IBM Watson: The Smart Sports Maven
November 19, 2018
The US does not follow soccer, ahem, football. The rest of the world, however, does. Whether you call it soccer or football, it is the most popular sport in the world and the World Cup requires a lot of power and technology to cover it. The Medium’s Global Editors Network explores how in the article, “Covering The World Cup Cup 2018 With AI And Automation.”
During the World Cup, fans are ravenous for information on their teams and news networks use automation and artificial intelligence to keep up with the demand. Individual networks each did something new and amazing to cover the World Cup. The UK Times launched a World Cup Alexa Skill, Fox Sports partnered with IBM Watson to make AI-powered highlight videos, and Le Figaro created automated visual summaries.
Fox Sports’s AI video highlight machine was amazing. Watson used its AI to allow users to create on-demand videos using World Cup clips from 1958 to the present.
“According to Engadget, there are 300 archived World Cup matches that Watson’s AI technology is capable of analyzing. More specifically, the IBM Watson Video Enrichment, a programmatic metadata tool, analyses the footage to create metadata that identifies what is happening in a scene at any given moment with an associated timestamp. ‘In essence, Watson Video Enrichment acts as an automatic metadata generator that is trained to use clues, such as facial characteristics, the presence of a red card, crowd noise, what’s being said by announcers and other characteristics, to create metadata that makes the massive amount of soccer video searchable’, wrote Phil Kurz on TVTechnology.”
Le Figaro’s innovation to generate World Cup visual summaries worked faster than any human. Dubbed Mondial Stories, the automated stories provide all the information someone needs to review a game as if they had watched the entire match.
Automation is a great tool, because the summaries do not require extra expenses, have low maintenance, it is an objective tool, and has potential for future sponsorships.
AI and automation cannot fully take over the human component of reporting on games, because they are just machines. However, they can enhance the viewer experience, increase commerce opportunities, and there are other ideas that have yet to be explored.
Whitney Grace, November 19, 2018
AdWords Adds Feefo Power
November 19, 2018
What the heck is Feefo? Is sounds like the name for the newest and cutest Internet star or some sort of product for the furry community. The Drum shares that it is actually an online review company (huh?) in the article, “Google To Strengthen Adwords Intelligence With Feefo Partnership.” Feefo has now partnered with Google AdWords. Feefo will use its sentiment analysis technology, it works with companies Next, Vauxhall, Expedia, and Thomas Cook, to discover advertising keywords from brand reviews. These keywords will then be pumped into digital ads to increase click-through-rates.
Google is proud of the new partnership:
“Adrian Blockus, head of channel sales for the UK and Ireland at Google, explained: ‘We’re pleased to have Feefo on board as a Google partner. Feefo has the product knowledge, advanced technology and insight needed, to create and optimize Google AdWords campaigns for their customers.’”
AdWords users will be able to use Feefo insights to spruce up their brand copy and landing pages to reflect the language and sentiment customers use in their reviews. In other words, Web sites will be rewritten to use customer-based language to make it sound more consumer friendly.
It is an ingenious strategy, because consumer feedback is being directed funneled into a company’s Web site. The language on a Web site will sound more natural and fluid to directly reflect consumer experiences with the product or service. Feefo says it will help consumers make confident and informed decisions, but actually the consumers are providing the keywords.
Whitney Grace, November 19, 2018
US Government to Crowdsource Malware
November 19, 2018
When we talk about all the wonderful opportunities for crowdsourcing, we often think about everything from network building to cake recipes. Very rarely do we think about governments crowdsourcing and even less frequently do we think about the benefits of sharing malware. But that’s exactly what’s happening and we couldn’t speak more highly of this choice. We learned more in a recent ZDNet story, “US Cyber Command Starts Uploading Foreign APT Malware to VirusTotal.”
According to the story:
“The Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), a subordinate unit of US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), set in motion a new initiative through which the DOD would share malware samples it discovered on its networks with the broader cybersecurity community.”
What is VirusTotal? It’s a unique organization that works a little like the Center for Disease Control, in that they keep a running bank of all malware and viruses on the internet. What this does, is allows experts to investigate these nasty elements and keep us safe. The CNMF is a great resource to team with VirusTotal and we hope good things stem from this. Oddly, one thing we did discover is that VirusTotal is owned by Google, which has the potential to make for strange bedfellows someday.
Patrick Roland, November 19, 2018
Facial Recognition and Image Recognition: Nervous Yet?
November 18, 2018
I read “A New Arms Race: How the U.S. Military Is Spending Millions to Fight Fake Images.” The write up contained an interesting observation from an academic wizard:
“The nightmare situation is a video of Trump saying I’ve launched nuclear weapons against North Korea and before anybody figures out that it’s fake, we’re off to the races with a global nuclear meltdown.” — Hany Farid, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College
Nothing like a shocking statement to generate fear.
But there is a more interesting image recognition observation. “Facebook Patent Uses Your Family Photos For Targeted Advertising” reports that a the social media sparkler has an invention that will
attempt to identify the people within your photo to try and guess how many people are in your family, and what your relationships are with them. So for example if it detects that you are a parent in a household with young children, then it might display ads that are more suited for such family units. [US20180332140]
While considering the implications of pinpointing family members and linking the deduced and explicit data, consider that one’s fingerprint can be duplicated. The dupe allows a touch ID to be spoofed. You can get the details in “AI Used To Create Synthetic Fingerprints, Fools Biometric Scanners.”
For a law enforcement and intelligence angle on image recognition, watch for DarkCyber on November 27, 2018. The video will be available on the Beyond Search blog splash page at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2018
Blood Sugar Levels Will Not Work. What about Death?
November 17, 2018
Google, as I recall, wanted to smash through medical barriers. When the contact lens thing surfaced at Microsoft with inputs from Babak Parviz, I figured Google knew something Microsoft did not. I read “Alphabet Stops Its Project to Create a Glucose-Measuring Contact Lens for Diabetes Patients” and learned:
Verily, Alphabet‘s life sciences arm, has paused work on its so-called “smart lens” program, which was aiming to put tiny sensors on contact lenses to measure blood sugar levels in tears.
Parviz, one of the wizards responsible for Google Glass (that’s a story as well) is now at Amazon. The contact lens thing is a goner.
That happens. But it raises a question in my mind:
If Google can’t make blood sugar monitoring work, what’s that say about the company’s goal of solving death?
High school science club project? Maybe. Death may be a more difficult problem, but it might spark fascinating ad sales.
Stephen E Arnold, November 17, 2018
High School Science Club Management: The Facebook Method
November 16, 2018
I am not much of a Facebooker. We use a script to pump out the titles of the items we post in the Beyond Search blog. I try to ignore Facebook, but – I must admit – that has been tough the last few days. The New York Times finally jabbed its remaining investigative skills into the juicy, fat cables of Facebookland. My takeaway from the long newspaper story which has many atwitter is that HSSCM is alive and well. HSSCM means to me “high school science club management.”
What sparks me to write this fine morning in rural Kentucky is an essay by the chief lean inner at his link. To read this essay, I have been informed I have to log in. I did not. I assume I saw the full Monty, but who knows? In practice it doesn’t matter because the drift of the write up is:
What? Who knew?
Yeah, sounds about right. Who put “Great Balls of Fire” on the Woodruff High School PA system at 7 45 am in 1958? Those of us in the WHS Science Club said:
What? Who knew?
Here in frosty Harrod’s Creek, the stories from Facebookland reveal the basic workings of HSSCM: Say what’s necessary to make the annoying Mr. McDonald (our WHS principal) go away.
We were the Science Club. We are the future. We knew better.
Sophomoric explanations work fine when one is 15. Transported to a publicly traded company I grow weary.
Time for a change. Lean into that.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2018
Quantum Computing: Rah, Rah, Rah
November 16, 2018
I don’t pay much attention to quantum computing. I gave a lecture at Yale, a fine institution a decade ago. At lunch, one of the lights of intellectual insight was yammering about quantum computing. I listened and offered, “Quantum. Think about light. Photon lensing maybe?” Wow, quite a reaction to the wave/particle thing that my former employer Halliburton Nuclear found interesting. I fell silent and listened to explanations of low temperatures, states, and the end of encryption as we know it. Believe me, I was glad to get to the train station and head back to rural Kentucky.
Over the years, I have noted the increasing interest in quantum computing. The idea is that the barriers or limitations of today’s computing methods are not doing the job. You know. Predicting the weather, figuring out what bond to buy or sell, and solving cancer or maybe even solving death. (That’s a Google thing, by the way.)
I read “The Case Against Quantum Computing.” I want to highlight a couple of statements in the write up. After the dust settles, you may be a believer in quantum computing or own a chunk of D-Wave Systems or some other forward leaning quantum computing outfit.
The D-Wave 2000Q is perfect for use on the run, in your home office, or on the beach.
The first statement I marked was:
It has gotten to the point where many researchers in various fields of physics feel obliged to justify whatever work they are doing by claiming that it has some relevance to quantum computing.
This is the everybody’s doing it approach. I am waiting for some bright spark to suggest that quantum computing enterprise search will make it possible to find the most recent version of a PowerPoint a sales manager used in a presentation yesterday after a wine infused lunch.
The second statement I noted was:
When will useful quantum computers be constructed? The most optimistic experts estimate it will take 5 to 10 years. More cautious ones predict 20 to 30 years. (Similar predictions have been voiced, by the way, for the last 20 years.) I belong to a tiny minority that answers, “Not in the foreseeable future.”
Roger that.
I found this statement interesting as well:
A useful quantum computer needs to process a set of continuous parameters that is larger than the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe.
My hunch is that the wizard at Yale thinks that quantum computing will be the next big thing. That’s useful.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2018
Cloudtenna for Combined Cloud and Local Search
November 16, 2018
Here’s a claim we’ve heard before: ZDNet declares, “Find a File Anywhere: Cloudtenna Targets Local and Cloud File Search.” Writer Robin Harris begins by describing the problem this upgrade addresses—an increasing number of cloud storage locations, combined with on-premise servers, make good search solutions even more challenging to build. Startup Cloudtenna is now expanding their cloud search engine, DirectSearch. Harris writes:
“The new product adds a machine learning platform that find files across disparate platforms, including Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Outlook, Gmail, Slack, Atlassian JIRA and Confluence, and local file servers. You can search on name, sender, date, file type, keyword, content, and other attributes regardless of where the file is located. That’s a lot, but it’s not the hard part. Nor is respecting file permissions, meaning that users can’t access files they aren’t supposed too. The hard part is doing this and delivering sub-second response times, even when thousands of users are searching across billions of files stored on dozens of repositories.”
Machine learning and a lightweight crawler (that collects metadata instead of files themselves) are strengths of the new platform. The company was understandably tight-lipped about the tech behind their cloudy search prowess, but they did release this tidbit:
“It uses real-time binding to build its file index and then performs consistency checks to capture deltas, such as a security change or a deleted file. File deduplication and ACL crunching reduces data required by the index, significantly reducing storage costs and requirements.”
A new OEM partner program helps users embed DirectSearch into existing platforms, and Cloudtenna offers a free, three-month account as a trial for potential users. Based in Sunnyvale, California, the company was founded in 2013.
Cynthia Murrell, November 15, 2018
Google Exits Robots or Replicants
November 15, 2018
Remember Google’s Boston Dynamics unit. That was the outfit with the robot reindeer. Perfect for pre school parties. I learned today that the ever frisky Andy Rubin’s last non humanoid fling has turned off the lights. The news appeared in “Google Shuts Down Bipedal Robot Team Schaft.”
This outfit was Schaft. It too made child friendly robots like this one:
Google now wants to create non humanoid robots. The decision means that robot rentals for children’s parties will not contribute to the company’s 2019 revenue.
“Hello, kids, let’s party,” says the Google Schaft thing.
If the party needs a bit of life, Schaft things can play hide and seek in the field near the pre school. That sounds like a good idea. Here’s Schaft approaching a three year old child cowering in a field behind a clump of grass.
High school science club thinking may be maturing. Think of those disappointed pre schoolers.
Stephen E Arnold, November 15, 2018
Wal-Mart: Responding to the Bezos Brigade
November 15, 2018
It’s retail conflict.
Wal-Mart likes to be on top. Wal-Mart’s sales, however, have fallen due to Amazon and other online retailers, but they will not go down without a fight. Wal-Mart has decided to fight digital sales with a bigger, better digital supply chain super structure. The Motley Fool reports on Wal-Mart’s biggest investment in, “IBM And Microsoft Are Upgrading Wal-Mart’s Digital Supply Chain.”
Wal-Mart has teamed up with Microsoft and IBM to revamp its supply chain. (What no Amazon in the mix?) Azure is the official cloud infrastructure of Wal-Mart with an exclusive five year contract. All of the retailer’s Web sites will now run natively on Azure and taking advantage of Microsoft’s machine learning and data management tools. Azure’s insightful tools will also streamline Wal-Mart’s supply chain, watch energy levels, and control devices.
Wal-Mart allegedly uses IBM’s blockchain technology to monitor product origins and IBM also built an onboard system for suppliers. How does the new supply chain help Wal-Mart:
“The modernization of Wal-Mart’s supply chain with cloud, IoT, and blockchain services could improve the retailer’s operating margin, which has been weighed down by e-commerce and overseas investments, store renovations, and wage hikes in recent years. That digital foundation can also pave the way for Wal-Mart to install more robots in its warehouses and stores, thereby reducing its overall labor costs. A streamlined supply chain would also help Wal-Mart avoid food safety problems, which are becoming increasingly common across supply chains and multiple countries and states.”
The new system will also help the just-folks store regain some of the losses from its China suppliers due to President Trump’s MAGA activities.
The team up between Wal-Mart, IBM, and Microsoft is a joint effort to counter Amazon-their common enemy—The Bezos brigade. Long shot for sure.
Whitney Grace, November 15, 2018
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
