Technology – Page 2 – Markus F. Peschl

July 28, 2020July 13, 2020

Innovation learnings from Google’s ATAP lab

One of the main goals of Google’s ATAP lab (Advanced Technology and Projects) is to make Google hardware as smart as Google software. It is one of Google’s (secretive) innovation factories working on a wide range of hardware innovations for the Google ecosystem. Apart from presenting inspiring hardware gadgets, such as the “house mouse” or a micro radar for gesture recognition, the head of the lab, Dan Kaufman, gives some insights into the lab’s innovation strategy:

Even if one has a zoo of fancy gadgets, you need to develop a cohesive and coherent vision or strategy for a future of smart devices.
Sometimes it is necessary to “re-invent” technologies that seem to work well.
Prototype and iterate.
It is not the head count of the lab that matters for the success of innovation activities, but the fact that one can tap into 100.000 smart engineers of the whole ecosystem the lab is embedded in.

See: https://www.fastcompany.com/90525392/googles-secretive-atap-lab-is-imagining-the-future-of-smart-devices

July 21, 2020July 3, 2020

Does the Wild wild web come to an end — rethinking the platform ideology

It seems that the WWW in its original idea as the Wild Wild Web is coming to an end. The tech industry’s decade-long experiment in unregulated growth and laissez-faire platform governance is being questioned in the light of recent political and social developments, polarization, fake news, etc. As the internet giants are unwilling to make rules, the WWW has slided into a state of “out of control”. Users as well as regulators are stipulating more responsibility and a new culture that is more accountable, more self-aware, and less willfully naïve.

see: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/technology/goodbye-to-the-wild-wild-web.html

July 7, 2020June 24, 2020

On Frictionlessness

Frictionless experience has become a requirement—even more so in times of COVID-19. What is frictionlessness actually about?

It turns out that when one removes friction from a system, process, business, organization, experience, etc., you offer your users what is almost the most valuable and nonrenewable/unique for them: time.

Friction is what costs you (time); frictionlessness is priceless.

→ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-future-of-commerce-belongs-to-the-frictionless/

June 24, 2020

Course on the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence — MIT Media Lab

This course will pursue a cross-disciplinary investigation of the development and deployment of the opaque complex adaptive systems that are increasingly in public and private use. We will explore the proliferation of algorithmic decision-making, autonomous systems, and machine learning and explanation; the search for balance between regulation and innovation; and the effects of AI on the dissemination of information, along with questions related to individual rights, discrimination, and architectures of c

Source: The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence — MIT Media Lab

April 8, 2020April 8, 2020

3 ways the coronavirus pandemic could reshape education

Not only our meeting culture has changed dramatically over the last weeks. The coronavirus (COVID-19) has changed the way students are learning, how teachers are teaching all over the world. Interestingly, it was just a matter of weeks that this switch of mode had taken place; suddenly things became possible which have been thought to be reserved only for “elite or alternative educational institutions”. This short essay by the World Economic Forum sketches some of these changes and highlights possible positive and negative long term implications:

Education – nudged and pushed to change – could lead to surprising innovations
Public-private educational partnerships could grow in importance
The digital divide could widen

See here for article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/3-ways-coronavirus-is-reshaping-education-and-what-changes-might-be-here-to-stay/

May 30, 2018May 31, 2018

Guide to Machine Learning courses on the internet | Medium & BigThink

Training computers instead of programming them is at the core of machine learning and deep learning. In a nutshell, this means that computers are learning to “learn by experience” (as we humans do) and make predictions by learning from (normally, huge amounts of) data (see also here).

The link below provides a well curated collection and guide to machine learning and deep learning courses on the internet offered by the world’s leading universities.

For this guide, I spent a dozen hours trying to identify every online machine learning course offered as of May 2017, extracting key bits of information from their syllabi and reviews, and compiling their ratings. My end goal was to identify the three best courses available and present them to you. (David Venturi)

May 11, 2018May 11, 2018

The Price of Google’s New Conveniences? Your Data | WIRED

Trading convenience for your privacy.

Google just announced a whole new range of services that are “awfully” convenient (visual search, personalized news services, personalized suggestions for new restaurants in Google Maps, monitoring and supporting your digital well-being, etc.). All this comes at a high price: your data and your privacy, knowledge about your habits, your interests, mindsets, etc., finally your identity. “Proactive” services are convenient, however they are based on prediction models operating on your personal interaction history.