The world's most objective hiring and selections platform plans to expand globally and innovate further with cutting-edge AI. SINGAPORE, Jan 4, 2022 /PR Newswire/ -- X0PA AI, a leader in AI-powered objective hiring solutions, today announced $4.2 million USD in Series A funding. The investment was led by ICCP SBI Venture Partners (ISVP), with additional funding from SEEDS Capital, AI8 Ventures, XCEL NEXT VENTURES, and SASV Investments. The new funding comes on the back of significant growth into new markets and the launch of trailblazing inclusive hiring innovations. Now more than ever, organizations are looking to increase diversity in their workplaces and reduce bias, while lowering the time and cost to hire the best talent.

Microsoft have added a new aspect to their AI for Good Projects and have released a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence model that will help combat the illicit trade of illegal animal trafficking – and it is being praised by everyone, including Prince William himself. Project SEEKER, as the project has been aptly named, was designed and trained to identify animals or animal products that are used in medicines. Illegal Wildlife Trafficking is a $23 Billion industry – it impacts well over 7000 different species and plants with one of the biggest transportation manners being that of storing animals in cargo or shipping them in planes and on boats. We saw a huge decrease in the number of trafficked animals during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when almost all countries had shut their borders! TechQuarters are a Gold Microsoft Partner and award-winning IT Managed Services Company in the UK – they have noted that this kind of technology will open up new doors and possibilities for all of us in the future. Project developers spent hundreds of hours uploading images of animals and animal parts and manually labelling them so that the AI model could learn to automatically identify these items – it is easily installed in luggage and cargo scanners at airports, border patrol sites, or shipping ports and will be able to automatically alert authorities if any illegal substance is detected.

Before COVID-19 struck India, Rajesh Agrawal and his wife, Meenakshi, would often get food from restaurants delivered to their home. A weekly treat of chicken tikka masala or lamb biryani would be a break from the vegetarian dishes they cook at home. It's been nearly a year since the Agrawals stopped ordering in food from their favorite restaurants. "There's no way to tell how clean and hygienic the restaurant kitchens are really," Mr. Agrawal says. "Sure, the government has released processes for restaurants during the pandemic. But we can't be certain that they're following those, can we?"

With the increasing requirement for more data scientists, ML experts, and AI engineers in every industry, Microsoft, in partnership with Netflix, has launched three new learning modules to guide learners through beginning concepts in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Inspired by the new Netflix original film -- 'Over the Moon' these learning modules include three paths -- planning a Moon mission using the Python Pandas Library; predicting meteor showers using Python and VC Code; and using AI to recognise objects in images using Azure Custom Vision. The growing requirement of data scientists comes with criteria of having a broad set of skills from data analysis with no-code and low-code solutions which will help them with designing and writing intricate ML models and solve some of the planet's most difficult problems. Keeping this in mind, Microsoft, partnering with Netflix, has launched these modules for providing high quality, free content to help learners develop their skills depending based on their professional goals and personal interests. According to Microsoft's blog post, "One such endeavour in creating an opportunity for you to learn and upskill is through unique partnerships. In the summer of 2020, we launched a set of Microsoft Learn modules inspired by real NASA scientists and engineers at https://aka.ms/LearnInSpace. And this Fall we are excited to bring you three more Microsoft Learn modules inspired by the new Netflix Original Over the Moon."

Microsoft and Team Gleason, the nonprofit organization founded by NFL player Steve Gleason, today launched Project Insight to create an open dataset of facial imagery of people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The organizations hope to foster innovation in computer vision and broaden the potential for connectivity and communication for people with accessibility challenges. Microsoft and Team Gleason assert that existing machine learning datasets don't represent the diversity of people with ALS, a condition that affects as many as 30,000 people in the U.S. Project Insight will investigate how to use data and AI with the front-facing camera already present in many assistive devices to predict where a person is looking on a screen. Team Gleason will work with Microsoft's Health Next Enable team to gather images of people with ALS looking at their computer so it can train AI models more inclusively. Participants will be given a brief medical history questionnaire and be prompted through an app to submit images of themselves using their computer.

Melissa Mulholland had no idea the baby she was carrying might not survive. If she hadn't gone to a high-risk clinic for an ultrasound, and if that ultrasound hadn't been reviewed by a doctor with expertise in a certain area of fetal care, the outcome could have been much different. Her ultrasound showed a fetal abnormality called posterior urethral valves (PUV), a congenital problem that is sometimes missed in reviews of ultrasounds unless doctors are trained to look for it, which they generally are not. PUV, which affects 1 in 8,000 males, means that extra tissue obstructs the baby's bladder, causing a reverse flow of urine that can damage other organs, and can be fatal. At 16 weeks, Mulholland, director of business strategy for One Commercial Partner (OCP), which helps enable Microsoft partners' success around the world, underwent a risky procedure.

KRAKOW, POLAND - 2019/01/23: In this photo illustration, the Google Hangouts logo is seen displayed ... [ ] on an Android mobile phone. Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. According to a report released this week, Google is in the process of creating its newest messaging app and the company's development team is looking to combine the capabilities of multiple apps that the tech giant already provides into one. The report detailed that the new messaging app would combine the features from Hangouts Meet, Hangouts Chat, and Drive, but also include Gmail features. This would be Google's tenth app.

A large Swiss drugmaker and a technology giant will work together to use data and artificial intelligence to speed drug discovery and development. Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said Tuesday that the alliance between the two companies would enable employees at Novartis to find insights in large amounts of data. It would also allow data scientists from Microsoft Research and Novartis' own research teams to use AI to find new approaches to personalized medicine for macular degeneration, manufacture of cell and gene therapies and shorten the time to design new drugs. The companies are referring to the two objectives as AI Empowerment and AI Exploration. "As Novartis continues evolving into a focused medicines company powered by advanced therapy platforms and data science, alliances like this will help us deliver on our purpose to reimagine medicine to improve and extend patients' lives," Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said in a statement.

The next time you see your physician, consider the times you fill in a paper form. It may seem trivial, but the information could be crucial to making a better diagnosis. Now consider the other forms of healthcare data that permeate your life--and that of your doctor, nurses, and the clinicians working to keep patients thriving. Forms and diagnostic reports are just two examples. The volume of such information is staggering, yet fully utilizing this data is key to reducing healthcare costs, improving patient outcomes, and other healthcare priorities.

Generally, default builds of popular deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow are not fully optimized for training and inference on CPU. To solve this issue, Intel has open-sourced framework optimizations for Intel Xeon processors. Microsoft recently announced a partnership with Intel to bring optimized deep learning frameworks to Azure. These optimizations are available on the Azure marketplace in the name of Intel Optimized Data Science VM for Linux (Ubuntu). These optimizations leverage the Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-512) and Intel Math Kernel Library for Deep Neural Networks (Intel MKL-DNN) to accelerate training and inference on Intel Xeon Processors.