunity that we are honored to lead,” said Co-founder and CEO of Wayve.

He also mentioned that they are enthused about the possibilities that this cooperation will open up as they push deep learning to new heights.

IBM report says over 60% Indian and Chinese companies use AI

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 21, 2022

A recent IBM report suggests that more than 60% of the companies in India and China use artificial intelligence (AI) in some parts of their business operations.

As companies across the globe are adopting a digital approach to their operations, the deployment of technology has drastically increased over the past few years.

This report is yet another proof of how companies have gained confidence in new-age technologies like artificial intelligence. According to IBM’s report, global AI usage is continuously increasing, with 35 percent of organizations utilizing AI in their operations.

This surge was attributed to corporations seeing the usefulness of AI as they emerged from the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic while dealing with manpower and skills shortages, as per Morning Consult’s “Global AI Adoption Index 2022.”

The report mentioned, “Chinese and Indian companies are leading the way, with nearly 60 percent of IT professionals in those countries saying their organizations already actively use AI, compared with lagging markets like South Korea (22 percent), Australia (24 percent) the US (25 percent) and the UK (26 percent).”

Morning Consult carried out the survey on behalf of IBM between March 30 and April 12, 2022, where samples of more than 7000 senior business decision-makers with some influence over their company’s IT decisions were collected. The data included 500 respondents from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, China, India, Singapore, Australia, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and 1,000 respondents from Latin America.

The survey results found that over half of IT professionals in India working for organizations exploring or adopting AI indicate their companies plan to spend on R&D, proprietary AI solutions, reskilling, and workforce development in the coming year.

“Adoption is being driven by advances that make AI more accessible for companies (50 percent), and the increasing amount of AI embedded into standard off the shelf business applications (46 percent),” mentioned the report.

Meta’s new Cloud-based API is here for WhatsApp

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 20, 2022

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announces the launch of its new cloud-based API for WhatsApp that will help companies grow their business.

The new API will drastically reduce the time required for digitizing operations and is aimed at businesses of all sizes.

Promoting businesses over WhatsApp is an effective way of marketing products and services as companies can directly contact potential customers through the world’s most popular messaging application.

According to Meta, this API will make WhatsApp available to any company looking for a quick, efficient, and secure method to communicate with their customers.

“With this new API, we’ve cut down start-up time from months to minutes so businesses and developers can quickly and easily access our service, build directly on top of WhatsApp to further customize their experience and increase the speed at which they can respond to their customers,” mentioned Meta in a blog.

Moreover, the services will also save businesses money on server costs and provide them with immediate access to new features. Meta is also working on several advanced features for these companies, such as the ability to organize chats across up to 10 devices to better handle an inflow of talks.

Meta has clarified that people have control over the businesses they speak with, and companies cannot message people unless they have the end user’s consent.

Interested users can directly sign up for this service from the official website of WhatsApp or can also connect with one of Meta’s business solutions providers.

E42 launches India’s first AI Marketplace

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 20, 2022

Artificial intelligence-powered no-code NLP platform providing company E42 launches India’s first AI Marketplace.

The announcement was made during the company’s flagship event called E42 Colclave 2022. Avnish Sabharwal launched E42’s AI Marketplace during the event through video calls.

According to the company, its newly launched Marketplace will be a store where E42’s clients can sell their AI bots, which can then be licensed or hired by other companies to use for enhancing their services.

This development comes just after E42 completed ten years of helping enterprises smart using AI. The AI Marketplace is a display of all E42 and partner-built click-to-hire AI workers, which will soon be available for businesses to browse and choose from.

“The idea behind E42 Conclave is to bring together business leaders from varied functions and verticals to discuss aspects of AI and digital transformation that are critical for today’s enterprise to stay abreast of the competition,” said Co-founder and CTO of E24, Sanjeev Menon.

#E42 Conclave 2022 is an #exclusiveevent that will host E42’s partners, clients, and prospects from across industries and will be all about bringing together visionaries from varied functions and verticals! Stay tuned for more! https://t.co/l5Pkh5MYz8 #E42PartnerNetwork pic.twitter.com/TAlsxrywSY
— E42 (@E42_ai) May 12, 2022

Pune-based artificial intelligence bot platform E42 was founded by Animesh Samuel, Sanjeev Menon, and Sanjeev Nair in 2012. The company specializes in delivering a no-code platform that allows people to create and deploy AI coworkers in their area of expertise using a simple drag-and-drop interface. E42’s platform is easy to implement, operate, and migrate, allowing businesses all over the world to automate time and resource-intensive activities.

Co-founder and CEO of E42, Animesh Samuel, said, “E42 Marketplace has been thoughtfully created keeping the interest of our partners and customers in mind. A single platform to list all the AI workers that we and our partners built that can be hired by any enterprise in a few clicks is what sets our Marketplace apart.”

He further added that according to numerous studies, at least half of the enterprise workforce will be AI workers by 2026, representing an $800 billion opportunity for them and their partners.

Chandigarh University Students test AI-powered Driverless Car NOMAD

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 20, 2022

Chandigarh University Students AI Driverless Car NOMAD

Chandigarh University mechatronics engineering students have successfully tested their self-developed artificial intelligence (AI)-powered driverless car named NOMAD.

The motive of the team behind NOMAD is to essentially reduce the number of road accidents that happen in India, which accounts for nearly 11% of total accidents in the world. The high-tech vehicle can sense its surroundings and automatically make decisions related to its movements without the need of any onboard human driver.

NOMAD can reduce the risk of road accidents caused primarily by human error while also delivering high accuracy even in foggy weather and permitting minimal operational costs. Students from the 2020 batch, including team leader Satyam Sharma, KVS Mohan Vamsi, Navjot Singh, and Sarabsukh Surya, came up with the idea.

NOMAD employs several sensors like radar, Lidar, Sonar, GPS, Odometry, and Inertial Measurement units to detect its surroundings. Moreover, it uses advanced control algorithms to analyze sensory data to identify appropriate navigation courses, impediments, and essential signage.

“The recurrent neural network will work as the heart of the system as it has the ability to process sequential data and back-propagation through time,” said Sharma.

He further added that this ability to back-propagate through time helps the car to make decisions based on its present and previous positions (recorded frames), allowing it to recognize and distinguish between slow-moving and fast-moving objects, as well as their directions of travel, to prevent a collision.

The image processing system receives primary feedback from two main cameras, which are augmented by 360° sensors located throughout the vehicle. NOMAD has a 2-speed transmission system with a top speed of 25 KMPH and can be fully charged in nearly five hours.

IBM collaborates with Amazon to provide IBM SaaS on AWS

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 20, 2022

Technology giant IBM announces that it has partnered with Amazon to bring its IBM Software as a Service (SaaS) to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Both the companies recently signed a partnership agreement to establish this collaboration. This partnership will now allow IBM to offer a broad portfolio of its software on AWS.

Users will be able to seamlessly access the IBM suite of solutions that ranges from automation, data and AI, security, and sustainability capabilities, which is built on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) and runs cloud-native on AWS.

The solutions include IBM API Connect, IBM Db2, IBM Security ReaQta, IBM Observability by Instana APM, IBM Maximo Application Suite, IBM Security Trusteer, IBM Security Verify, and IBM Watson Orchestrate.

Senior Vice President of IBM Software, Tom Rosamilia, said, “As hybrid cloud continues to become the reality for our clients, IBM is ready and willing to meet them with a flexible and cloud-native software portfolio wherever they are in the cloud or in data centers.”

Tom further added that by strengthening their partnership with AWS, they are taking another big step toward allowing businesses to choose the hybrid cloud model that best suits their needs and workloads, enabling them to focus on solving their most critical business problems.

The partnership will also include several joint initiatives to make it easier for clients to use IBM Software on AWS, including integrated go-to-market operations across sales and marketing, channel incentives, developer enablement and training, and multi-sector solution creation.

“Through our multi-year agreement, AWS will work with IBM to offer a broad array of IBM Software as SaaS on AWS. In addition, we’ll be working together on stronger joint marketing and co-selling programs for customers,” said Matt Garman, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at AWS.