UAE: More AI, Less PE
November 9, 2019
The field of artificial intelligence has reached a milestone—the first graduate-level university dedicated to it is set to open next year. Interesting Engineering reports, “World’s First AI University Has More than 3200 Applicants Already.” The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence is being built in Abu Dhabi. It is named for the country’s crown prince, who is big on using science to build up his nation’s human capital. The school received those thousands of applications in its first week of admissions. The aspiring grad students are located around the world, but most are in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, India, and China. It is no surprise interest is so high—students will get a sweet deal. Reporter Donna Fuscaldo writes:
“The school aims to create a new model of academia and research for AI and to ‘unleash AI’s full potential.’ Students get access to some of the most advanced AI systems as part of the program. Students can earn a Master of Science (MSc) and PhD level programs in machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. All admitted students get a full scholarship, monthly allowance, health insurance, and accommodation. The first class will commence in September 2020.”
The time is ripe for such an institution. With AI now permeating nearly every industry, research firm PwC Global predicts that by 2030 it will have a $25.7 trillion impact on the global economy ($6.6 trillion from increased productivity and $9.1 trillion from “consumption-side effects”) and provide a 26% GDP boost for local economies. It is no wonder many students are eager to get in on the ground floor.
Cynthia Murrell, November 09, 2019
How to Create Solutions in Software: The Cloud and More
November 8, 2019
DarkCyber is working on a white paper. This white paper is about Amazon AWS and its products/services for LE and intel professionals. Don’t worry, the white paper will be free to those affiliated with an enforcement organization.
In that white paper, DarkCyber’s team includes a diagram with layers. One of the reviewers of the paper told a team member:
Layers. What’s AWS? A birthday cake?
We talked about our diagram and the notion of layers. One person talked about “Layers in Software: From Data to Value.” The article included this diagram, which is different from the illustration in the DarkCyber white paper, but it conveys the same message. Here’s the Jessitron image:
The main idea is explained this way:
Feature teams need to do everything, from the old perspective. But that’s too hard for one team — so we make it easier.
This is where Developer Experience (DevEx) teams come in. (a.k.a. Developer Productivity, Platform and Tools, or inaccurately DevOps Teams.) These undergird the feature teams, making their work smoother. Self-service infrastructure, smooth setup of visibility and control for production software. Tools and expertise to help developers learn and do everything necessary to fulfill each team’s purpose. Internal services are supported by external services. Managed services like Kubernetes, databases, queueing, observability, logging: we have outsourced the deep expertise of operating these components. Meanwhile, internal service teams like DevEx have enough understanding of the details, plus enough company-specific context, to mediate between what the outside world provides and what feature teams need. This makes development smoother, and therefore faster and safer. We once layered by serving data to software. Now we layer by serving value to people.
This is a useful explanation. It applies to Amazon’s approach to the LE and intel sector. There is a twist in the Amazon digital river of products and services. That’s to be expected.
What is that twist?
The white paper will be out one the reviewers complete their inputs.
Stephen E Arnold, November 8, 2019
The GOOG: Is Self Promotion a Bad Thing?
November 8, 2019
Why would Google not use its position to boost its own services? After all, it is not as though legislators can keep up enough to preempt its maneuvers. The Sydney Morning Herald reports, “Google Algorithm Hogs Internet Traffic, Researchers Say.” The article cites recent research detailing how Google can monopolize nearly half of networks’ capacity for its streaming services, putting other online services at a distinct disadvantage. Writer James Titcomb tells us:
“It puts a spotlight on Google’s role in managing internet traffic as the company is under increased scrutiny over its central role in much of the plumbing of the internet. Internet services use congestion control algorithms (CCAs) to efficiently share bandwidth when there is a potential bottleneck and ‘throttle’, or slow down, certain functions when capacity is stretched. For example, if several people are using a Wi-Fi network at an airport or coffee shop to stream videos, the algorithms will restrict the internet capacity available to each user, and reduce video quality. But researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and software company Nefell Networks found that Google’s algorithm, known as BBR, takes up 40 per cent of internet capacity even when multiple services are competing for traffic. In some instances, when the algorithm was active, other services would have less than 4 per cent of capacity; a tenth of that using Google’s algorithm.”
Google offers this algorithm as open source, though many other sites choose different CCAs. But even those that do adopt Google’s code are at a drastic disadvantage. The write-up says Google did not respond to a request for comment but reminds us the company is famous for amping up its speed wherever, and however, it can.
Cynthia Murrell, October 31, 2019
Google and Health: Still Plugging Along
November 8, 2019
Google is joining the push into healthcare and, not surprisingly, its focus is on search functionality for doctors and patients. Engadget reports, “Google Wants to Give Doctors Web-Like Searches for Medical Records.” We wonder—how long before SEO experts boost ads for drugs related to each patient’s health history?
Writer Jon Fingas summarizes a piece from CNBC that outlines the company’s plans according to Google Health lead David Feinberg. Fingas writes:
“Feinberg envisions a search bar that would help doctors search medical records like they do the web. A doctor could search for ‘87’ to find an 87-year-old patient instead of using the patient’s name, as an example. An insider also claimed that Google is considering a Flights-style dedicated search experience for health. You could research conditions without wading through the regular web to find trustworthy info.
It’s not certain how close either idea is to fruition, and CNBC’s tipster warned that it wasn’t certain the Google search team would sign off on the dedicated health search. Google might have to ditch advertising on the health page. They do indicate how Google Health and Feinberg are thinking, however, and give you a hint of what to expect in the future.”
So, maybe not so much on that SEO potential; we shall see. The write-up notes Feinberg has made other health-related moves, like pulling advertisements from anti-vaxer propaganda on YouTube. Perhaps even more is happening behind the Google Health scenes, Fingas suggests.
The digital business school case study is on the march.
Cynthia Murrell, November 8, 2019
IBM Watson to the Rescue of Truth: Facts? Not Necessary
November 7, 2019
“Could IBM Watson Fix Facebook’s ‘Truth Problem’?” stopped me in my daily quest for truth, justice, and the American way of technology. The write up dangles some clickbait in front of the Web indexing crawlers. Once stopped by IBM Watson, Facebook, and Truth, the indexers indexed but I read the story.
I printed it out and grabbed by trusty yellow highlighter. I like yellow because it reminds me of an approach which combines some sensational hooks with a bit of American marketing.
For instance this passage warranted a small checkmark:
Facebook is between a rock and a hard place because “the truth” is often subjective, where what is true to one party is equally false to the other.
I like the word subjective, and I marveled at the turn of phrase in this fresh wordsmithing: “between a rock and a hard place.” Okay, a dilemma or a situation created when a company does what it can to generate revenue while fending off those who would probe into its ethical depths.
This statement warranted a yellow rectangle:
Since Facebook itself is perceived as being biased (or perhaps the news sources it hosts are), a solution from them would be suspect regardless of whether it was AI-based or, assuming such a thing was financially viable (which I doubt it is), human-driven. But IBM may have a solution that could work here.
Yes, a hypothetical: IBM Watson, a somewhat disappointing display of the once proud giant’s Big Blueness, is a collection of software, methods, training processes, and unfulfilled promises by avid IBM marketers. I grant that a bright person or perhaps a legion of wizards laboring under the pressures of an academic overlord or a government COTAR possibly, maybe, or ought to be able to build a system to recognize content which is “false.” Defining the truth certainly seems possible with time, money, and the “right” people. But can IBM Watson or any of today’s smart software and wizards pull off this modest task? If the solution were available, wouldn’t it be in demand, deployed, and detailed. TV programs, streaming video, tweets, and other information objects could be identified, classified, and filtered. Easy, right?
I then used my yellow marker to underline words, place a rectangle around the following text, and I added an exclamation point for good measure. Here’s the passage:
IBM also has the most advanced, scalable, deployable AI in the market with Watson. They recognized the opportunity to have an enterprise-class AI long before anyone else, and they have demonstrated human-like competence both with Jeopardy and with a debate against a live professional debater a few years ago. I attended that debate and was impressed that Watson not only was better with the facts, it was better with humor. It lost the debate, but it was arguably the audience’s favorite.
Yes, assertions without facts, no data, no outputs, no nothing. Just “has the most advanced, scalable, deployable AI in the market.” The only hitch in this somewhat over-the-top generalization is, “It [Watson] lost the debate.”
But what warranted the exclamation mark was “it [IBM Watson] was better with humor.” Yep, smart software has a sense of humor at IBM.
This write up raises several questions. I will bring these up with my team at lunch today:
- Why are publications like Datamation running ads in the form of text? Perhaps, like Google Ads, a tiny label could be affixed so I can avoid blatant PR.
- Why is IBM insisting it has technology that “could” do something. I had a grade school teacher named Miss Bray who repeated endlessly, “Avoid woulda, coulda, shoulda.” What IBM could do is irrelevant. What IBM is doing is more important. Talking about technology is not the same as applying it and generating revenue growth, sustainable revenue, and customers who cannot stop yammering about how wonder a product or service is. For example, I hear a great deal about Amazon. I don’t here much about IBM.
- What is the “truth” in this write up. IBM Watson won Jeopardy. (TV shows do post production.) I am not convinced that the investment IBM made in setting up Watson to “win” returned more than plain old fashioned advertising. The reality is that the “truth” of this write up is very Facebook like.
To sum up, clicks and PR are more important than data, verifiable case examples, and financial reports. IBM, are you listening? Right, IBM is busy in court and working to put lipstick on its financials. IBM marketers, are you listening? Right, you don’t listen, but you send invoices I assume. Datamation, are there real stories you will cover which are not recycled collateral and unsupported assertions? Right, you don’t care either it seems. You ran this story which darn near exhausted by yellow marker’s ink.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2019
The UAE and AI: What Will Students Learn?
November 7, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Abu Dhabi AI University Is Key to UAE’s Future As the Oil Dries Up.” The write up states:
The Gulf state is developing healthcare, financial services, renewable energy and materials technology sectors, which will make up the UAE economy when the oil runs out. But first, it needs to ensure its citizens have the skills to drive them. The long-term nature of the UAE government’s initiative is what stands out for Oxford University professor Michael Brady, who is interim president of Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), which was set up to ensure the UAE has the right skills to drive these industries. The Masdar City-based university has just opened to applications for its first intake of 50 students.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, among others, have a presence in UAE. The article quoted Professor Brady as saying:
But it was the ambition that he saw when he visited Abu Dhabi, which puts UK government planning to shame, that cemented his interest “There is a stark difference between the short-termism that characterizes so much of government policy in the UK, where politicians worry about the headlines tomorrow morning,” he said. “It is so refreshing to be part of a government-led initiative that has a 30-year vision to transform the economy and the culture.”
The AI university is important. The question the write up did not address is:
What cloud AI service will be the core of the curriculum?
It seems obvious that the go-to cloud system for students will have an advantage in deploying next-generation solutions.
Worth monitoring which of these three cloud aspirants will capture the hearts and minds of the student, UAE officials, and investors who want to cash in on this investment in the future.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2019
Simple English Is The Basis For Complex Data Visualizations
November 7, 2019
Computers started to gain a foothold in modern society during the 1980s. By today’s standards, the physical size and amount of data old school computers used to process are laughable. Tech Explore reports on how spoken English can actually create complex, data rich visitations, something that was only imaginable in the 1980s, in the article, “Study Leads To A System That Lets People Use Simple English To Create Complex Complex Machine Learning-Driven Visualizations.”
Today’s technology collects terabytes of diverse information from traffic patterns, weather patterns, disease outbreaks, animal migrations, financial trends, and human behavior models. The problem is that the people who could benefit from this data do not know how to make visualization models.
Professor Claudio Silva led a team at New York University Tandon School of Engineering’s Visualization and Data Analytics (VIDA) that developed VisFlow, a framework that allows non-data experts to create flexible and graphic rich data visualization models. These models will also be easy to edit with an extension called FlowSense. FlowSense will allow users to edit and synthesize data exploration pipes with a NLP interface.
VIDA is one of the leading research centers on data visualizations and FlowSense is already being used in astronomy, medicine, and climate research”
• “OpenSpace, a System for Astrographics is being used worldwide in planetariums, museums, and other contexts to explore the solar system and universe
• Motion Browser: Visualizing and Understanding Complex Upper Limb Movement under Obstetrical Brachial Plexus Injuries is a collaboration between computer scientists, orthopedic surgeons, and rehabilitation physicians that could lead to new treatments for brachial nerve injuries and hypotheses for future research
• The Effect of Color Scales on Climate Scientists’ Objective and Subjective Performance in Spatial Data Analysis Tasks is a web-based user study that takes a close look at the efficacy of the widely used practice of superimposing color scales on geographic maps.”
FlowSense and VisFlow are open source frameworks available on Github and programmers are welcome to experiment with them. These applications allow non-data experts to manipulate data for their fields, take advantage of technology, and augment their current work.
Whitney Grace, November 7, 2019
False News: Are Smart Bots the Answer?
November 7, 2019
To us, this comes as no surprise—Axios reports, “Machine Learning Can’t Flag False News, New Studies Show.” Writer Joe Uchill concisely summarizes some recent studies out of MIT that should quell any hope that machine learning will save us from fake news, at least any time soon. Though we have seen that AI can be great at generating readable articles from a few bits of info, mimicking human writers, and even detecting AI-generated stories, that does not mean they can tell the true from the false. These studies were performed by MIT doctoral student Tal Schuster and his team of researchers. Uchill writes:
“Many automated fact-checking systems are trained using a database of true statements called Fact Extraction and Verification (FEVER). In one study, Schuster and team showed that machine learning-taught fact-checking systems struggled to handle negative statements (‘Greg never said his car wasn’t blue’) even when they would know the positive statement was true (‘Greg says his car is blue’). The problem, say the researchers, is that the database is filled with human bias. The people who created FEVER tended to write their false entries as negative statements and their true statements as positive statements — so the computers learned to rate sentences with negative statements as false. That means the systems were solving a much easier problem than detecting fake news. ‘If you create for yourself an easy target, you can win at that target,’ said MIT professor Regina Barzilay. ‘But it still doesn’t bring you any closer to separating fake news from real news.’”
Indeed. Another of Schuster’s studies demonstrates that algorithms can usually detect text written by their kin. We’re reminded, however, that just because an article is machine written does not in itself mean it is false. In fact, he notes, text bots are now being used to adapt legit stories to different audiences or to generate articles from statistics. It looks like we will just have to keep verifying articles with multiple trusted sources before we believe them. Imagine that.
Cynthia Murrell, November 7, 2019
Coveo: A 15 Year old $1 Billion Start Up Unicorn in Canada!
November 6, 2019
I read “Coveo Raises US$172M at $1B+ Valuation for AI-Based Enterprise Search and Personalization.” The write up states:
Search and personalization services continue to be a major area of investment among enterprises, both to make their products and services more discoverable (and used) by customers, and to help their own workers get their jobs done, with the market estimated to be worth some $100 billion annually. Today, one of the big startups building services in this area raised a large round of growth funding to continue tapping that opportunity.
Like Elastic, Algolia, and LucidWorks, Coveo is going to have to generate sufficient revenues to pay back its investors. Perhaps the early supporters have cashed out, but the new money is betting on the future.
Coveo was founded in Quebec City more than a decade ago. The desktop search company Copernic spun off Coveo in 2004. The original president was Laurent Simoneau. Mr. Tetu is an investor with great confidence in enterprise software, and he has become the “founder”, according to the write up. In April 2018, Coveo obtain about $100 million from Evergreen Coast Capital.
DarkCyber recalls that Coveo has moved from Microsoft-centric search to search as a service to customer experience and now personalization.
In 2005, I wrote this about the upsides of the Coveo approach in the Enterprise Search Report I compiled for an outfit lost to memory:
Coveo is a reasonably-priced, stable product. Any organization with Microsoft search will improve access to information with a system like Coveo’s. Microsoft SharePoint customers will want to do head-to-head comparisons with other “solutions” to Microsoft’s native search solution. Coveo has a number of features that make it a worth contender. Other benefits of the Coveo approach include:
- Web-based administration tool allows straightforward configuration and monitoring of the system.
- Automatic indexing of new and updated documents in near real-time.
- Includes linguistic and statistical technologies that can identify the key concepts and the key sentences of indexed documents. Provides automated document summaries for faster reading and filtering.
- Groups information sources into collections for field-specific searches.
- The product is attractively priced.
- Tightly integrated with other Microsoft products and Windows-based security regimes.
- Customer base has grown comparatively quite rapidly and customers tend to speak well of the product.
I noted these considerations:
The software is Windows-centric – both in terms of its own software as well as document security settings it tracks – which may be an issue with certain types of organizations. You will have to assign permissions to index to allow the ASP.NET worker process user to access the index. The task is simplified, but it can be overlooked. Administrative controls are presented without calling attention to actions that require particular attention. Coveo is still however able to search content on any operating system, application, or server. Other drawbacks of the Coveo search system include:
- There is limited software development support to allow customization or extensions of the core technology to other applications, although the company is expanding the product’s reach through Dot Net-based APIs.
- When the system is installed and its defaults accepted, the “Everyone” group is enabled. Administrators will want to customize this setting. A wizard would be a useful option for organizations new to enterprise search.
- No native taxonomy support, except through partner Entrieva.
- Achieving scalability beyond hundreds of millions of documents requires appropriate resources.
My final take on the company was:
Coveo Enterprise Search meets many distinct needs of the small and medium-sized business that has standardized on the Microsoft platform, while still providing a few critical advanced search capabilities. Perhaps more importantly, CES minimizes search training, system maintenance, and other cost “magnets” that typically accompany an enterprise search deployment.
Like a handful of other products in this report, you can test Coveo out first, via a free download of a document-limited version.
The challenge for Copernic is to make enough sales and to generate robust sustainable income. This is the uphill run that Algolia, Elastic, LucidWorks, and probably a number of other enterprise search vendors face. Perhaps an outfit like Xerox will buy up, which would be one way to get the investors their money?
DarkCyber wishes Coveo the best. But a start up unicorn? No, that is not exactly correct for a 15 year old outfit. This push to make the investors smile is not for the faint hearted or those who have a solid grasp of the formidable enterprise search options available today. Plus there are outfits like Diffeo and other next generation information access systems available for free (Eleasticsearch) or bundled with other sophisticated information management tools (Amazon, search, managed blockchain, workflows, and a clever approach to vendor lock in.)
One tip: Don’t visit Quebec City in February during a snow storm.
Stephen E Arnold, November 6, 2019
Stephen E Arnold, November 5, 2019
The GOOG: Bright People, Interesting Management Tactics
November 6, 2019
Silicon Valley is notorious for its leftist political leanings. As much as the workforce supports leftwing views, Silicon Valley leaders are more concerned with their bottom dollar and maintaining a politically correct image. BuzzFeed News shares that, “Google Removed Employee Questions About Its Hiring Of A Former DHS Staffer Who Defended The Muslim Travel Ban.”
In this recent example of maintaining an inoffensive image, Google removed questions related to hiring Miles Taylor, a former employee of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), on the internal Google message board, Dory. Dory is used to ask and vote on questions for management. Information was removed about Taylor due to his support of Trump’s travel ban of Muslims. Google staffers were especially upset about Taylor’s hiring in September 2019, because Google executives actually protested against policies Taylor implemented at the DHS.
Lately, Google is having many problems maintaining free expression for its staffers and “corporate harmony.” Earlier in 2019, Google settled with the National Labor and Review Board about the company’s attempts to prevent employees’ from discussing their dissatisfaction with the company.
Google defended hiring Taylor, because he was not involved in the original Muslim travel ban drafts nor the family separation. Google declined to comment on removing discussions about Taylor, but two close sources did confirm that some of the comments were removed because they were viewed as personal attacks on Taylor. Other discussions about him remained posted on Dory.
It is ironic that Google did hire Taylor based on the executives’ past views:
“Google and its leaders had voiced their strong opposition to the Muslim travel ban and family separations occurring at the Mexico border. In January 2017, following the announcement of the original travel ban, Google cofounder Sergey Brin joined protesters at San Francisco International Airport, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai pointedly voiced his displeasure on Twitter, in an email to staff, and in a much-publicized employee meeting.
‘The stories and images of families being separated at the border are gut-wrenching,’ Pichai tweeted as the Trump administration ramped up its anti-immigration policy in the summer of 2018. ‘Urging our government to work together to find a better, more humane way that is reflective of our values as a nation. #keepfamiliestogether.’”
Are Google executives unaware that their management decisions may be interpreted as off center? Are Google employees allowing politics to control their work place? Maybe it is reflective of the here and now?
Whitney Grace, November 6, 2019
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