Applied Artificial Intelligence #4: Singapore Edition
🔥 What’s up, Singapore? Our fourth Applied Artificial Intelligence newsletter is curated by Victor Alexiev, ambassador of Singapore AI & experienced tech & AI consultant. Singapore has been widely claimed to be an AI hotspot — so be sure to check in!
World Summit AI is 2 weeks behind us now. If you loved the event just as much as we did — pre-register for the 2018 edition here 🔆
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Applied AI by Victor — Introduction
Slightly over a week has passed since we managed to get the CITY AI Ambassador team together in Amsterdam for WorldSummit AI. And what a fantastic experience that was! Aside from great content, high profile speakers and a large number of curious attendees the event offered a great platform to take the pulse on the global ecosystem. Below you can find our crowd-curated team notes with the most interesting screen captures from our 50+ Ambassadors who met for the first time at the event.
A big “Thank You!” shout-out to Mircea Vadan the came up with the initiative 👏
Lessons learned by Victor
A high level strategy view on AI
To start the newsletter lightly, I thought of sharing a nice article, which reminds us that above all — AI is business. On one side, everybody seems to be engaged in talking or writing about it because it draws attention, on the other the more dramatic the claims, the more the clicks. Hence, most articles describe AI either as a magical servant, making all technology more responsive and generally “smarter” (whatever that means), or as a scary overlord — eliminating jobs, destroying privacy, and transforming industries. But for business decision makers, AI is primarily an enabler of productivity. Below is an overview on how executives view AI Strategy when considering to deploy budgets within their organizations.
A look into the future 🌇
As a consequence of the increased adoption of technology, and especially — intelligent technology, the Gig economy is growing (in terms of people involved in it). Here’s an interesting view on how this oversupply of labour is causing extreme price competition but at the same time — increased collaboration between “Mechanical Turks”.
Reboot for the AI revolution — www.nature.com
As a response, one article indicates that Governments might decide to deliberately slow down the pace of automation, to lessen the resulting shocks and allow time for readjustments. This all starts by identifying winners and losers of the transformation journey, and supporting the shift of workforce away from routine, automatable tasks through lifelong learning and investments in entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, this is all air until we start addressing the real issue, which is — new Socio-Economic models of existence need to be developed and tested before it is too late.
AI Impact studies and roadmaps
Concerned with the above topics, WebFoundation has launched a few interesting research pieces aimed at identifying the impact of AI as well as the gaps in infrastructure and access that may create inequality. They’ve gone as far as to make some general recommendations for emerging countries. One thing that caught my eye is the concept of AI as a public good. Worth a thought…
Alpha-Go is Learning From Scratch
Here’s something interesting — Google’s Alpha Go team set themselves the challenge of improving their reinforcement learning algorithms by enabling Alpha Go to learn from scratch. The result is a fascinating new form of reinforcement learning, in which AlphaGo Zero becomes its own teacher. The system starts off with a neural network that knows nothing about the game of Go. It then plays games against itself, by combining this neural network with a powerful search algorithm. As it plays, the neural network is tuned and updated to predict moves, as well as the eventual winner of the games.
Microsoft vs Deep Mind
In case you have missed this during your summer break, probably scared of Google’s progress so far, Microsoft recently also announced a General Purpose AI initiative aimed at taking on Deep Mind.
A glimpse into Singapore’s ecosystem
Who has the biggest… hub — qz.com
It is not a secret that, for a reason that I have not yet been able to fully comprehend, countries have started somewhat of an AI arms race. We see governments racing to launch ambitious R&D programmes, open data initiatives and last but not least — incubation hubs to do… well something with AI. And Singapore definitely puts forth some interesting ambitions in the space. After Alibaba’s announcement that the small Southeast Asian country will be one of its key hubs in a global $15BN AI initiative.
Here are the top startups in the Singapore AI scene
Speaking of which, below is an enlightened review of Singapore’s own top AI firms. Broadly speaking, the author points out something that I have personally found to be valid for most of Southeast Asia. The key points: (1) Ambiguity around the definition of AI; (2) Many Big Data or Analytics companies are positioning their products as AI; and (3) Lack of AI talent across the board.
A word of caution
But we need to be weary of the risks. Jobs and killer robots aside, a large part of our software architecture has been built in a way that is far from robust and future-proof, or fool-proof… What stunned me is the following statement: We already know how to make complex software reliable, but in so many places, we’re choosing not to. Enjoy reading!
Upcoming CITY AI events
Munich AI #1 — October 26th — get your tickets here.
Bogota AI #1 — November 6th — sold out (300/300).
Valletta AI #2 — November 8th — get your tickets here.
Wellington AI #1 — November 15th — get your tickets here.
Lahore AI #1 — November 18th — stay tuned for more information.
Hamburg AI #3 — January 17–2018 — get your tickets here.
Reminder:
AI Shines At TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin
TechCrunch Disrupt is coming to Berlin on 4–5 of December. Come and discover early-stage AI startups and hear from leading thought leaders in the field like Stan Boland the CEO of FiveAI and ABB Group’s Ulrich Spiesshofer. You’ll also be able to attend the Artificial Intelligence “Off The Record Session” where you can interact with and ask questions of AI-focused speakers and disrupters. Book your tickets today and save 15% with promo code “WORLDAI”.
Thanks for reading!
Big shout out to Victor from Singapore AI for curating this edition. Next up: the team behind Wellington AI!
Would you like to contribute to our newsletter, or have something interesting to share? Tweet us @thecityai or shoot us an email!
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Curated with ❤️ from Singapore,
Victor & The City.AI team
