A botanist at Kew's Madagascar research site scans a plant for digitisation. A botanist at Kew's Madagascar research site scans a plant for digitisation. AI could help win'race against extinction' of vital plants, say botanists Tech is helping to identify and save new specimens and could open'genomic goldmine' of fungi data The rise of AI and digitisation could be a turning point in the "race against extinction" faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a major report from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. New technology is enabling scientists to track how flowering times have shifted by weeks around the world, rapidly identify new specimens and even get crucial genetic data from 180-year-old fungus specimens, potentially opening a "genomic goldmine". Digitisation and online access to millions of specimens that were until now only accessible in archives is also producing new insights, especially in the global south.

Vision is a popular and effective sensor for robotics from which we can derive rich information about the environment: the geometry and semantics of the scene, as well as the age, gender, identity, activity and even emotional state of humans within that scene. This raises important questions about the reach, lifespan, and potential misuse of this information. This paper is a call to action to consider privacy in the context of robotic vision. We propose a specific form privacy preservation in which no images are captured or could be reconstructed by an attacker even with full remote access. We present a set of principles by which such systems can be designed, and through a case study in localisation demonstrate in simulation a specific implementation that delivers an important robotic capability in an inherently privacy-preserving manner. This is a first step, and we hope to inspire future works that expand the range of applications open to sighted robotic systems.

Upskilling has gained prominence in recent times with working professionals increasingly realising the importance of expanding their abilities and closing the current skill gaps. According to the World Economic Forum, almost half of the existing workforce has to upskill/reskill by 2025 to stay relevant in the changing business realities. There are different methods and ways for upskilling to ensure continuous learning that helps employees expand their skill set to confidently take on new roles and responsibilities across functional domains and operational areas. A learning organisation always defines and deploys the best learning solutions for building capability to stay relevant. The world of workplaces has undergone a massive transformation in the last couple of years.

The recent shake-out in NASDAQ-listed tech stocks spared few – not least insuretech disrupters such as Lemonade, Root and Hippo, who saw their market valuations slump an eye watering 85-90% from their peaks at one point. It wasn't difficult to see why, given aggressive and ongoing interest rate moves by the Fed and loss ratios (measuring claims incurred as a proportion of premiums sold) heading in the wrong direction. This in turn led to a substantial negative impact on earnings. Indeed, data from Capital IQ showed Root, Lemonade and Hippo collectively wracked up $1.1bn in net losses in 2021 vs. $474m two years earlier. Yet, if the travails of Lemonade, Root and Hippo offer a salutary lesson in frothy market valuations, they've also left the door open for traditional insurance providers to recapture (using third party software providers) lost market share.

During its 37th plenary meeting held in Strasbourg on 8 and 9 December, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) launched the 2022-2025 action plan called "Digitalisation for a better justice" aiming at reconciling the efficiency of new technologies and the respect of fundamental rights. Back on this plan which will also focus on the use of artificial intelligence technologies. The priority of the CEPEJ for the next four years is thus to accompany the States and the courts in a successful transition towards the digitalization of justice in conformity with the European standards. These orientations are articulated around major axes aiming at"that justice is always transparent, collaborative, human, centred on individuals and accessible, enlightened, and finally responsible and reactive" and are the following: The charter emphasises the need for specific training and indicates that developers and users of AI applications could find it beneficial to receive more practical guidance on how to apply the five principles set out in the CEPEJ Charter. This would give developers a clearer idea of how to audit their applications, ideally already in the development phase.

Spain is "lagging behind" when it comes to the general population's digital skills, especially women, the country's Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence told Euronews Next. Speaking on Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona, Carme Artigas said the Spanish government was tackling the country's skills shortage head on. "Women are still underrepresented in the population that has technological abilities," the minister said. "The jobs of the future will require not only basic skills, but also specialised skills, advanced skills". Artigas said digitisation was also lacking for small and medium-sized businesses but that Spain is "absolutely focused" on transforming its economic model, something she said, "needs to be tackled urgently".

The Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (CAIM) will be officially opened in January 2021 in Bern, Switzerland. The center, founded by the University of Bern and the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern, is intended to be a platform for research, teaching and transfer of medical technologies using AI, aimed at improving the provision of patient care and facilitating the work of physicians and caregivers. The healthcare sector today generates more data than healthcare professionals are able to analyze. AI allows us to use this data to determine the characteristics that doctors, caregivers and other health professionals need to make more accurate diagnoses and better treatment decisions. With AI, treatments become more accurate – unnecessary interventions can be avoided and treatment successes improved. In cancer therapy, for example, treatment plans can be designed more specifically for the patient to minimize radiation exposure.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our lives and compelled governments, businesses and individuals to re-examine the ways of the past and reimagine the future. For India, the pandemic has also laid bare the several gaps in India's healthcare system and underscored the urgent need to improve health outcomes in the country. Digitization will play an integral role in plugging the prevailing gaps in India's healthcare ecosystem. In 2015, the government of India (GoI) launched the'Digital India' campaign with an aim to transform India into a leading economy of the future. In the last half a decade, the country has become the second-fastest digital adopter in the world--India has almost half a billion Internet users and more than 350 million smartphone users consuming 8.3 GB of data per month per subscriber.

Believing that your company has become digital because it makes its content available online, use data analytics a little bit more than it did historically, or because your IT department decided to move from owning its own servers to cloud services are great steps but not enough. Putting a digital lipstick is a (quick) win but it does not confer any competitive advantage to your organization and what's more, this false sense of digitisation may unfortunately delay a required core transformation. The typical digital usages inside an SME revolve around the automation for logistics, procurement, HR, general services, and part of sales. Digitisation is about reshaping every element of your business model, including what you produce, how you produce, how you buy, how you sell, your relationship with customers, suppliers, and other partners, as well as you manage the company internally. A digital SME is not necessarily an organization using the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

"Today each organization must know how to build its digital capability. Because now every company is a software company, every organization is a digital organization." Recently, an article published by the Harvard Business Review gave holistic advice on how in terms of a technology renaissance, we ought to not forget our humanistic side. A very unconventional beginning to a write-up which will solely speak about the whole nine yards of tech, but since digital transformation services are about bringing change to the existing reality, it'll cease to exist sans a touch of humanism. The latter half of the 20th century was the genesis of the'Age of Information' where progression was made from orthodox industrial techniques to the forever evolving Information and Technology. From analogue, everything turned digital. Let's understand it layer by layer. In simple terms, Digital transformation is the impact and influence of technology into each and every business vertical. And when we say technology, we mean digital. But it doesn't restrict itself to that. It's equally a colossal cultural change that thrives on experimentation, brainstorming, challenging metacognitive skills and coping with failure.