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SiLC Technologies Unveils the Eyeonic Vision System Mini: A Leap in Precision LiDAR Technology

Business Wire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:58:51 +0000

New AI Machine Vision System Offers Unmatched Sub-Millimeter Resolution in a Significantly Reduced Size

SiLC Technologies, Inc. (SiLC), the leading developer of integrated single-chip FMCW LiDAR solutions, announced the launch of the Eyeonic™ Vision System Mini (Eyeonic Mini), a groundbreaking advancement in LiDAR technology. This innovative system, integrating a full multi-channel FMCW LiDAR on a single silicon photonics chip and an integrated FMCW LiDAR System-on-Chip (SoC), sets a new industry benchmark in precision.

Utilizing the industry’s first purpose-built digital LiDAR processor SoC, the iND83301 (“Surya”) developed by indie Semiconductor, the Eyeonic Mini achieves an unprecedented level of detail, delivering an order of magnitude greater precision than existing technologies while being one-third the size of last year’s pioneering model. This latest innovation builds upon the success of SiLC’s first commercial FMCW LiDAR system, the Eyeonic Vision System, founded on an integrated silicon photonics chip and designed specifically for machine vision applications.

SiLC’s Eyeonic Vision Chip, central to the system, amalgamates all essential photonics functions into a coherent vision sensor, delivering a compact solution that meets the demands for performance, affordability and low-power consumption. The system’s exceptional accuracy is driven by a 4-channel FMCW LiDAR chip, complemented by indie’s innovative Surya SoC, and equips robots with sub-millimeter depth precision from distances exceeding 10 meters.

This level of precision opens new doors in automation, particularly in warehouse logistics and AI machine vision applications. For instance, AI-driven palletizing robots equipped with the Eyeonic Mini can fully view and interact with pallets, optimizing package placement and loading onto trucks with efficiency and safety. In the context of the U.S., with its over 13 million commercial trucks, this technology promises to revolutionize warehouse operations and the broader trucking industry, significantly boosting efficiency in loading and unloading processes.

Giving robots the intelligence to see, move, touch, think and learn, Dexterity is working on incorporating SiLC technology into their robot autonomy platform. “At Dexterity, we focus on AI, machine learning and robotic intelligence to make warehouses more productive, efficient and safe,” remarked CEO Samir Menon. “We are excited to partner with SiLC to unlock LiDAR for the robotics and logistics markets. Their technology is a revolution in depth sensing and will enable easier and faster adoption of warehouse automation and robotic truck load and unload.”

“Our FMCW LiDAR platform aims to enable a highly versatile and scalable platform to address the needs of many applications,” added Dr. Mehdi Asghari, CEO of SiLC Technologies. “At CES this year, we’re demonstrating our long-range vision capabilities of over two kilometers. With the Eyeonic Mini we’re showcasing our high precision at shorter distances. Our FMCW LiDAR solutions, at short or long distances, bring superior vision to machines to truly enable the next generation of AI-based automation.”

“The Eyeonic Mini represents the next evolution of our close collaboration with SiLC. The combination of our two unique technologies has created an industry-leading solution in performance, size, cost, and power,” said Chet Babla, SVP Strategic Marketing at indie Semiconductor. “This creates a strong foundation for our partnership to grow and address multiple markets, including industrial automation and automotive.”

For machines to be capable of truly augmenting our lives, their vision solution must be powerful, compact, scalable, and unaffected by complex, unpredictable environments and conditions, including interference from other systems. It must provide motion, velocity, polarization, and precision – prerequisites which exclude existing, time-of-flight-based solutions and instead point to FMCW as the needed platform. FMCW technology enables a new generation of imaging solutions that can directly capture images for AI machine vision, factory robots, home security, autonomous vehicles, and perimeter security applications.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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TruLite Health Announces Collaboration With Mayo Clinic to Address Clinical Bias & Improve Health Equity

Business Wire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:58:38 +0000

Optimizing software to deliver equitable healthcare at scale

TruLite Health, developer of the only health equity solution to remediate clinical bias, announced a know-how agreement with Mayo Clinic to address disparities in medical outcomes and costs.

TruLite’s innovative software, Truity™, tackles persistent issues of clinical bias that adversely affect patient outcomes in diverse populations. The platform addresses this challenge by driving patient-specific clinical, social and behavioral interventions, leading to improved healthcare outcomes and costs as part of an organization’s health equity strategy. Alongside their deployment in clinical practice, Mayo Clinic’s physicians will provide feedback on user experience enhancements, workflow and platform improvements.

“This collaboration with Mayo Clinic represents a significant step forward in health equity capabilities to address this critical unmet need in the market,” said Alan Roga, M.D., Founder and CEO of TruLite, an American Hospital Association (AHA) Health Equity Transformation Partner.

Clinical bias in healthcare has far-reaching consequences, significantly impacting patient outcomes and costing the United States healthcare system $320 billion annually. Moreover, a TruLite actuarial study found individuals with one of seven chronic illnesses who are Black or Latinx cost approximately $5,300 more annually for the same disease compared to the White population.

Leveraging the largest health equity knowledge base, TruLite’s software directly integrates into an electronic health record (EHR), and in the workflow provides patient-specific actions and interventions for clinicians, care teams and patients. This integration empowers providers to improve equity at the point of care and aligns with regulatory drivers, including the Joint Commission, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and Food and Drug Administration. Additionally, TruLite offers virtual health equity coaching with a focus on patient advocacy and through their partnership with the Morehouse School of Medicine.

The collaboration with Mayo Clinic comes on the heels of TruLite’s participation in the 2023 Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care MedTech Accelerator Program, where the company was selected as one of nine international startups. This flagship initiative provides early-stage medical device and Healthtech companies with resources and mentorship to accelerate growth.

Mayo Clinic has a financial interest in the technology referenced in this press release. Mayo Clinic will use any revenue it receives to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Chatmeter Unveils the Future of Reputation Management with Launch of Pulse AI: Signals

GlobeNewswire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:41:17 +0000

Chatmeter, the leader in reputation management and multi-location intelligence, announced the release of Pulse AI: Signals, enabling brands with critical customer and location insights in real time to grow their business – an industry first.

Multi-location businesses have traditionally used keyword-matching sentiment analysis and Net Promoter Score surveys to get a surface-level understanding of customers. Now, these businesses can type any question into Signals, which will analyze their reviews, social media and surveys to deliver the exact information needed, with the data to back it up, in real time.

“We’re in a new era for multi-location brands,” said John Mazur, CEO of Chatmeter. “Every brand is at risk of their next mention going viral and costing them millions in revenue before they’re even able to respond. Not anymore, thanks to Signals and its pioneering use of generative AI.”

“Armed with Chatmeter’s insightful data, we’ve made swift and effective changes to elevate the guest experience,” said Richard Clarke, senior manager of loyalty and guest feedback at Northland Properties. “As a result, we’ve enjoyed future bookings, repeat stays, and greater guest loyalty. Chatmeter’s ability to close the loop on customer feedback and generate positive results is truly impressive.”

Chatmeter was one of the first reputation management platforms to bring advanced sentiment analysis to the market in 2017 and is now the first to use generative AI to empower multi-location businesses to:

Quickly make better, more informed decisions from real customer feedback through generated reports that answer the mission-critical questions brands have about their customer experience, products, locations, and more.
Gain an even deeper understanding of every customer’s experience and how specific locations are performing by using insights from specific regions, locations, providers, timeframes, and more, along with all of the customer reviews and data, to make informed decisions that drive real business impact.

“While many companies use AI to automate basic tasks, Chatmeter is using multiple, best of breed large language models, including internal models trained on our own data, to deliver actionable insights in real time,” said Chatmeter CTO Dan Cunningham. “We have invested heavily in this technology because we believe that multi-location businesses need insights beyond what is delivered using general sentiment and search, and they need these insights in real time.”

Signals uses an advanced data pipeline to process reviews, social posts and surveys through multiple AI models, including custom-trained versions to deliver the insights multi-location businesses need on topics such as:

Product feedback
Customer satisfaction
Facilities operations
Critical business risks
Customer and employee safety
Regional strengths and weaknesses
And many more….

Across a multi-location brand, thousands of reviews, social posts and surveys may be processed by Signals daily. With the data processed and stored using AI, businesses can ask questions of their data, and get detailed answers back, including insightful analysis, attributing data and downloadable reports.

Signals is now available to Chatmeter customers with the Performance and Intelligence bundles. Additional Pulse AI features will be available later in 2024.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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AUDIENCEX Announces Groundbreaking Expansion of its Innovative AI-Powered Suite, AUDIENCEX Intelligence

GlobeNewswire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:36:49 +0000

Expansion includes new marketing analytics solution providing omnichannel data visualizations, conversion insights, and predictive modeling

AUDIENCEX, the AI-enabled digital advertising partner built to optimize real-time campaign performance for brands and agencies, is proud to announce a significant expansion to the capabilities of its innovative AI product, AUDIENCEX Intelligence (AXi). AXi is a suite of advanced AI-powered data science and performance tools designed to address the complex advertising challenges faced by today’s marketers, including media and data fragmentation, evolving privacy regulations, and increasingly rigorous budget scrutiny.

In conjunction with this expansion, AUDIENCEX is evolving the structure of their AXi suite of solutions into three distinct tech and service offerings which can be leveraged individually or alongside one another, each designed to meet specific client needs. This move reinforces the company’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology and expertise in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-powered digital marketing, while simplifying the continued evolution of the various tools within the AXi suite. This restructuring includes the launch of AXi Explorer, a groundbreaking new marketing and media analytics solution that introduces a new era of precision in campaign management.

The new structure of the AXi suite is outlined below:

AXi Predictor powers the analysis of crucial behavioral signals in audiences based on first-party data, historical data, and log-level data access. Using a fully opted-in dataset, AXi Predictor uses these insights to model custom predictive audiences most likely to convert.
AXi Optimizer enables custom bidding algorithms and real-time optimization. With a continuous optimization engine customized for specific goals, AXi Optimizer works in collaboration with custom and enterprise-level platform algorithms to reach the right audience at the right time.
AXi Explorer, a new integrated analytics solution, provides visibility into real-time omnichannel performance data, predictive modeling for data-driven campaign decisions, and transparent reporting throughout the campaign lifecycle.

As the newest offering in the AXi suite, AXi Explorer is designed to provide greater transparency into omnichannel performance while enabling predictive modeling for data-driven decision-making to drive results. This comprehensive analytics solution seamlessly integrates and unifies data from diverse marketing sources, establishing a singular source of truth for in-depth marketing performance analysis. Complemented by intuitive marketing dashboards and AI-powered recommendation engines, AXi Explorer optimizes clients’ media mix and enhances marketing efficiency.

“Marketers are actively seeking precision and clarity in their campaign analytics. This seamlessly integrated tool will empower our clients with real-time insights, allowing them to more fully understand the true impact of their campaigns, forecast performance to assist in data-driven decision-making, and optimize strategically,” noted Brittany Wray, VP of Product at AUDIENCEX. “Ultimately, clients will achieve unprecedented success in their marketing endeavors through the strategic utilization of these advanced capabilities.”

Key Features of AXi Explorer Include:

Transparent Performance Reporting for Omnichannel Campaign Analytics
MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling) for Optimal Campaign Yield
Predictive Analytics for Future Planning
Custom Data Visualization for Tailored Insights
Seamless Website Analytics Integration for Conversion Attribution

“We are thrilled to expand our exceptional AXi suite, including the introduction of AXi Explorer, which together represent game-changing AI-enabled marketing and media solutions for brands and agencies. Now, marketers can gain a deeper understanding of their audiences and confidently scale performance–all with completely privacy-safe, futureproof solutions. This marks a major milestone in our commitment to transparency, data access, and performance excellence,” said Max Yang, VP of Ad Ops at AUDIENCEX.

The newly expanded AXi suite of solutions is available to all AUDIENCEX clients effective immediately. This reflects the company’s commitment to increasing access to enterprise-level AI-driven technology, privacy-safe consented data, and industry-leading performance solutions. For additional information on AUDIENCEX, the full AXi suite of solutions, or AXi Explorer itself, you may reach out directly to their team.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Hyperfine Launches AI-Powered Brain Imaging Software for Enhanced Quality

Business Wire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:21:43 +0000

The latest software, the eighth generation of Swoop® system software, has obtained CE and UKCA approval

Hyperfine, Inc. the groundbreaking medical device company that has redefined brain imaging with the world’s first FDA-cleared portable magnetic resonance brain imaging system—the Swoop® system— announced the launch of the AI-powered eighth generation of Swoop® system software. The software’s diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) AI denoising feature received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance in October 2023, and it has been rolled out at select sites over the past several weeks through a limited market release. The latest software improves Swoop® system image quality and introduces valuable ease-of-use features, including a real-time aid for more precise patient loading and positioning and a streamlined image upload process.

With CE and UKCA certifications for this latest software, Hyperfine, Inc. is well positioned for future international expansion, bringing the Swoop® system to a broader global market.

“Our latest AI-powered software, the eighth generation of our proprietary software platform, embodies our commitment to supporting clinicians in critical decision-making,” remarked Tom Teisseyre PhD, Chief Operating Officer of Hyperfine, Inc. “Our focus on image quality with this latest software has been on the DWI sequence, which is key in stroke imaging. Since its first FDA clearance in 2020, we’ve been dedicated to continually enhancing image quality and workflow efficiencies to define best-in-class, user-centric, ultra-low field MR brain imaging.”

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Over 50 exams were performed in hospitals taking part in the limited market release phase, and users commented favorably on DWI image quality. Participating sites confirmed that the new streamlined upload feature materially shortened upload completion times, and the fast-positioning check was a time-saving aid and helped improve image acquisition.

“The software update on the Swoop® system has been most beneficial to our workflow. We are now able to view each series as it is being performed and can communicate with the technologist whether additional series are needed. Additionally, we can communicate with clinicians any critical findings in real-time without having to wait for the whole study to be completed,” says Jennifer Villa Frabizzio MD, neuroradiologist, Radiology Group of Abington.

Hyperfine, Inc. will roll out software updates for the Swoop® system to users in the coming weeks.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc. Unveils Friction Positive Campaign, Transforming Retail With A.I.

Business Wire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:16:37 +0000

Fujitsu’s A.I. for retail harnesses the concept of positive friction to optimize processes, foster engagement, and improve overall satisfaction at three levels: the customer experience, attendant engagement, and the enterprise view.

Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc., a leader in innovative retail self-checkout hardware and software solutions, announced its ground-breaking “Friction Positive” campaign, signaling a paradigm shift in the landscape of A.I. for checkout technology with a focus on loss prevention and promoting checkout efficiency in the retail sector.

This transformative initiative champions the idea that not all friction at checkout is detrimental; in fact, when strategically integrated, friction becomes a catalyst for positive change. At the forefront of this movement is Fujitsu’s commitment to leveraging A.I. technology to enhance the retail experience across enterprise operations and down to the customer experience, allowing retailers to manage the delicate balance between efficiency, improved security, and meaningful interactions.

Enhanced Experience:

We believe that positive friction enhances rather than hinders the self-checkout process. Utilizing advanced A.I. technology, Friction Positive appropriately applies friction during the self-service process and guides shoppers through a uniquely tailored customer journey, enriching the customer experience while offering an optimized level of assistance to speed shoppers’ engagement. By ensuring that the fusion of technology and human touch elevates the in-store experience, Friction Positive makes every visit as efficient as possible under the pressures of what could be a complex set of transactional hurdles.

Integrated Assistance:

Fujitsu’s commitment to Friction Positive extends to integrated assistance, where A.I. seamlessly collaborates with in-store attendants to target what feels like a less invasive level of support during unavoidable interventions. This dynamic synergy between technology-driven capabilities and human expertise ensures that every customer feels heard, valued, and assisted in their unique shopping requirements. And, we have not forgotten the needs of the self-checkout attendant – we’ve integrated techniques and tools that will make their difficult customer-facing tasks incrementally easier in support of the customer while protecting the bottom line of the retailer they represent.

Retail IQ:

Another integral component of Fujitsu’s Friction Positive campaign is Retail IQ, which emphasizes strategic insights and assisted support made possible by A.I. technology matched with our nearly 30 years of self-checkout experience. Unveiling usage patterns and engagement data empowers executives to make informed decisions that not only enhance their bottom line, but also elevate operational processes and drive overall business and operations strategy.

Multi-phase Approach

Friction Positive features a strategic multi-phased approach for leveraging A.I. for retail technology. Phase One, which is available for retailers to integrate into both new and existing deployments now, delivers on all three pillars of the Friction Positive campaign by enabling features including: advanced customer enablement through self-correction of common issues/interventions, the ability to auto-delay certain interventions based on activity levels, attendant guidance based on priority ranking of transaction interventions, and more. With an emphasis on enhanced security supported by our consultancy, this initial phase pioneers a new era in loss prevention by seamlessly integrating features that act as a protective shield, safeguarding against theft while ensuring a positive shopping environment for both employees and customers.

Additional phases will introduce innovative new solutions and features focused on further enhancing customer experiences and retail capabilities, including: integration of our U-SCAN VersaMount with A.I. technology to support scan avoidance and ticket switching detection, a new feature for pre-alerting when potential high-theft/time-consuming conditions occur, flexible tiered security controls to give retailers options that meet their needs, and the capability to automatically halt or terminate a transaction when fraudulent activity persists.

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“At Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc., we are proud to redefine the narrative surrounding self-service technology. The Friction Positive campaign embodies our commitment to connecting people and technology, creating a shopping environment where positive friction becomes the driving force for unparalleled customer satisfaction and retail success,” said Shuhei Oyake, President and CEO at Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Global Innovators Partner with Axelera AI, Leverage Metis Platform for Enhanced Edge AI CapabilitiesInsights

Business Wire — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:14:46 +0000

Company Unveils Industry-Leading YOLO Performance for Edge AI Video Analytics at CES 2024

Axelera AI, provider of the world’s most powerful and advanced solutions for AI at the Edge, announced significant technology advancement and customer adoption. Following the unveiling of the company’s Early Access Program and first product shipment, Axelera AI customers can soon use state-of-the-art AI inference processing with YOLO (“You Only Look Once”) Neural Networks for Edge AI Computer Vision applications, with unmatched performance, opening up unprecedented opportunities for Edge deployment with the industry-defining Metis™ AI Platform. The solution was recently named a CES 2024 Innovation Awards Honoree and is being showcased this week at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The acceleration of AI technologies has brought with it the opportunity for innovation across a range of vertical markets. The Metis AI Platform provides customers with advanced Edge AI-native hardware and software solutions for companies of all sizes across a multitude of industries. Early Access Program customers System Electronics/Coesia Group, XXII, Relay2 among others are currently utilizing the Metis AI platform within their cutting-edge products to differentiate the unique offerings they bring to their respective industries.

“The exceptional performance and accuracy of the Axelera AI Acceleration platform have significantly fueled our collaborative efforts. Its unmatched performance-to-price ratio, surpassing traditional GPUs and dedicated AI Processing units, has been critical in our selection process. We are confident that leveraging their state-of-the-art YOLO performances will empower us to tackle new challenges in our current and future video analysis applications,” said Alexandre Perez, R&D Director at XXII.

“Better performance and accuracy at a similar price point compared to alternative AI accelerators in the market brought us to select Axelera AI as our partner in the Edge AI space. Our group is committed to providing cutting-edge solutions to our customers in the industrial automation space. Our partnership with Axelera AI not only ensures that we meet customers’ current needs but also helps future-proof their deployment at the Edge by providing a best-in-class solution,” added Andrea Gozzi, General Manager of System Electronics/Coesia Group.

“Relay2’s Wi-Fi enabled Edge Computing solution with embedded Axelera Metis AIPU allows our surveillance solution customers to take full advantage of edge computing,” said Eric Chen, CEO of Relay2, Inc. “With Axelera Metis AIPU’s low power consumption and high inference accuracy, Relay2’s Service Point is able to process the surveillance videos onsite and generate instant analytics. This integrated solution facilitates immediate responses to onsite incidents, and reduces CAPEX and OPEX for our retail and industrial customers.”

The Metis AI Platform combined with the YOLOv5s network offers a full multi-channel video analytics pipeline with high-accuracy object detection, running at 480 frames per second (16 Full HD resolution streams at 30 FPS). The demonstration at CES showcases the Metis AI platform’s pre-release, which has been in the hands of select Axelera AI customers through an Early Access Program since last September and is now available for evaluation. The full production-ready platform will be available in mid-2024 and has a projected performance up to 800 frames per second. Axelera AI matches 99% of the original model’s precision, indistinguishable from GPU-based inference models, while offering 4-5 times the energy efficiency and cost savings, opening up unprecedented opportunities for Edge deployment. The Metis PCIe and M.2 Edge AI accelerator cards are sampling now.

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“Integrating YOLO into our Metis AI Platform marks a significant milestone in Edge AI inference,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and Co-Founder of Axelera AI. “As more and more customers harness the advantages of AI, computer vision models like YOLO and the Metis AI Platform enable applications previously constrained by computational power. Our platform’s enhanced capabilities demonstrate our commitment to providing the best performance and usability, at a fraction of the price and power consumption of other solutions available today. Axelera AI is committed to not only making current solution designs ready for the future, but also to looking ahead and getting ready for the next wave of technological innovations.”

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post Global Innovators Partner with Axelera AI, Leverage Metis Platform for Enhanced Edge AI CapabilitiesInsights appeared first on AiThority.

Decoding the Grid: A Practical Guide to Generative AI for Utilities

Shriram Ramanathan — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 06:07:15 +0000

After several false starts over many decades, artificial intelligence (AI) has finally proven its worth in helping people achieve faster results and with greater success. Even utilities, which are generally conservative in adopting new technologies, are thoughtfully embracing AI to improve customer experience, operational efficiencies, and infrastructure planning through smarter grid management.

Imagine knowing exactly how much energy is consumed inside every home or business, down to the individual appliance and time of day.

Would your utility’s business managers be able to operate and plan grid infrastructure more efficiently?

Now, imagine knowing what type of appliance each home was using. Would your utility’s marketing team be able to target gas furnace customers for electric heat pump upgrades more accurately and cost-effectively, for example?

The capabilities of today’s AI algorithms are helping utilities do just this by illustrating with precise detail how energy moves along the grid. In just a few clicks, utilities can identify key power loads – including electric vehicle (EV) charging, solar, batteries, HVAC, and water heaters – detect behavior and appliance inefficiencies, track consumption history, filter consumption patterns by geography, income level, and more.

For the first time, utilities can draw meaningful insights from consumption data that lend to smarter decision-making for critical initiatives like time-of-use (TOU) load shifting, distribution planning, and demand-side management.

A Trusted ‘Knowledge’ Repository is Key to Generative AI Adoption in 2024

New in the Evolution of AI

While AI has slowly been developing since the 1940s – and large breakthroughs in the first few decades brought us ELIZA, the first chatbot – it wasn’t until 2011 that the ‘smartness’ of AI started to pick up. Apple integrated Siri into its iPhones, IBM Watson won Jeopardy, and Google’s AlphaGo won the World Go Championship. All of a sudden, AI was on the map for tech and non-tech companies everywhere.

Current AI capabilities – which are considered ‘traditional AI’ – are being used in the utility world to connect what is happening on the grid with how utilities carry out top-level decision-making and day-to-day activities. For example, using AI to analyze power consumption on an hour-by-hour basis, network planners can optimize grid management by running capacity analysis on transformers, feeders, and substations. This enables them to identify areas of the grid that are being overloaded and which areas are capable of withstanding an increase in demand.

Another typical use is taking AI’s ability to detect appliance-level consumption patterns within each home to personalize customer communications that encourage behavioral energy efficiency. Specifically, utilities can send out usage alerts as a house comes close to crossing the high-bill threshold.

Because, AI can draw side-by-side comparisons of homes based on energy consumption, property attributes, individual lifestyles, and geography, utilities are also better positioned to establish benchmarks for initiatives like electrification and demand response. Some utilities are even using these AI-powered consumption insights to identify and prevent meter tampering and tariff misuse.

But the world is entering a new era with generative AI, which promises to be even more powerful.

When traditional AI algorithms see a picture of an elephant, they process the elephant as a whole and can describe it in intricate detail, capturing every pixel. When asked to draw the elephant, traditional AI algorithms will draw that elephant in nearly the same way again and again.

Generative AI, however, is more creative. These ML algorithms instead capture key features of the elephant to draw a different elephant each time.

This evolution brings incremental creativity to the problems around us – the type of creativity most of us have to apply on a day-to-day basis – and allows organizations to enhance operations from the top down without drastic restructuring of business models.

Although generative AI is still in its infancy in regards to scaled adoption and implementation, recent research from Capgemini Research Institute revealed that 33 percent of utility and energy companies worldwide have begun to pilot generative AI and almost 40 percent of utility and energy companies have established a dedicated team and budget for generative AI.

While Capgemini notes high-tech and industrial manufacturing as the two industries at the forefront of generative AI, it is perhaps more interesting to see industries notoriously slower to adopt technological innovations (like utilities) are supporting generative AI at the same pace as its tech-savvy counterparts.

Generative AI for Utilities

As impressive as Siri was when it was first introduced, generative AI is garnering that same admiration.

Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) passed the Bar Exam with flying colors, so it’s not difficult to imagine how applying this resource will continue to improve utility operations.

Traditional AI is incredibly valuable in analyzing data, which for utilities means appliance detection, consumption profiling, and everything that comes from this sophisticated energy intelligence like segmenting customers, sending automatic high-usage alerts, etc. With generative AI, utilities have the power to further amplify operations.

Implementation of generative AI within areas like call centers to reduce time spent on the phone with customers will be the most obvious and low-risk use of AI in the near term, it is also low-hanging fruit for most utilities. Where utilities will see the greatest impact overall, however, will be grid planning and management.

For instance, as utilities currently work to support rising EV adoption they rely on human input to determine their EV charging infrastructure strategy. This means planning when, where, and how many EV chargers to install at any given location. In the absence of much historical data (which is what traditional AI depends on), such a task requires significant amounts of creativity around human behavior as well as a firm understanding of how charging infrastructure is likely to affect EV purchases, demographic changes, and even real estate availability. This now is a task well suited to be tackled by generative AI.

Another great example is the use of generative AI chatbots by utility business managers, not just customers. Utility managers can interact with underlying big data in a natural language mode via initial questions such as, “Which five substations have the highest solar penetration?”

They can then dive deeper with follow-on questions such as:

“How many EV drivers are at this substation?”

“How many of those users have both solar and EVs?”

What are the time of use patterns for these users?”

With this, grid planners can easily identify areas of focus within minutes, rather than the weeks that it would have taken an analyst to download and analyze the data before answering these questions.

A Smarter Energy Future with Generative AI for Utilities

AI-powered consumption insights at this level can unlock considerable financial savings for utilities. EV load shifting can save utilities upwards of $1,350 per EV every year in bulk system investments and $1,090 per EV every year in distribution system investments – a financial benefit that compounds as adoption grows.

And, that’s just the beginning.

McKinsey Global Institute estimates AI and machine learning can drive $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually in business value. This could mean $200 billion in value add for the U.S. utility industry thanks to AI helping utilities avoid costly and unnecessary infrastructure upgrades, improving grid planning, reducing operating spending, and more.

While full-scale adoption of AI strategies may be decades away, the success of early pilot programs and projects proves there is no reason to wait. Utilities can start working more efficiently today – both in terms of employee workload and by uncovering new business opportunities – and build a stronger, more reliable grid.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post Decoding the Grid: A Practical Guide to Generative AI for Utilities appeared first on AiThority.

Daily AI Roundup: Biggest Machine Learning, Robotic And Automation Updates

AIT Staff Writer — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 21:30:15 +0000

This is our AI Daily Roundup. We are covering the top updates from around the world. The updates will feature state-of-the-art capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Fintech, and human-system interactions.

We cover the role of AI Daily Roundup and its application in various industries and daily lives.

Qrypt Joins NVIDIA Inception

Qrypt, the pioneering quantum-secure encryption company, announced its acceptance into NVIDIA Inception, a program that nurtures startups revolutionizing industries with technological advancements.

AppsFlyer Unveils Cutting-Edge AI Solution for Elevating Marketing Campaign Creativity and Performance

AppsFlyer, the global leader in marketing measurement, attribution, and data analytics, launched Creative Optimization, its new product that provides marketers with unparalleled insights into their creative assets and data-driven guidance on maximizing their impact.

Accenture to Expand Network of Generative AI Studios Across Asia Pacific and Latin America

Accenture is setting up generative AI studios in nine countries across Asia Pacific and Latin America to respond to growing client interest in the technology. Studios across Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Greater China, India, Japan, Mexico, Philippines and Singapore will connect clients with data and AI experts from Accenture, and ecosystem partners, ventures, and other strategic investments to enable rapid experimentation, co-creation and scaling of generative AI solutions using Accenture’s responsible AI framework as a foundation.

Zendesk Signs Definitive Agreement To Acquire Klaus

Zendesk announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Klaus, the industry leading AI-powered quality management platform. AI is driving a rapid increase in customer interactions and radically transforming the world of customer service. Customer service teams are being asked to increase their ROI by managing a rising volume of interactions while providing quality service, and increasing their organization’s efficiency in the process.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Nylas and AE Studio Speed Up Development With Large Language Models

Business Wire — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 20:25:40 +0000

New partnership allows businesses to build faster across various coding languages while also exploring large datasets and the possibilities of generative AI within their tech stack

Nylas, the state-of-the-art communications platform giving developers universal access to email, calendar, and contacts providers through a single API integration, has announced a strategic partnership with AE Studio, whose development, design, and data science teams work closely with founders and executives to create custom software and AI solutions. Under the terms of the partnership, organizations will be able to leverage both Nylas’ best-in-class communications APIs alongside AE Studio’s top-tier development resources to accelerate development cycles and time-to-market. Additionally, companies will have access to resources and technology aimed at building workflows and products rich with intelligence and automation.

Finding top developer talent remains immensely important yet incredibly challenging. In a recent survey from Reveal, more than a third of respondents cited hiring and retaining skilled developers as their most difficult job to fill. The combination of Nylas and AE Studio will help businesses and their development teams build and maintain complex email and scheduling integrations, and leverage this rich data for AI applications, without needing to reallocate additional internal developer resources. Through Nylas and AE Studio, development teams can:

Add additional development resources combined with easy-to-use APIs to prioritize developer speed without compromising on efficiency or quality.
Leverage SDKs across major coding languages to speed up integration processes and reduce the effort and code required, such as AE Studio’s recent use of Nylas to reduce delivery by 3 weeks with entertainment project management client Filmik.
Begin exploring generative AI use cases such as workflow automation and LLM training with secure access to large email datasets.

“The importance and value placed on developer experience and the ability to infuse AI into product roadmaps and workflows are mission-critical tasks that companies of all sizes and industries are faced with,” said Jesse Ervin, Chief Revenue Officer at Nylas. “Our strategic partnership with AE Studio allows companies to prioritize both without needing to significantly increase developer workloads, coding efforts, or shift resources away from existing product roadmaps.”

Additionally, developers want to see their organizations invest more heavily in AI and workflow automation tools. In their 2023 State of Developer Experience report, Nylas found that two out of three developers want to harness AI and automation to create better user experiences.

“The currency for building AI with impact is data. Nylas makes data integrations easy while AE Studio’s team of top-tier developers and Ph.D. data scientists turn data into software that drives lasting ROI,” said Jevan Fox, Chief Revenue Officer at AE Studio. “Nylas is a core partner for our client work as they help us to drive efficiency and speed at scale.”

The partnership comes on the heels of Nylas being named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ for the second consecutive year and being recognized as a Gartner^® Cool Vendor in Composable Customer Engagement Platforms, while AE Studio was recently named a Clutch Top Artificial Intelligence Company for the year.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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