Who needs a humanoid robot when everything is already robotic?
The service sector will see a surge in delivery robots, streamlining last-mile
package and food delivery logistics. Advanced cleaning robots will maintain both
homes and commercial spaces. urgical robots performing minimally invasive
procedures with high precision will benefit healthcare. Rehabilitation robots
and exoskeletons will transform physical therapy and mobility, while robotic
prosthetics will offer enhanced functionality to those who need them. At the
microscopic level, nanorobots will revolutionize drug delivery and medical
procedures. Agriculture will increasingly embrace harvesting and planting robots
to automate crop management, with specialized versions for tasks like weeding
and dairy farming. Autonomous vehicles and drone delivery systems will transform
the transportation sector, while robotic parking solutions will optimize urban
spaces. Military and defense applications will include reconnaissance drones,
bomb disposal robots, and autonomous combat vehicles. Space exploration will
continue to rely on advanced rovers, satellite-servicing robots, and assistants
for astronauts on space stations. Underwater exploration robots and devices
monitoring air and water quality will benefit environmental and oceanic
research.
Cybersecurity Isn't Easy When You're Trying to Be Green
Already, some green energy infrastructure has fallen prey to attackers. Charging
stations for electric vehicles typically require connectivity, which makes them
vulnerable to both compromise and disruption. In 2022, pro-Ukrainian hacktivists
compromised chargers in Moscow to display messages of support for Ukraine. In
2019, a solar firm could no longer manage its 500 megawatts of wind and solar
sites in the western US after a denial-of-service attack targeted an unpatched
firewall, the FBI stated in a Private Industry Notification (PIN) in July. The
risk could extend all the way to homeowners, who increasingly have adopted
rooftop solar and need to be connected to be able to deliver their solar power
and be credited. "This issue will only become more important as small solar
systems continue to grow. When every house is a power plant, every house is a
target," Morten Lund, of counsel for Foley & Lardner LLP, wrote in a brief
directed at energy companies. "In many ways, the distributed nature of solar
energy provides significant protection against catastrophic failures. But
without sufficient protection at the project level, this strength quickly
becomes a weakness."
A look at risk, regulation, and lock-in in the cloud
The threat here, if indeed it is a threat, is multifaceted. Firstly, financial
implications can be significant. When a company heavily invests in a specific
vendor’s ecosystem, the costs of migrating to a different provider, both in
terms of money and resources, can be prohibitive. The reality is that any
technology comes with a certain degree of lock-in. That is why I’m often amazed
at enterprises that ask me for zero lock-in in any enterprise technology
decision. It just does not exist. The question is how do we minimize the impact
of the lock-in that any use of technology brings. This is something I explain
extensively to enterprises. The risk is operational; dependencies on proprietary
APIs and services might necessitate extensive application rewriting. ... Whether
governmental regulation is a boon or a bane is a matter of perspective. On one
side, it could enforce fairness, ensuring that no single provider exploits its
position to the detriment of customers. Conversely, excessive regulation might
stifle innovation and limit the aggressive evolution that characterizes the tech
world. Also, we should consider that these regulations exist within one or a few
countries, and as enterprises are now mostly international firms, that has less
of the chilling effect that most expect.
Biometrics options expand, add more layers to secure financial services
The range of technologies being brought to bear against different fraud
vectors also includes Herta’s biometrics being utilized by the EU’s EITHOS
project to detect deepfakes, and age assurance and automated border control
measures a pair of governments are looking into for contract opportunities.
... Mastercard is rolling out passkeys for payments in the Middle East and
North Africa, following their launch in India. Starting with the noon Payments
platform in the UAE, the Payment Passkey Service will by offered as a more
secure alternative to OTPs at online checkouts. A Washington, D.C.-based think
tank says America has a digital verification divide, due to the lack of
documents possessed by low-income and marginalized people and the conflation
of biometrics for ID verification with surveillance and law enforcement.
Login.gov has helped less than it is supposed to so far, but evidence from
ID.me suggests that the situation could be improved with biometrics. Panama
has introduced a national digital ID and wallet for identity verification to
access public and private services online. The digital ID is available to both
citizens and permanent residents, and essentially digitizes the national ID
card supplied by Mühlbauer and partners.
AI Won’t Fix Your Software Delivery Problems
You can assess your personal productivity because it’s a feeling rather than a
number. You don’t feel productive when dealing with busy work or handling
constant interruptions. When you get a solid chunk of time to complete a task,
you feel great. If an organization is interested in this kind of productivity,
it should check in on employee satisfaction because people tend to be more
satisfied when they can get things done. The State of DevOps report confirms
this problem, as the high ratings for AI-driven productivity aren’t reducing
toil work or improving software delivery performance, which we’ve long held to
be a solid way for development teams to contribute to the organization’s
goals. ... Given the intense focus on increasing the speed of coding, we’re
likely seeing suboptimization on a massive scale. Writing code is rarely the
bottleneck for feature development. Speeding up the code itself is less
valuable if you aren’t catching the bugs it introduces with automated tests.
It also fails to address the broader software delivery system or guarantee
your features are useful to users. If you aren’t working at the constraint,
your optimizations don’t improve throughput. In many cases, optimizing away
from the constraint harms the end-to-end system.
The mainframe’s future in the age of AI
Running AI on mainframes as a trend is still in its infancy, but the survey
suggests many companies do not plan to give up their mainframes even as AI
creates new computing needs, says Petra Goude ... “AI can be assistive
technology,” Dyer says. “I see it in terms of helping to optimize the code,
modernize the code, renovate the code, and assist developers in maintaining
that code.” ... “Many institutions are willing to resort to artificial
intelligence to help improve outdated systems, particularly mainframes,” he
says. “AI reduces the burden on several work phases, such as code rewriting
or replacing databases, which streamlines the whole upgrading stage.” ...
Many organizations have their mission-critical data residing on mainframes,
and it may make sense to run AI models where that data resides, Dyer says.
In some cases, that may be a better alternative than moving mission-critical
data to other hardware, which may not be as secure or resilient, she adds.
“You have both your customer data and then you have what I’ll call the
operational data on the mainframe,” she says. “I can see the value of being
able to develop and run your models directly right there, because you don’t
have to move your data, you have very low latency, high throughput, all
those things that you would want for certain types of AI
applications.”
How (and why) federated learning enhances cybersecurity
Federated learning’s popularity is rapidly increasing because it addresses
common development-related security concerns. It is also highly sought after
for its performance advantages. Research shows this technique can improve an
image classification model’s accuracy by up to 20% — a substantial increase.
... Once the primary algorithm aggregates and weighs participants’ updates, it
can be reshared for whatever application it was trained for. Cybersecurity
teams can use it for threat detection. The advantage here is twofold — while
threat actors are left guessing since they cannot easily exfiltrate data,
professionals pool insights for highly accurate output. Federated learning is
ideal for adjacent applications like threat classification or indicator of
compromise detection. The AI’s large dataset size and extensive training build
its knowledge base, curating expansive expertise. Cybersecurity professionals
can use the model as a unified defense mechanism to protect broad attack
surfaces. ML models — especially those that make predictions — are prone to
drift over time as concepts evolve or variables become less relevant. With
federated learning, teams could periodically update their model with varied
features or data samples, resulting in more accurate, timely insights.
Augmented Reality's Healthcare Revolution
Many observers believe that AR's most immediate benefit will be in training
both current and future healthcare professionals. "AR enables students to
interact with virtual content in a real-world setting, providing
contextualized learning experiences," Stegman says. Meanwhile, full virtual
reality (VR), will offer a completely immersive training environment in which
students can practice clinical skills without the risks associated with real
patient care. ... As AR begins entering the healthcare mainstream,
deep-pocketed large hospitals and specialized medical centers will most likely
be the leading adopters, says SOTI's Anand. He reports that his firm's latest
healthcare report found that 89% of US healthcare industry respondents agree
that artificial intelligence simplifies tasks. "This gives a hint that
healthcare organizations are already on the path to integrating advanced
technologies," Anand notes. ... AR technology is rapidly evolving, and
improvements in hardware (such as AR glasses and headsets), software, and
integration with other medical technologies, are rapidly making AR more
practical and effective. "As these technologies mature, they will become more
accessible and affordable," Reitzel predicts.
Achieving peak cyber resilience
In a non-malicious, traditional disaster incident such as hardware failure or
accidental deletion, the backup platform isn’t a target. Recovery is
straightforward with a recent backup copy. You can quickly recover right back
to the original location or an alternative location. In contrast, a
cyberattack maliciously goes after anything and everything, making recovery
complex. Backups are an especially attractive target for hackers because they
represent an organization’s last line of defense. In a cyberattack scenario,
the priority is containing the breach to stop further damage. Forensics teams
must pinpoint how the attacker gained entry, find vulnerabilities and malware,
and prevent reinfection by diagnosing which systems were potentially affected.
Data decontamination is then needed to ensure threats aren’t reintroduced
during recovery. Ransomware events can also necessitate coordination across IT
disciplines, various business teams, legal, public, investor and government
entities. Disaster recovery is likely something your organization deals with
only infrequently. ... Cybercriminals have been enjoying the first-mover
advantage in putting AI to work for their nefarious purposes. AI tools have
allowed them to increase the frequency, speed and scale of their attacks. But
now it’s time to fight fire with fire.
Who Are the AI Goliaths in the Banking Industry? A New Index Reveals a Growing Divide
In the Leadership pillar, banks have significantly increased their AI-related
communications. The 50 Index banks published over 1,250 references to “AI”
across annual reports, press releases, and company LinkedIn posts—representing
a 59% increase year-over-year. This increase in “volume” was accompanied by an
increase in “substance,” both across Investor Relations materials and in the
engagement of Executive leaders across external media, industry conferences,
and LinkedIn. As AI investments mature, the pressure is mounting for banks to
demonstrate tangible returns. While 26 banks are now reporting outcomes from
AI use cases, only 6 are disclosing financial impacts, and just two (DBS and
JPMorgan Chase) are attempting to estimate total realized dollar outcomes
across all AI investments. JPMorgan Chase, for instance, reported that the
value they assign to their AI use cases is between $1 billion to $1.5 billion
in fields such as customer personalization, trading, operational efficiencies,
fraud detection, and credit decisioning. DBS, on the other hand, reported an
economic value of SGD 370 million from its use of AI/ML in 2023, more than
double the value from the previous year.
Quote for the day:
"The quality of leadership, more
than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an
organization." -- Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers
No comments:
Post a Comment