Industry Insider Archives

The Amazing Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Genomics and Gene Editing

By 2021, consultant firm Frost & Sullivan expects that artificial intelligence (AI) systems will generate $6.7 billion in revenue from healthcare globally. One area that machine learning is significantly evolving is genomics the study of the complete set of genes within an organism. While much attention has been paid to the implications for human health, genetic sequencing and analysis could also be ground-breaking for agriculture and animal husbandry. When researchers can sequence and analyze DNA, something that artificial intelligence systems make faster, cheaper and more accurate, they gain perspective on the particular genetic blueprint that orchestrates all activities of that organism. With this insight, they can make decisions about care, what an organism might be susceptible to in the future, what mutations might cause different diseases and how to prepare for the future.

Genome Sequencing and Gene Editing

Since the illnesses an individual experiences in a lifetime are largely determined by their genetics, there has been significant interest to better understand our genetic makeup for years. Our progress was stalled by the complexity and enormity of the data that needed to be evaluated. With advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, researchers are better able to interpret and act on genomic data through genome sequencing and gene editing.

A genome sequence is a specific order of DNA building blocks (A, T, C, G) in a living organism; the human genome is made up of 20,000 genes and more than 3 billion base pairs of these genetic letters. Sequencing the genome is a critical first step to understanding it. The latest technology called high-throughput sequencing (HTS) allows the sequencing of DNA to occur in one day—a process that once took a decade when it was first done.

When changes are made to DNA at a cellular level, it’s called gene editing.

Personalized medicine and life-saving therapies

One of the most exciting prospects about gene technology is the development of precision or personalized medicine. The field, which enables interventions specific to a patient or population of genetically similar individuals, is expected to reach $87 billion by 2023. Historically, cost and technology limited the implementation of personalized medicine, but machine learning techniques are helping to overcome these barriers. Machines help identify patterns within genetic data sets and then computer models can make predictions about an individual’s odds of developing a disease or responding to interventions.

Microsoft acquires conversational AI and bot development firm

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft has announced to acquire a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) and bot development company XOXCO for an undisclosed sum.

Texas-based XOXCO has been paving the way in conversational AI since 2013 and was responsible for the creation of Howdy, the first commercially available bot for Slack that helps schedule meetings.

“It also developed Botkit which provides the development tools used by hundreds of thousands of developers on GitHub. Over the years, we have partnered with XOXCO and have been inspired by this work,” said Lili Cheng, Corporate Vice President, Conversational AI at Microsoft on Thursday.

Conversational AI is quickly becoming a way in which businesses engage with employees and customers — from creating virtual assistants and redesigning customer interactions to using conversational assistants to help employees communicate and work better together.

According to Gartner, “by 2020, conversational artificial intelligence will be a supported user experience for more than 50 percent of large, consumer-centric enterprises”.

The Microsoft Bot Framework, available as a service in Azure and on GitHub, today supports over 360,000 developers.

“With this acquisition, we are continuing to realise our approach of democratising AI development, conversation and dialog, and integrating conversational experiences where people communicate,” said Cheng.

Over the last six months, Microsoft has made several strategic acquisitions to accelerate the pace of AI development.

The acquisition of Semantic Machines in May brought a revolutionary new approach to conversational AI.

In July, it acquired Bonsai to help reduce the barriers to AI development by combining machine teaching, reinforcement learning and simulation.

In September, Microsoft acquired Lobe, a company that has created a simple visual interface empowering anyone to develop and apply deep learning and AI models quickly, without writing code.

“The acquisition of GitHub in October demonstrates our belief in the power of communities to help fuel the next wave of bot development,” Microsoft said.

How to make AI less biased

With machine learning systems now being used to determine everything from stock prices to medical diagnoses, it’s never been more important to look at how they arrive at decisions.

A new approach out of MIT demonstrates that the main culprit is not just the algorithms themselves, but how the data itself is collected.

“Computer scientists are often quick to say that the way to make these systems less biased is to simply design better algorithms,” says lead author Irene Chen, a PhD student who wrote the paper with MIT professor David Sontag and postdoctoral associate Fredrik D. Johansson. “But algorithms are only as good as the data they’re using, and our research shows that you can often make a bigger difference with better data.”

Looking at specific examples, researchers were able to both identify potential causes for differences in accuracies and quantify each factor’s individual impact on the data. They then showed how changing the way they collected data could reduce each type of bias while still maintaining the same level of predictive accuracy.

“We view this as a toolbox for helping machine learning engineers figure out what questions to ask of their data in order to diagnose why their systems may be making unfair predictions,” says Sontag.

Chen says that one of the biggest misconceptions is that more data is always better. Getting more participants doesn’t necessarily help, since drawing from the exact same population often leads to the same subgroups being under-represented. Even the popular image database ImageNet, with its many millions of images, has been shown to be biased towards the Northern Hemisphere.

According to Sontag, often the key thing is to go out and get more data from those under-represented groups. For example, the team looked at an income-prediction system and found that it was twice as likely to misclassify female employees as low-income and male employees as high-income. They found that if they had increased the dataset by a factor of 10, those mistakes would happen 40 percent less often.

In another dataset, the researchers found that a system’s ability to predict intensive care unit (ICU) mortality was less accurate for Asian patients. Existing approaches for reducing discrimination would basically just make the non-Asian predictions less accurate, which is problematic when you’re talking about settings like healthcare that can quite literally be life-or-death.

Chen says that their approach allows them to look at a dataset and determine how many more participants from different populations are needed to improve accuracy for the group with lower accuracy while still preserving accuracy for the group with higher accuracy.

“We can plot trajectory curves to see what would happen if we added 2,000 more people versus 20,000, and from that figure out what size the dataset should be if we want to have the best of all worlds,” says Chen. “With a more nuanced approach like this, hospitals and other institutions would be better equipped to do cost-benefit analyses to see if it would be useful to get more data.”

You can also try to get additional kinds of data from your existing participants. However, that won’t improve things either if the extra data isn’t actually relevant, like statistics on people’s height for a study about IQ. The question then becomes how to identify when and for whom you should collect more information.

One method is to identify clusters of patients with high disparities in accuracy. For ICU patients, a clustering methods on text called topic modeling showed that cardiac and cancer patients both had large racial differences in accuracy. This finding could suggest that more diagnostic tests for cardiac or cancer patients could reduce the racial differences in accuracy.

The team will present the paper in December at the annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in Montreal.

How Artificial Intelligence is Changing SEO

Artificial intelligence and digital marketing are quickly becoming intertwined systems. AI development is occurring at a feverish pace, improving the efficiency with which developers and marketers can do many tasks.

AI goes beyond enhancing market research. Because it doesn’t rely on static methods for data collection, it can do far more to categorize and classify data than almost any market research firm working today.

What this means for techniques like SEO is having tools that can offer data collection for predictive keyword phrases long into the future. In most cases today, SEO is based on the ideas of keyword research and speculation for keywords that can produce excellent results in ranking the webpage.

Stronger algorithms

Search engine algorithms typically have set patterns for the way they rank websites, but with an introduction of AI enhancements to search, marketers may be forced to use the same tools. This is because AI enhancements mean the algorithm can change almost daily. AI enhancements to search engine algorithms can learn from query to query and decide relevant search engine results based off the volume of every search on a much timelier basis.

Introducing SEO tools and software that can adjust keywords on the fly can help to make sure that a page is always in its best position to perform based on current search engine algorithms. Being able to adjust and select main keyword phrases to optimize content regularly or include new variations of content can remain essential to ranking a page.

More relevant, high-quality content

AI simulations can also be extremely helpful with managing technical and on-page SEO. Testing and diagnostic software are only improving with the use of learning algorithms. Performing multiple search engine queries for voice-based search, mobile searches and more could help to make sure that a page is optimized correctly to perform. As most search engine algorithms will place enhancements and search engine ranking to a site that is well optimized for mobile users and fast loading, this can present great opportunities for marketers to optimize further.

AI is also delivering improvements in relevance and quality of content. Google AI tools for search can weed out content that is light on information or simply optimized to rank. Google AI works to check on content relevancy by measuring time spent on each page. AI can go even further with sorting analytics data to check into the content that is producing the best on-page results and categorizing subjects that can keep your viewers returning to the page. Insights on quality of content are giving marketers the tools they need to rank and produce improvements for their viewers too.

These are just a few of the top ways that AI is changing SEO. It seems as though both on a technical side from a search engine perspective and from the side of marketers, an evolution is taking place as these AI systems improve.

Cybersecurity: Eight Ways You Can Boost Employee Buy-In

Cybersecurity threats are an ongoing problem, and one that’s growing: It’s hard to go a month without some organization reporting a breach or other problems. There were, for instance, more reported instances of data breaches in the U.S. during the first half of 2018 than in all of 2013, according to a report on Statista.

Yet, no matter how extensive cybersecurity measures are, the human element is a regular issue: Specifically, how well employees comply with the new procedures, sometimes handed down from people far removed from the employees’ department, who don’t necessarily understand all the ins and outs of how those employees do their daily work. A well-thought-out plan can go sideways, for instance, if team members ignore some of the steps involved to save time or avoid hassles — something quite possible, if they don’t understand why a task exists in the first place.

So how do you ensure individual buy-in, in order to keep your organization protected against data breaches or other security issues? Below, eight members of Forbes Technology Council share their preferred methods for boosting cybersecurity buy-in, as well as discuss why the approaches work. Here’s what they said:

Make Understanding A Priority

Security and compliance actually have two separate goals. A compliance program should focus on the minimally invasive way to meet all public policy and industry rules to prevent fines or other sanctions. Security is about providing the correct level of protection to make an asset an unattractive target for a criminal. When employees understand the objective and outcome, you create buy-in. – Bret Piatt, Jungle Disk

Lay Out All Of The Facts

It has become abundantly clear in the last 12 months in the world of cutting-edge technology companies, that customer data must be protected and respected to a massive degree. Such behavior does not merely grant your firm a competitive advantage. Rather, it is singularly pivotal to your firm’s very survival in the digital age. Make this fact clear to your teams on day one, and every day after. – Zia Yusuf, Velocity

Clearly Define Policies

Often employees are left guessing “what’s our policy?” The ISO Compliance regime allows companies to clearly define those policies or rules, and then audit. Employees aren’t left guessing, for example, whether they can connect their personal Bluetooth fitness tracker. Employees need to feel good about their role in security, model good behaviors, and to be the sentinels when things don’t look right. – Phil Quade, Fortinet

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Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

Make It An Employee-Managed Initiative

Make cybersecurity an “employee-managed initiative.” Involve them in the “internal security committee” that tracks compliance. Communicate cybersecurity’s importance and the impact it has on the business using terms and language they understand. We use comic book-like imagery and sci-fi and comic language in posters across the office that reinforces the message without being suffocating. – AshwinRamasamy, PipeCandy, Inc.

Demo A Break-In

Typical security procedures seem more like theatre than security, forcing employees through repetitive steps with no clear meaning. One of the best ways I’ve found to get employee buy-in is to demonstrate how vulnerable the company is to security violations. You can do this by having employees attempt to break in themselves, or watch someone else do so. It makes security real to watch it fail. – Sean Byrnes, Outlier AI, Inc.

Read more in The Cybersecurity Maturity Model: A Means To Measure And Improve Your Cybersecurity Program

Create Security Roles

Protecting your company against attacks includes having a reliable team of experts in place who will identify risks in your network and business systems, while proactively creating mitigation strategy. Creating security roles and setting limited access required by each position and educating employees by holding yearly cybersecurity seminars will play a vital role in cybersecurity compliance. – Lana Vernovsky, Dynamics Resources

Illustrate Importance

The best way to improve employee buy-in and compliance on cybersecurity features is to illustrate the importance of these issues. Regular training can help improve your employees’ understanding of company policies and will help to strengthen mutual goals, even through interpersonal differences. – Schieler Mew, CS Design Studios

Make It A Part Of New-Employee Orientation

In our industry, we deal with sensitive customer data, including their bank account information. As part of new-employee orientation, I personally ask all new employees to safeguard this data and explain how our policies and training help us exceed customer expectations on protecting their confidential data. – VinayPai, Bill.com

Cyber Security Today:Online holiday shopping tips

It’s the holiday gift-buying season, which means it’s time to carefully consider security features when buying Internet-connected devices. Plus, a kid’s watch with big security problems and a warning for Black Friday.

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Friday November 16th. To hear the podcast, click on the arrow below:

The Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, has a web page with mini-reviews of 70 toys, games, coffee makers, pet finders and other products. Many of them rate poorly for security. So here’s a few questions to ask when choosing a wireless gift: Can it spy on you with a camera, microphone or location tracking? If so, does it use encryption? Can you control it through a changeable password? Does the manufacturer issue security updates? Does it delete data it stores on you? Does it have a privacy policy you can understand? Most answers should be on the product’s website. But, does a child’s toy really need to connect to the Internet? To get a look at the list and Mozilla’s thinking go to Foundation.mozilla.org and look for the page “Privacy Not Included.”

One connected product for kids the MiSafes Kid Watcher Plus, a watch that allows parents to track the location of their children. However, this week the BBC reported that a researcher said the device can be easily hacked, the data wasn’t encrypted, nor was the data secured on each child’s account. The researcher said he could track children’s movements, listen in to their activities and make spoof calls to the watches that appeared to be from parents. Neither the researcher nor the BBC could contact the manufacturer.

Speaking of Firefox, the browser comes with a tool called Monitor, which shows if information from your online accounts has been leaked or stolen. This week an updated version of Monitor was released that adds the ability to give an alert if you visit a website that has recently hacked. However, a security company called High Tech Bridge warns this feature isn’t complete protection. Monitor uses a list of publicly-known hacked websites. If the breach isn’t reported, Monitor doesn’t know about it. So you still have to be careful where you go on the web.

Finally, Black Friday, a day in late November when companies offer a number of sales online, has become a tradition this time of year. However, it’s also a time when criminals try to take advantage of your gullibility. Kaspersky says it already has discovered threats targeting 67 e-commerce brands including 33 consumer apparel sites, eight consumer electronic outlets and three online retail platforms. Scams include intercepting what you type to make off with your username and password, and redirecting users to phishing pages. So, as always, when buying online make sure you’re on a safe site. One way is to ensure the Internet address of the site you’re on starts with HTTPS. Always watch every page you get sent to.

That’s it for Cyber Security Today. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing. Thanks for listening.

Rocky 2019 Warned by Middle Real Estate Tycoon

A mogul of Middle East real estate development, Emaar Properties Chairman Mohamed Alabbar, said that the region has plenty of development opportunities despite geopolitical tensions and difficulties doing business. “If I was to look at the region as a whole I’m still positive,” he told CNBC at the Milken Institute MENA Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. However, he cautioned investors to remain prudent in the longer term. “I’m just careful about what is 2019. I’m just worried that we’ve been having a good time for too long. So I just hope that 2019 goes well … So make sure your balance sheet and debt level is at reasonable levels, so if there’s a shake-up you can handle it,” he said.

Emaar Properties is a real estate development company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which is responsible for developments throughout the country and the wider Middle East, and beyond.Founded in 1997, Emaar Properties has been responsible for much of the development of Dubai, including the iconic Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. It has also developed shopping malls and residential property, hotels and entertainment venues. The real estate firm also has developments further afield such as in India and Pakistan. Speaking to CNBC, Alabbar summarized the outlook for the company.

“My view is that Morocco is doing well for us, I would say Egypt is doing extremely well; Saudi Arabia with all the restructuring going on, it’s going to be a fabulous opportunity. In the UAE, we still expect to grow 20 percent on an annual basis,” he said, noting that the company’s growth in India was recovering and Pakistan was doing “reasonably well” for the firm.

Alabbar said the company had achieved around $5 billion of sales in 2017 and close to $1.8 billion of net profit with the company growing around 20 to 25 percent on an annual basis.

“Trust me, the margins, the opportunities and the growth I’ve been having in the Middle East over the last 20 years — even if you make a mistake, it’s so worth it,” he said, although he noted doing business in the wider Middle East had its challenges.

“Of course if I’m doing business in the UAE, it’s comfortable, it’s safe. But if I have to go to Cairo (in Egypt) I have to know the government, I have to know the mayor of Cairo, the mayor of Alexandria. But that’s what we do, that’s what we’re paid for, that’s what we have to do to grow our business,” he said.
The Middle East is certainly not a region for the faint-hearted. There is ongoing geopolitical turbulence caused by the continuing conflict in Yemen, uncertainty in Syria and Iraq about the possible resurgence of terrorist group Islamic State and internal disputes within the Gulf Cooperation Council (with Qatar being sidelined by

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt), not to mention perceived proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Couple these issues with economic instability, prompted by the lower oil price, and there’s a combustive mix for most businesses. Alabbar said it was nothing new, however, and that the region was ripe for real estate development and infrastructure investment.

“I think that what the Middle East is going through is, unfortunately, not new … But the truth is that the opportunities exist — there are millions of people who have to go to school, they have to shop, they have to find jobs and open new factories, there’s tourism, so therefore that will contribute to economic growth in the whole region.”
Asked about Emaar Properties’ balance sheet, Alabbar said there had been difficult times.
“2007, 2008 and 2009 was very painful and I try not to forget the lesson. And I deal with bankers with a lot of respect but when they come and tell me ‘your balance sheet is not very efficient’ I know that I’m doing a good job. So I like to keep my debt at a very reasonable level. Then again, we have to do business, we have to be aggressive but at the same time we have to keep our eye on the cycle.”

Officials to Approach Strong Local Economy in the State Real Estate

F.C. Tucker Commercial Thursday presented its annual State of Real Estate program, a panel discussion about recent trends and predictions in the region’s residential, retail and industrial real estate markets. F.C. Tucker officials and Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke participated. A few of the highlights:

Officials said 2017 saw significant activity in local industrial real estate, and the plastics industry was a major driver. Two former Whirlpool warehouses on St. George Road were bought last year for distribution of plastics, and a $2.1 million sale last May on St. Joseph Industrial Park Drive is facilitating a plastics company expansion.

An empty building in the Vander burgh Industrial Park drew an Israeli-owned company in the plastics industry. “The economic impact of the plastics industry is huge, and as the economy stays strong, I look for the industrial demand to stay strong as well,” said Ken Newcomb, president of F.C. Tucker Commercial.
New comb also noted another recent industrial development win for the region, a TaylorMade golf equipment distribution center at 4400 Garrison Drive.
There tail market has been busy as well, although the continued trend to online shopping has caused some hits, such as the pending loss of Evansville’s Sears store in Washington Square.

Fresh Thyme has opened at The Promenade, and Dick’s Sporting Goods just opened its new store in the former Gordman’s store at East Lloyd Commons, relocating from the Pavilion shopping center further east.

Dick’s will have lower rent and an additional 15,000 square feet at the new site, said Aaron Kendall, F.C. Tucker Commercial vice president.
The new year is expected to bring the arrival of Costco at The Promenade, a relocation of Burlington Coat Factory, the arrival of At Home in Burlington’s former space and a few Eastland Mall additions, such as Box Lunch and Carters/Oshkosh B’gosh.

There’s been quite a bit of new office development in the region, but a lot of B or C class space remains vacant in Downtown Evansville and elsewhere.
Energy Systems Group moved into a new building, just east of Interstate 69 in Warrick County. New burgh Family Dental built on Ruffian Lane, and a new medical office facility is going on adjacent to Target Pavilion on Evansville’s East Side.

The former ITT Tech building is now occupied by Approval Payment Solutions. Commerce Bank opened a new branch at Lloyd and Eagles Crest Drive and relocated its corporate headquarters to nearby 320 Eagle Crest Drive.

The high level of vacancy “speaks to the need of those landlords to adapt and change to the new workforce taking over these spaces,” said Kyle Bernhardt, who works in F.C. Tucker Commercial in commercial sales and leasing.

The region’s tallest building, at 420 Main St., is back on the open market. A purchase option and redevelopment plan was announced at the 2017 State of Real Estate event, but it did not materialize.

“Although we are sad to see this potential project put on hold, we are still very excited about how this property could truly transform Downtown,” Bernhardt said.
Locally and nationally, new home construction starts are well below demand, said John Briscoe, vice president of F.C. Tucker’s residential division.

Vanderburgh and Warrick counties saw 535 housing starts in 2017. That number will likely grow about 10 percent in 2018, Briscoe said.
The local residential market saw record low inventory levels in 2017. Briscoe said houses were on the market an average of 56 days, and it was common during the spring and summer to see multiple offers on houses and offers above the asking price.

Winnecke said the region’s economy is strong. He pointed to major publicly supported projects in Downtown Evansville and organic growth elsewhere in the community.

The Multi-Institutional Academic Health Science and Research Center, a Downtown building that will house academic programs from three universities, is more than 70 percent completed and will be open for classes in August. Construction on the campus’ second building could begin this year.

“Strong regions have strong cores in their primary cities, but it’s not just Downtown where that is happening,” Winnecke said. “Literally, there is hundreds of millions of dollars of investment underway in our city right now … I think 2018 will be another banner year for the community. I hope people are documenting how the city is changing for the better.”