In GTC China yesterday, NVIDIA made a series of announcements. Some had to do with local partners and related achievements, such as powering the likes of Alibaba and Baidu. Partners of this magnitude are bound to generate impressive numbers and turn some heads. Another part of the announcements had to do with new hardware. NVIDIA unveiled Orin, a new system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed for autonomous vehicles and robots, as well as a new software-defined platform powered by the SoC, called Nvidia Drive AGX Orin.

Speech recognition is definitely one of the areas where artificial intelligence is showing its power and effectiveness. And what is the last thing that journalists, secretaries, and assistants wish to take care of? But whether for interviews or parliamentary reports, new AI-based applications emerge as useful support tools to let the machine do the boring part of the job and allow people to focus on more demanding and intellectually challenging tasks. In the next year, the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) is set to introduce HANS – AI system that will be a valuable ally to the work of lawmakers and employees of the Riigikogu. By deploying speech recognition, it will increase the efficiency and accuracy in transcripts of the sessions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP) in Japan has successfully found features in pathology images from human cancer patients, without annotation, that could be understood by human doctors. Further, the AI identified features relevant to cancer prognosis that were not previously noted by pathologists, leading to higher accuracy of prostate cancer recurrence compared to pathologist-based diagnosis. Combining the predictions made by the AI with predictions by human pathologists led to an even greater accuracy. According to Yoichiro Yamamoto, the first author of the study published in Nature Communications, "This technology could contribute to personalized medicine by making highly accurate prediction of cancer recurrence possible by acquiring new knowledge from images. It could also contribute to understanding how AI can be used safely in medicine by helping to resolve the issue of AI being seen as a'black box.'"

Consumer-centric applications for artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are helping to stamp out the public perception that these technologies will only benefit businesses and negatively impact jobs and hiring. The conversation from human replacement to human efficiency has become more mainstream as we see AI applications in healthcare, social media, mass transportation, financial industries and many more. Andrew Ng – Computer scientist and adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford – has recently referred to AI as "the new electricity," pointing out that most industries will see the value from AI significantly expand over the next decade. Recent advancements have helped to overhaul mundane and outdated processes and provide advanced data analysis and enhanced or, "augmented," intelligence to support not just companies, but individual employees and consumers. In 2018 and 2019, AI was tapped to disrupt and improve multiple industries, and was the prime target for VC funding with investments well into the billions.

She works on expanding the reach of IBM's technology to New York City's developer community. Her area of interest includes prototyping with NodeRED & working with AI services to build fun & interesting things! Prior to living in NYC, Pooja lived in Boston, MA where she was working as an API automation engineer in the healthcare tech industry. She mainly works in Javascript & Java, however she tinkers with Python. She is currently passionate about Node-RED & building IoT applications using Node-RED services. She is a strong believer in helping new technologist get up & running with technology & feel confident in their abilities to make!

Artificial Intelligence is being accused of fueling inequality and climate change as revealed by a new report. Recently, a paper was published by the AI Now Institute with a title AI Now 2019 Report and it is highlighting the societal impacts of artificial intelligence and is also putting in front some recommendations for the tech industry and policymakers. The artificial intelligence is being controlled by the people who already have power and is promoting inequality, and disempowering people who lack power. According to the claims by AI Now, the artificial intelligence industry is promoting the mistreatment and discrimination of workers as the tech companies are moving more towards facial recognition technologies and ignoring the facts that these energy-running A.I. systems are the reason behind the increase of carbon dioxide in the environment. According to the co-founder of AI Now Kate Crawford, her organization is concerned about the effects of the recognition technology that is promoting to determine the personality or emotional state of a person via their facial expression and this type of technology is being used by vet job applicants, to track students and to gather data on the emotional states of shoppers inside the stores.

The IBM Developer NYC team will be hosting a Holiday Tech Showcase & Party! Please join us & the community for a fun-filled night of food & drinks, networking, IBM's BIG IDEAS for 2020, exclusive project demos using IBM technologies, & a special holiday gift from IBM Developer as a token of appreciation. Sign up for IBM Cloud (here: http://ibm.biz/IBMHolidayParty) to receive a special IBM holiday gift. Pooja, Roger, Grant, Nigel, Jenna, & Mofi Special Message: The IBM Developer NYC team would like to thank you ALL for being the best part of our events this year! This year, IBM Developer New York has grown over 70%! Thank you for showing up, participating & being excited to learn with us!

In its first year of operation, the Intelligent Towing Tank (ITT) conducted about 100,000 total experiments, essentially completing the equivalent of a PhD student's five years' worth of experiments in a matter of weeks. The automated experimental facility, developed in the MIT Sea Grant Hydrodynamics Laboratory, automatically and adaptively performs, analyzes, and designs experiments exploring vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs). Important for engineering offshore ocean structures like marine drilling risers that connect underwater oil wells to the surface, VIVs remain somewhat of a phenomenon to researchers due to the high number of parameters involved. Guided by active learning, the ITT conducts series of experiments wherein the parameters of each next experiment are selected by a computer. Using an "explore-and-exploit" methodology, the system dramatically reduces the number of experiments required to explore and map the complex forces governing VIVs.

In the not-so-distant future, more robots may be interacting with customers at shopping complexes, serving food at restaurants or cleaning floors at offices in Japan amid a serious labor crunch. A hint of what is to come is visible at the International Robot Exhibition 2019, a major biennial robot trade show that kicked off on Wednesday at Tokyo Big Sight. The event runs until Saturday. Featuring a record 637 firms and organizations, some participants said demand for robotics as helping hands in service sectors is rising to compensate for a shortage of workers. Tokyo-based Omron Social Solutions Co. unveiled a robot capable of performing three tasks: cleaning, security and guiding.

Tis the end of the year when pundits typically dust off the crystal ball and take a stab at what tech, and its impact on consumers, will look like over the next 12 months. But we're also on the doorstep of a brand-new decade, which this time around promises further advances in 5G networks, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, self-driving vehicles and more, all of which will dramatically alter the way we live, work and play. So what tech advances can we look forward to in the new year? Here's what we can expect to see in 2020 – and in some cases beyond. The next generation of wireless has showed up on lists like this for years now. But in 2020, 5G really will finally begin to make its mark in the U.S., with all four major national carriers – three if the T-Mobile-Sprint merger finally goes through – continue to build out their 5G networks across the country.