According to Musk, the platform is in need of a complete transformation as he believes that Twitter can play a vital role in promoting and supporting free speech, which is an integral part of any democratic society.
In a recently held TED Talk event, Musk said that the platform has become kind of the de facto town square. Musk’s offer price of $54.20 per share is a 38 percent premium over Twitter’s stock closing price on 1st April. Prior to Musk’s proposal, the social networking platform’s stock had dropped by about a third in value during the previous year.
“One of the things I believe Twitter should do is open-source the algorithm and make any changes to people’s tweets – if they are emphasized or de-emphasized, that action should be made apparent. So anyone can see that action has been taken,” mentioned Musk during the event.
However, Musk does not plan to join the board of directors of Twitter despite receiving support from Twitter’s CEO Parag Agarwal and outgoing board member Jack Dorsey. Musk mentioned that Twitter has enormous potential, which he will unleash, and he has made a “best and last” offer to purchase Twitter.
“If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” added Musk.
Artificial Intelligence-powered customer service platform provider Uniphore acquires AI knowledge automation company Colabo.
Either of the companies did not provide any information regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal. According to Uniphone, this acquisition will allow the company to expand its platform’s capabilities using Colabo’s knowledge extraction and automation expertise.
The integration will allow organizations to extract knowledge entities and graphs from structured and unstructured data.
Clients of Uniphore will drastically benefit from this integration as this will allow IVAs and live agents to receive the most relevant content and next-best-action, resulting in improved customer experiences.
Colabo’s cutting-edge AI technology supports consumer interaction solutions by combining data from any digital and physical source into a smooth, customized omnichannel experience.
Co-founder and CEO of Uniphore, Umesh Sachdev, said, “Simply put, consumers today expect access to up-to-date information to solve their problems and contact centers can provide better experiences with the latest technologies that do exactly that.”
He further added that this acquisition brings together distinct capabilities to provide organizations with new tools that enable them to quickly respond to customer inquiries and provide agents with $400 million in its latest Series E funding round.
United States-based data extraction and utilization solution providing company Colabo was founded by Asaf Wexler, Naama Halperin, and Yoav Dembak in 2011. The firm specializes in offering an artificial intelligence-powered knowledge automation solution that extracts and utilizes information from structured and unstructured documents in real-time.
To date, the company has raised more than $10 million from multiple investors like Marker, Kaedan Capital, RedSeal, and others over three funding rounds.
Co-founder and CEO of Colabo Yoav Dembak said, “Today, I am proud to say we have achieved that and will be taking our vision even further by integrating into Uniphore’s conversational AI and automation platform, bringing rigor and best-of-breed agility and accuracy to every contact center inquiry.”
We have seen documentaries or news clips of Night-vision systems being used to see things in dark or low light conditions. Night vision cameras are amazing equipment, but the lack of detail in the acquired images can hamper decision-making. Some night vision systems employ infrared light – invisible to humans, and then convert the pictures to a digital display – which displays a monochrome image in the visible range. However, they also inhibit the interpretation of video footage since the display is monochromatic, with little difference between objects and poor shading.
Recently, scientists at the University of California, Irvine, used a deep learning system to rebuild night vision images in color. The system employs infrared pictures, which are undetectable to the naked eye. Humans can only perceive light wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers (violet to red), but infrared light exists beyond 700 nanometers. The scientists then merged the infrared data with an AI color prediction system to produce images, in the same manner, they would appear if the light was in the visible spectrum.
According to the team, image enhancement and deep learning have been used in computer vision jobs with low illuminance imaging to help in object recognition and characterization from the infrared spectrum, but not with appropriate interpretation of the same picture in the visible spectrum. The researchers explained that each dye and pigment that gives an item a visible color reflects a set of visible wavelengths as well as a set of infrared wavelengths in the current study. They could show visuals employing the visible hues associated with each dye and pigment if they could train a night-vision system to recognize the infrared fingerprint of each dye and pigment.
The scientists used a monochromatic camera sensitive to visible and near-infrared light to collect an image dataset of printed images of faces under multispectral illumination that included visible red (604 nm), green (529 nm), and blue (447 nm) wavelengths as well as infrared wavelengths to achieve their goal (718, 777, and 807 nm). They then used solely the near-infrared data to train a convolutional neural network to predict visible spectrum images. The training procedure yielded three architectures: a baseline linear regression, a U-Net inspired CNN (UNet), and an enhanced U-Net (UNet-GAN), all of which could generate three images per second.
Once the neural network had generated color pictures, the scientists presented them to graders, who chose which outputs looked nearly similar to the ground truth image. This information aided the researchers in determining the most effective neural network architecture. They discovered that a deep U-Net-based architecture could convert three infrared photos into a full-color photo that looked nearly identical to a normal photo of the same image.
According to the University of California scientists, the system requires two significant upgrades before it can be employed in medical applications. The first option is to increase the existing data capture rate beyond the present three frames per second in order to enable video imaging. The second is to modify the system so that it may be utilized with biologically relevant specimens like retinal tissues, which have different infrared reflectance spectra than the pictures used in this research. Aside from that, the scientists believe the discovery may be useful in security and military activities, as well as animal monitoring.
Indian government-owned oil marketing company Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited has partnered with global technology giant Microsoft to further accelerate its journey of digital transformation.
The partnership aims to take advantage of Microsoft’s cloud to meet the oil and gas industry’s particular issues.
BPCL will leverage the expertise of Microsoft in the cloud and artificial intelligence-powered technologies to modernize its tech architecture and help provide a better experience to its customers.
Infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS), platform-as-a-service (PAAS), network, and security services on the cloud, including Azure native services on Azure data factory, application programming interface (API), internet of things (IoT), and analytics, are among the services Microsoft will provide to Bharat Petroleum.
Moreover, Microsoft and Bharat Petroleum have also collaborated to deliver a secure communication experience for BPCL’s employee ecosystem across the country using Microsoft Teams and Workplace Productivity Suite.
Chief General Manager of BPCL, Rahul Tandon, said, “Microsoft has been one of the undisputed global leaders in technology for decades altogether, and BPCL is proud of taking this partnership forward now in the cloud domain.”
He further added that they want to help the company unlock value by providing world-class scalable infrastructure, reducing time to market, and reinventing how customers interact with BPCL.
As a part of the partnership, Bharat Petroleum will provide a digital customer experience using an innovative fueling solution powered by Microsoft Azure, build brand value by digitizing backend operations, and introduce, IoT-powered supply chains, along with developing a conversational AI platform named Urja to offer unmatched customer support to its customers.
“BPCL is one of the most respected public sector companies in the country, and we are honored to work together to define the next frontiers of data-driven innovation and customer engagement in the oil and gas industry,” said President of Microsoft India, Anant Maheshwari.
He also mentioned that this partnership, which combines BPCL’s operational knowledge with Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities, will help strengthen BPCL’s business operations by focusing on trust and security.
Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT)-Allahabad announces the launch of its new MTech course in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science.
Over the last decade, the data science and AI industry have witnessed an all-time growth because of the potential it brings. However, the industry still faces the challenge of pooling in trained professionals.
MNNIT has considered the growing demand for skilled professionals in this booming industry of data science to launch its new course.
Learners of this course will acquire critical skills and knowledge that the industry currently demands them to kick start their careers.
Artificial intelligence and data analytics is the ability to study and learn about enormous amounts of data from a variety of sources, along with identifying trends and making future source predictions. MNNIT says that its newly announced course named MTech in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science will start its first batch from the 2022-2023 academic session.
“This new MTech course is being started in place of the eight-year-old MTech in Software Engineering course that has been discontinued for lack of interest among both students and industry representatives arriving on the campus for placements,” said Sarvesh Tiwari from MNNIT.
He further added that this new MTech course had been meticulously designed to cater to all the industry requirements.
Admissions will be taken based on the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2022 scores for a total of 25 seats.
Prof DS Kushwaha, Head of the Department of Computer Science at MNNIT, said, “Now, on the basis of the GATE scorecard, admissions for MNNIT’s MTech in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science will be done in the institute in July-August 2022. The new MTech course will make technical students proficient in artificial intelligence and data analytics.”
Bakery chain Panera Bread started to deploy artificial intelligence-powered robots developing company Miso Robotics’ new automated coffee brewing system named CookRight Coffee at its outlets.
According to the company, Miso Robotics’ new system is currently being tested at two locations of Panera Bread.
The novel robot ensures a quality cup of coffee and a more efficient team member experience by monitoring indicators such as volume, temperature, and time data and combining it with predictive analytics.
Moreover, an additional feature of the CookRight Coffee system is that it can automatically evolve as it learns from its environment and add new enhancements over time.
With the deployment of this new technology, Panera Bread aims to further accelerate and increase the reach of its coffee and tea subscription program. Users can enjoy the benefits of this program, including the option to drink unlimited tea or coffee at a price of $8.99 per month.
Adoption of new-age technologies is now not limited to selected industries, multiple sectors, including retail, food & beverage, and several others, have started to deploy AI-powered tech and have integrated those systems into their daily operations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also played a vital role in accelerating this shift as consumers worldwide are looking for no-contact services to minimize the chances of acquiring the virus and eliminate cross-contamination.
The company believes that its partners will show an overwhelming response to its CookRight Coffee system and deploy the tech at scale by the end of this year. “In order to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving restaurant industry, we want our products to come to market quickly and maintain a high level of flexibility,” said CEO of Miso Robotics, Mike Bell.
With the debut of voice-controlled chatbots and assistants, the world witnessed a new chapter unfolding before them where things could get done by mere voice. Powered by voice recognition AI software, the world slowly prepared itself for keyword-less reality. The launch of voice-controlled devices like Apple Siri and Amazon Echo was met by unpredicted market demand. Customers were intrigued by the features and benefits these gadgets offered them. Following these, we had automotive voice assistants like BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant, Amazon Echo Auto, Apple CarPlay, Google Android Auto, and more. Today, we also rely on voice-based biometrics for user identification. All these developments are now creating new demand in the Voice AI industry, i.e., voice-driven coding.
Voice-driven coding will not only render the software development industry more accessible by eliminating entry barriers, but it will also allow individuals with injuries or chronic illnesses to continue working. Many programmers suffer from repetitive strain injury (RSI) caused by repetitive motions causing damage to muscles, tendons, and nerves. Voice-driven coding can be a blessing to them. The concept is simple: artificial intelligence is used to produce code from natural language descriptions of what users want to accomplish by telling them in easy-to-understand spoken language. Voice coding involves two types of software: a speech recognition engine and a voice coding platform. A good microphone is also required for voice coding, especially if you wish to reduce background or non-stationary noise.
An example of a speech recognition engine that allows voice coding is Dragon, a powerful engine developed by a Massachusetts-based speech-recognition software company – Nuance. Dragon has different versions for Windows and Mac versions available. Examples of voice coding platforms include VoiceCode, Talon, and Aenea. While VoiceCode and Talon are suitable for Mac OS; Aenea which is a client-server library for using voice macros from Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Dragonfly on remote hosts runs on Linux.
The difference between popular voice assistants like Siri and voice-driven coding platforms like VoiceCode and Talon, is that the latter do not process natural language, thus spoken commands must precisely match the directives that the system already understands. Further, these voice drive coding platforms employ continuous command recognition, which eliminates the need for users to stop between instructions, which happens in the case of voice assistants. The majority of VoiceCode instructions are made up of terms that aren’t in the English language. Talon and Aenea, however, have dynamic grammar, which continually refreshes which words the program can detect based on which applications are open. This implies that users may provide commands in English without creating misunderstandings. Talon can also imitate navigating with a mouse by moving a pointer across the screen based on eye movements and producing clicks based on lip pops.
There are voice-to-code software too, like Serenade, which includes a speech-to-text engine created exclusively for coding, unlike standard conversational speech-based speech-to-text API (e.g., Google). Serenade’s engine passes the code spoken by the user into its natural-language processing unit, which uses machine-learning models to recognize and transform common programming structures into syntactically correct code.
Serenade is compatible with a number of major IDEs, including Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ IDEA. The Serenade app identifies your IDE and integrates with its capabilities when you install and activate it. By delivering specific directives, you can get started quickly. Most of these software also offer visual options that can help users resolve issues faced while interpreting voice commands.
Salesforce is also exploring a voice-driven programming approach named CodeGen. In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, Silvio Savarese, Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist at Salesforce, revealed that CodeGen is based on a large autoregressive model with 16 billion parameters that is trained on a tremendous quantity of data. It divides the use cases with model samples based on whether the user is an expert programmer or a non-coder.
While the study is currently in the proof-of-concept stage, Savarese plans to share his findings at an internal developer Salesforce conference later this month.
The future of voice drive coding looks promising so far. However, the possibility of such technology entering mainstream consumption depends on user demand and user transition from keyboard-mouse-based coding to voice coding.
Global technology and services providing company Bosch announces that it has acquired autonomous driving software developing company Five AI.
The acquisition will allow Bosch to further strengthen its expertise in software development for self-driving cars.
However, neither company revealed any information regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal, which was signed earlier this month, and the deal is yet to be approved by the antitrust authorities.
With this acquisition, Five AI will become a part of Bosch’s Cross-Domain Computing Solutions division. According to the official statement, Five AI preferred Bosch over other bidders as it felt both the companies had a shared vision of automated driving and safe automated driving systems.
This new acquisition is a step towards achieving Bosch’s goal of developing SAE Level 4 automated driving systems as Five AI is a leading self-driving software developer in the region.
Dr. Markus Heyn, a member of the Bosch board of management and chairman of the Mobility Solutions business sector, said, “Scale matters in building automated driving technology. Bosch is a global leader in driving assistance technologies, with core technologies and vast data lakes that will be essential in bringing safe self-driving systems to market.”
He further added that they are looking forward to Five becoming a part of Europe’s most powerful SAE Level 4 player and contributing to Bosch’s long-term success.
Earlier this year, Bosch also acquired high-definition maps providing firm Atlatec to increase its autonomous vehicle offerings to its customers. Bosch officials mentioned that the company had acquired Atlatec as it provides all of the necessary solutions for data recording, processing, map generation, and quality control.
United Kingdom-based urban mobility software platform designer Five AI was founded by Ben Peters, John Redford, Simon Walker, Stan Boland, and Steve Allpress in 2015. The firm specializes in providing a solution for urban mobility in public transport to complex urban environments for autonomous vehicles using machine learning and artificial intelligence.
To date, Five AI has raised more than $78 million from investors like Sistema VC, Trustbridge Partners, Direct Line Insurance, Lakestar, and several others over three funding rounds.
Energy storage technology solutions providing company Fluence announces that it plans to acquire artificial intelligence-powered Software as a Service (SaaS) firm Nispera.
According to the official statement, Nispera’s acquisition deal is valued at $30 million, including an all-cash buyout provision. Additionally, Fluence will also issue restricted stock to Nispera’s management team.
This acquisition will allow Fluence to integrate its technology with Nispera’s portfolio of capable applications, including its SaaS platform, portfolio management application, predictive maintenance app, and operations management platform, to provide better services to its customers.
Fluence’s IQ Digital Platform is machine learning-powered software that offers hourly and daily recommendations on when and how much to bid into auctions for energy and grid services. The competent platform allows users to make better real-time decisions based on historical data and forecasting metrics.
Chief Executive Officer and President of Fluence, Manuel Perez Dubuc, said, “With this acquisition, we are primed to expand our portfolio of digital products and services for customers around the world. Furthermore, it represents a powerful cross-selling opportunity to offer energy storage products to owners of existing renewable energy assets and portfolios.”
Perez added that he is very excited to welcome Nispera, a customer-centric organization that shares its values and mission of transforming the way the world is powered.
Switzerland-based company working in the energy management sector, Nispera, was founded by Antonio Notaristefano, Ernesto Pizza, Gianmarco Pizza, and Jaakko Manninen in 2015. The organization specializes in providing an artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered SaaS platform that allows customers to monitor, analyze, forecast, and optimize the performance and value of renewable energy assets.
“As we build a comprehensive digital product suite for customers to better understand, control, dispatch, optimize, and maintain their renewable energy and storage assets, Nispera’s use of machine learning and AI will be highly complementary to the advanced applications already being developed at Fluence,” said Chief Digital Officer of Fluence, Seyed Madaeni.
He further mentioned that Nispera’s innovative technology would also benefit the Fluence ecosystem of energy storage products, services, and digital applications.
Intelligence workforce platform Observe.ai raises $125 million in its recently held series C funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Other existing investors and Zoom also participated in Observe.ai’s funding round.
According to the company, it plans to use the fresh funds to expand the Intelligent Workforce Platform, invest in R&D functions, and scale the go-to-market team, including direct and channel-based motions.
Priya Saiprasad, a Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join Observe.ai’s board of directors as a part of this investment.
“We believe the company has built an intelligent, flexible platform with endless use cases, from healthcare companies seeking to enhance the patient experience to financial institutions aiming to boost revenue,” said Saiprasad.
She further added that they are excited to collaborate with Swapnil Jain and the team to accelerate a paradigm shift in the contact center industry. The company says that this funding further proves the trust Observe.ai has built over the years with its products in a market where consumer needs and demands change at a rapid pace.
This new funding round will help Observe.ai develop the next generation of product innovations, such as harmonizing real-time with post-interaction agent coaching, scaling the company’s go-to-market strategy, becoming IPO-ready, etc.
United States-based artificial intelligence company Observe.ai was founded by Akash Singh, Sharath Keshava Narayana, and Swapnil Jain in 2017. The organization specializes in offering a platform that transforms contact centers by embedding AI into customer conversations, optimizing agent performance, and automating repeatable processes that accelerate revenue and retention.
To date, Observe.ai has raised $214 million from multiple investors such as SoftBank Vision Fund, Zoom, Emergent Ventures, Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, NGP Capital, and others over six funding rounds.
“This fresh round of funding is further validation that Observe.AI is uniquely positioned with our industry-leading product innovations and offerings, robust services expertise and partner ecosystem, and intimate understanding of and execution on the evolving needs at the intersection of AI and CX,” said Co-founder and CEO of Observe.ai, Swapnil Jain.
