As businesses race to adopt AI, traditional hiring models are being challenged—opening the door to a more diverse and potentially more effective workforce.

A Different Kind of Competitive Advantage

As artificial intelligence continues to transform how businesses operate, a new conversation is emerging around talent—and who is best equipped to thrive in this rapidly changing environment.

According to Josh Hough, founder of home care software company CareLineLive, neurodiverse individuals may be particularly well suited to this shift.

Speaking during Neurodiversity Celebration Week, Hough highlighted that traits often associated with neurodiversity—such as pattern recognition, deep focus, and problem-solving—are becoming increasingly valuable in AI-driven workflows.

Josh Hough, founder of CareLineLive, advocates for the value of neurodiverse talent in the AI economy

Challenging Traditional Hiring Models

Hough argues that many organisations are still relying on outdated hiring frameworks.

“A lot of businesses still want people who tick every box. The reality is, people who think differently often solve problems differently.”

In an AI economy defined by constant change, adaptability and alternative thinking are becoming critical.

This marks a shift away from:

• Process-driven roles

• Standardised thinking

• Linear problem-solving

Toward a workforce that can:

• Interpret complex systems

• Identify patterns quickly

• Approach problems from new angles

Lived Experience Shapes Innovation

Hough’s perspective is shaped by his own experience.

Born with a rare muscle-weakening condition, he spent much of his early life in a wheelchair—an experience that required him to constantly adapt and rethink how to navigate everyday challenges.

“When you grow up having to do things differently, you don’t assume the standard way is the best way.”

That mindset, he says, has carried directly into how he builds and leads his company.

Building Technology Around Real-World Needs

Founded in 2014, CareLineLive develops software used by more than 700 home care providers globally, supporting over 25,000 carers.

The company focuses on improving how information flows across care systems—an area where inefficiencies can have real-world consequences.

“Too often, information doesn’t move between people in the way it should. That creates risk and wastes time.”

By prioritising clarity, communication, and accessibility, the platform reflects the same principles Hough advocates in workforce design.

Neurodiversity in an AI-Driven Workplace

As AI adoption accelerates, the nature of work is evolving.

Rather than replacing human capability, many AI systems:

• Require interpretation

• Depend on pattern recognition

• Benefit from non-linear thinking

These are areas where neurodiverse individuals may excel.

Hough believes businesses need to rethink how they define capability:

“Not everyone is going to fit a traditional mould—but that doesn’t mean they can’t be excellent at what they do.”

A Broader Shift in Workplace Thinking

The conversation around neurodiversity is moving beyond inclusion—and toward performance.

Forward-looking organisations are beginning to recognise that:

• Cognitive diversity can drive innovation

• Different thinking styles can improve outcomes

• Inclusion is not just ethical—it’s strategic

In the context of AI, this shift may become even more pronounced.

Conclusion

As the AI economy continues to evolve, so too must the way organisations think about talent.

Josh Hough’s perspective highlights a simple but powerful idea:

The future of work may belong to those who think differently.

And for businesses willing to adapt, that represents not a challenge—but a competitive advantage.

The post Rethinking Talent for the AI Economy appeared first on Tech Trends.

Democratizing Animation

Marketers know that few tools are as effective in engaging your audience as a well-crafted animation. Traditionally, however, this type of material has been extremely labor-intensive – and therefore costly – to produce.

Yet LottieFiles is a company looking to change all that with its open-source tool that allows animators to spend less time learning and deploying complex code and more time crafting captivating content that will wow users and increase conversion rates.

LottieFiles allows designers to spend less time learning and deploying complex code and more time crafting captivating content
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Lottiefiles is a lightweight, interactive, and scalable animation format that allows for customization without having to code, build and render bulky files from scratch. In fact, Lottie files are, on average, 600% smaller than other popular animation formats such GIFs, allowing for a much faster, more responsive, and therefore engaging user experience (UX).

Lottie files are on average 600% smaller than GIFs, allowing for a much faster, responsive, and engaging user experience
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Popular apps such as Airbnb and Duolingo have wholeheartedly embraced this user-friendliness. Use cases for Lottie animations range from app loading and wait screes to gamification and user onboarding, as well a vast array of websites and apps looking to serve meaningful content to their users, according to LottieFiles CTO Nattu Adnan

“LottieFiles has helped hundreds of thousands of developers and designers from over 65,000 global fortune companies like Netflix, Disney, Google and Amazon to ship interactive animation faster and more effectively,” adds the company’s Co-Founder and CEO Kshitij Minglani.

Augmenting Reality

AR (Augmented Reality) has been steadily gathering momentum in recent years, and it is easy to see why. Merging the physical and digital worlds is an exciting proposition that opens up a whole world of possibilities for users, and the companies hoping to reach and keep them engaged.

From new ways of experiencing art to enabling customers to realistically try products before committing to a purchase, Augmented Reality is becoming ever more pervasive across an incredibly broad swathe of industries.

Augmented Reality is becoming ever more pervasive across an incredibly broad swathe of industries.
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“Research shows that AR will evolve from one-off ‘surprise and delight’ moments to provide everyday utility and practical value, right across the consumer journey.  This could include helping people visualize how products look in their home, locating products in-store through wayfinding applications, or getting more out of a product post-purchase through usage guidance,” explains Jeremy Pounder, Futures Director at Mindshare UK

One example of how it is possible for innovative companies to bring their customers the best of both worlds by creating Omnichannel experiences is Canadian start-up StickerYou which offers customized, die-cut stickers online, but also maintains a physical shop where customers can touch and feel the merchandise.

“The broader trend in retail, particularly among millennials, is a shift in focus from products toward experiences. For this reason, many customers still choose to visit a physical shop even if it may be more convenient to order the item online, explains StickerYou Founder and President, Andrew Witkin. “For retailers, this presents an opportunity to leverage technology to literally augment the value of their products for their customers,” he concludes.

Meeting Virtually

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic became the catalyst for what we now know as a socially distanced “new normal,” technology had been pushing us towards having more of our interactions in virtual environments.

From virtual live comedy shows to professional poker tournaments, people had started to not only accept the premise of hosting their familiar interactions and experiences in immersive virtual worlds.

Technology has been pushing us towards having more of our interactions in virtual environments
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Given the continuation of the pandemic, however, we have seen most events in the global conference calendar going virtual in some way or another, including one of the biggest highlights in the tech circuit – South by Southwest (SXSW) which is held in Austin, Texas in March.

SXSW Online 2021 included a variety of online meetings, sessions, musical performances, and many attempts at virtually recreating the interactive experience of SXSW.

As Tech Trends correspondent Laura Kobylecky reports, the world of virtual Austin exists within VRChat, an online, virtual reality, social platform which added a layer of immersion and interactivity to this year’s online conference and left her feeling as if she’d really attended the event.

Tech Trends’  Consultancy services offer support for companies looking to enhance their brand’s digital strategy with immersive and emerging technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a technology journalist, communications consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

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A Deloitte survey revealed that most companies – a staggering 90 percent of those approached by the research and consultancy firm – consider cognitive technologies to be of crucial strategic importance, and over 80 percent of those were either already using it on some level or planning to implement it in the near future.

That is hardly surprising considering the dramatic efficiency savings that adoption can bring. According to Bill Eggers, executive director of Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights, in the U.S. alone, federal employees spend about 4.3 billion hours per year on a variety of mundane tasks such as recording information and handling. He estimates that currently available AI and robotic process automation could free up about 1.3 billion of those hours by automating such tasks, effectively enabling quantum leaps in productivity as AI allows institutions to anticipate rather than merely react to problems after they occur.

Yet in spite of its pervasiveness, and the fact that it has been around for many decades, AI still falls, paradoxically, in the “emerging technology” category. One that constantly presents new facets and developments that bring us ever closer to the worlds imagined by the likes of Isaac Asimov.

And what also emerges as such technologies mature are sub-categories that address their more specific applications, to the point where it makes as little sense to refer to AI as a single entity as it would to bundle all computers into one homogenous category.

So we turned to industry stakeholders for help in defining three of these major branches of AI-assisted, augmented, and autonomous intelligence – and to provide some practical examples to help us understand their current (and future) applications.

Assisted Intelligence

Assisted Intelligence is a basic level of AI that primarily consists of automating repetitive and mundane tasks and procedures. This – at least in theory – frees up humans to perform more complex and creative assignments, enabling efficiency savings by allowing paid employees to focus on high-value tasks that are not so easily automated.

In order to work well, assisted intelligence requires clearly defined input and output parameters, and is most useful in applications such as monitoring and producing alerts and directions, which can then be checked by an actual person. Typical applications for this type of AI include GPS navigation programs and manufacturing robots.

Augmented Intelligence

Augmented intelligence, as the name suggests, augments and supports – rather than replaces – human intelligence, yet it is more complex and versatile than the basic assisted AI we described above.

This is a symbiotic relationship where humans and machines ideally learn from one another and work collaboratively by layering machine learning over existing human systems to accelerate and improve accuracy of those human-led processes. In other words, it enables us, at least in theory, to make better and faster decisions than we would otherwise.

Among the models included under this umbrella are machine learning, natural language processing, image recognition and neural networks, with typical use cases encompassing healthcare, public safety, and fraud detection.

Autonomous Intelligence

Autonomous intelligence allows machines, bots and systems to act independently of human intervention. This is the most complex form of AI not only in terms of the technology itself and its implementation and effectiveness but of the moral implications of effectively handing over decision-making to machines. What accountability frameworks are needed if we are indeed to pursue that path? It is, quite simply, the fascinating and scary realm of science fiction, except that reality is rapidly catching up, and it remains to be seen whether the dystopian visions presented in The Matrix or Terminator franchises will come to life in some form.

“What happens when humans cannot establish all the constraints, boundaries, and limits, because of our lack of vision and imperfections as human beings?” asks Lucas Werthein, Co-founder and Head of Technology at Design Innovation firm Cactus. “Machines can go through all potential scenarios in seconds, but we as humans cannot necessarily create boundaries for things we don’t know,” he explains, citing a fascinating study which demonstrated how AI is capable of adapting in ways which can be utterly baffling to humans.

An AI Spectrum?

These definitions essentially help us envisage the different levels of interaction between humans and machines. They answer the question of how much autonomy and agency does (or should) AI have.

Yet although defining categories is helpful on some levels, the lines between them are not usually well defined, nor do they remain static. It is perhaps more appropriate therefore, to think of them as a spectrum or continuum rather than attempting to pigeonhole use cases into one category or another.

Josh Browning, machine-learning architect at AMP Robotics, agrees that it may be more accurate to view these categories in terms of progression. “AI often starts in the simplest phases (assisted) and progresses to a fully autonomous phase. This is more of a spectrum, rather than individual examples that fit into each category. For example, consider spam filtering. The initial application will be simple and rules-based: filter emails as spam if they have all capitalized titles, many misspelled words, etc. As data is collected, it moves into the range of augmented intelligence: the application can make reasonable decisions on its own, but requires human feedback to continue to learn. Once it has achieved a certain level of performance, it may be moved into the final category of being fully autonomous,” he concludes.

The usefulness of establishing a common lexicon for technologies like AI is that it enables us to have more constructive conversations about them, and perhaps be better equipped to deal with the hurdles and pitfalls along the way.

As Mike Nager, Business Development Manager at Festo Didactic, says, the path forward is not likely to be hindered by technological progress, but rather by how well society accepts further non-human interactions and how the regulations and laws keep up, to both allow beneficial technologies to flourish while safeguarding human life and privacy.

And it is that human touch that we must not lose sight of, according to Benjamin Cox, Director of Product Marketing at H2O.ai.

“By keeping humans in the loop, companies can better determine the level of automation and augmentation they need and control the ultimate effect of AI on their workforce. As a result, enterprises can massively mitigate their risk and develop a deeper understanding of what types of situations may be the most challenging for their AI deployments and machine learning applications,” he concludes.

This article was originally published in Futurithmic

A @DeloitteInsight survey revealed 90% of respondents consider cognitive technologies to be of crucial strategic importance.
Learn more about the different forms of #AI: https://t.co/HHuhwH8NsL pic.twitter.com/Z22UKZgCvJ

— Futurithmic (@futurithmic) September 14, 2020

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals, and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a XR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post The Many Flavours of Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Tech Trends.

Why would we want to build a parallel reality populated by digital twins?

Sure, it sounds cool, yet this “virtual twinning” effectively extends the possibilities of both the “world of atoms and the world of bits“ as HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman eloquently put it in a TED talk which has been viewed over 3.5 million times.

There is already an entire ecosystem emerging around the challenges of sensing, mapping, and replicating objects from the real world into the digital – and vice-versa
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This is not some distant blue-sky thinking. There is already an entire ecosystem emerging around the challenges of sensing, mapping, and replicating objects from the real world into the digital – and vice-versa. In fact, one of the main applications of the 5G connectivity infrastructure rollout will be to mirror physical objects and environments digitally in real-time. That, in turn, would enable XR (extended reality) applications to be built which bring quantifiable value to users.

5G applications that consumers will “get”

“I don’t think the average person really comes close to realizing just how much of a quantum leap we’re talking about,” says Deeyook CEO Gideon Rottem. “They think it will be faster, but literally it will enable things that will make what we have now pale in comparison,” he adds.

Rottem’s Israel-based company has developed a self-learning tracking solution that measures the angles of wireless transmissions – tapping into the existing 1.7 billion wireless access points that already exist globally – to determine positioning of employees, items and assets (within 10 cm) without tapping into a company’s IT network and without invasive personal tracking or data capturing.

These mapping technologies are going to interact with the cloud differently, as it no longer becomes necessary to upload images in order to understand what the user is standing in front of. According to Rottem, once we achieve accurate positioning, we can also create accurate virtual worlds (largely automatically) so the integration between the physical and the digital can become seamless.

These mapping technologies are going to interact with the cloud differently, as it no longer becomes necessary to upload images in order to understand what the user is standing in front of
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A newly released report by research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics revealed that although consumers are intrigued by 5G, speed on its own is not enough to sell them on the idea of upgrading. This is partly because it is difficult to grasp what it will enable them to do. CSPs will need to solve existing pain-points and entice customers with new experiences.

In practical terms, spatial mapping technologies are crucial in enabling the type of integrated applications that not only address practical customer needs but also create these “wow” factors that will prompt mass adoption of 5G. The above research found that what got consumers most excited about the prospect were immersive experiences such as holographic conversations and XR field training.

A newly released report by research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics revealed that although consumers are intrigued by 5G, speed on its own is not enough to sell them on the idea of upgrading
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It’s not a surprise, therefore, to see many companies in the connectivity space embracing immersive technology and content as they seek to bridge this “imagination gap”.

An example of a CSP doing just that is UK mobile giant Three, which recently released a highly produced tongue-in-cheek advert which shows us what a 5G-enabled holographic future could look like.

“Hold on to your crumpets,” says Three in their recent 5G ads.

Many companies in the connectivity space embracing immersive technology and content as they seek to bridge the consumer imagination gap
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Moetsi is a company working to build the spatial mapping infrastructure to make that future happen by offering “sensor stream processing on the edge.” This effectively boils down to processing vast amounts of data in real-time and delivering it in a format that makes sense and is relevant to the context of where it is being applied.

We will see an explosion of XR applications that provide immense value industry and enterprise, as well as mind-blowing experiences for individual consumers
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To illustrate how an application could leverage this, Moetsi co-founder Adam Polak gives an example of someone about to cross a street getting alerted that the car moving towards them isn’t slowing down for the red light. At that point, all our decisions would potentially become augmented and informed by tapping into these edge-processed datastreams, fundamentally changing our relationship with technology, the world around us, and one another.

3D mapping in arts and entertainment

There are use cases already emerging of spatial mapping being applied to create, transform, and augment art. Award-winning immersive content studio HEAVY has partnered with the Marriott hotel group to build a “secret digital garden” at the JW Marriott Anaheim Resort which was  due to open in April. The project leveraged mapping technology from 6D.ai, a company that set out to build  “a 3D map of the world” and has since been acquired by Niantic, the makers of Pokémon GO.

This feature of persistence is key to understanding the value these real-time mapping technologies bring to such experiences. In this case, HEAVY produced a fine art installation blending physical, custom-made sculptures with augmented reality elements to create a serene space where resort guests and visitors can plant their own fantastical trees while enjoying playing among digital caterpillars and butterflies.

There are use cases already emerging of spatial mapping being applied to create, transform, and augment art
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What makes the zen-like experience more than a bit of fun, however, is the narrative backdrop for the magical plant’s evolution from sapling to tree. By performing the digital meditations, each guest will figuratively transform into a different kind of tree, personalized around their choices, which can then be further nurtured over time like a flora version of Tamagotchi. This means that the way users interact with and nurture their trees will affect how it develops, and consequently what type of experience each person generates and enjoys.

How will this technology come to life?

Improving the speed at which connected devices can stream information to an authoritative server will be a crucial piece of that puzzle according to Polak, as improvements in networking such as 5G will help reduce the latency and increase the amount of sensors that can communicate in a local area, something that the current generation of networking infrastructure simply cannot cope with.

“The engineering challenge is enormous: being able to interpret any sensor data correctly in a manner that can be used by application developers to provide value to end-users, basically not only seeing, but understanding anything a device can sense in the world,” Polak adds.”

So, are we there yet? Well, yes and no. A lot of this technology already exists but it is hampered by the fact that nearly every XR developer has to roll out their own solutions to build cross-platform applications that can be shared with all users.

According to Polak, initiatives like OpenXR are addressing the problem of having to build separate implementations for ARKit, ARCore, and MRTK (Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Toolkit) by enabling developers to access XR device data through a single interface.

A lot of this technology already exists but it is hampered by the fact that nearly every XR developer has to roll out their own solutions to build cross-platform applications that can be shared with all users
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Once we arrive at that convergence of 5G connectivity and the ability to interact with digitized objects in platform-agnostic experiences that are embedded in our own physical reality, our world as we know it will never be the same. We will see an explosion of XR applications that provide immense value industry and enterprise, as well as mind-blowing experiences for individual consumers.

So while wrapping your head around the concept of building a “Mirror World” might be difficult at first, once it clicks into place we’re likely to wonder how we ever settled for such an ordinary reality in the first place.

This article was originally published on Futurithmic

#SpatialMapping technologies are crucial in enabling the type of integrated applications that not only address practical customer needs but also create these WOW factors that will prompt mass adoption of #5G. https://t.co/2wC9FhIFdq pic.twitter.com/vnsLln2VPY

— Futurithmic (@futurithmic) May 1, 2020

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals, and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a XR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Digitizing our Existence appeared first on Tech Trends.

I spent many years working with start-ups and large corporations, and invariably they all spent a large proportion of their budgets getting their message across to consumers and other businesses.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has advanced significantly in recent years, becoming much more sophisticated
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Yet while there is no doubt that external communications are important, I found that the most successful companies were, in fact, the ones which dedicated just as much time, effort, and resources (if not more) to get their internal communications right.

Because it’s all well and good projecting the right image to the outside world, but if your messaging is not consistent internally, in other words, if your mission is not clear to your own team, you have very little chance of it ringing true to those outside it.

One of my favorite quotes from Richard Branson really sums it up:

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Building a cohesive and inclusive corporate culture is challenging for any company, but those challenges are exacerbated even further in an age where many employees work remotely, often in different time zones.

With the right NPL tools, interactions can be turned into meaningful engagement at scale
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It might seem counter-intuitive, but where it comes to fostering better communication channels amongst humans, machines can be our most powerful allies. With technologies such as Artificial Intelligence – in particular, Natural Language Processing (NLP) – it is possible to enable better communication without having to over-stretch resources by dedicating people to maintaining those channels manually.

It’s all well and good projecting the right image to the outside world, but if your mission is not clear to your own team, you have very little chance of it ringing true to those outside it
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NLP has advanced significantly in recent years, becoming an increasingly sophisticated tool in discerning syntax (the arrangement of words in a logical manner) and semantics (referring to the contextual meaning of words), able to more accurately gauge human sentiment and leverage it appropriately. It can be used to bridge Top-Down Communication in Organizations and foster a better employee-employer relationship by ensuring that the employees receive all the relevant messages that they require, whether it is through regular email messaging or through highlighting their accomplishments.

“ It is a well-known fact that many companies fail to pass down relevant messages to their employees making them feel unwanted and disengaged,” said Gaurav Bhattacharya and Saumya Bhatnagar Co-founders of Involvesoft, a platform that enables companies to improve employee engagement through the use of NLP. He stresses that nowadays it is possible for chatbots to be highly effective in establishing a meaningful connection with an employee, understanding their strengths and weaknesses and helping them where needed.

Involvesoft provides its users with an Instagram-like feed that allows employees to read the latest news and announcements, spotlight stories, and take surveys and communicate with members of their community, which in turn improves top-down communication as the messages reach all the employees through the platform.

“Whereas an employee might be reluctant to ask a colleague or supervisor about something for which they feel they might get judged, a chatbot could help bridge that gap,” says Bhattacharya, adding that many times an employee will refrain from asking an important question because they are worried about how friends or colleagues might judge them, and this has a significantly negative impact on productivity levels, not least because failing to ask a question might mean a mistake is repeated without that person even realizing it.

As the CEO of the company, Bhattacharya very much practices what he preaches, since his own company also leverages NLP to make employees happy and successful by helping others. The Involvesoft platform helps companies and their employees to give back to the community by creating personalized giving and volunteering opportunities.

Involvesoft leverages NLP to make employees happy and successful by helping others
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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a hugely successful tool in building a cohesive company culture, often much more so than perks and personal rewards. In fact, Bhattacharya explains that such initiatives have been shown to improve company culture and team collaboration by up to 81% reducing turnover by as much as 30%.

NLP can thus create a self-learning virtuous circle, whereby every conversation, every interaction, and every good deed helps to evolve both humans and algorithms into a better platform. The information and insights gathered through this constant feedback loop are constantly deployed in optimization across the board within an organization: From user experience to consumer outreach, advertising and HR.

Whereas an employee might be reluctant to ask a colleague or supervisor about something for which they feel they might get judged, a chatbot could help bridge that gap
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With the right NPL tools, interactions can, therefore, be turned into meaningful engagement at scale, and provide a veritable goldmine of information for human resources and marketing teams alike, improving not only the work environment but also the product. It’s a win-win!

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a XR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Communicating In the Age of Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Tech Trends.

3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help Your Business.

AI can help you to easily analyze every single piece of information produced digitally by any competitor; anything from online content, social media posts and written content to videos uploaded.
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Outstanding developments in technology mean that new and existing businesses have access to new ways of running and developing their companies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just one example of the breakthroughs in helpful and immersive technology; other examples include Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

With so many options out there, it can sometimes be difficult to know how specific technology can help your business in the best way; so here are 3 ways Artificial Intelligence can help.

Improve Your Customer Relationship Management

Good management of your customer data is imperative for the smooth running of your business. An adept CRM system is able to gather data across all the relevant channels, such as email, social media, and phone communication, in order to present you with the best way to improve the overall sales process.

You can now access CRM systems which use Artificial Intelligence to better help the process, with AI analyzing all customer feedback from all communication outlets and being able to adjust marketing strategies to better suit the information gathered.

This means that AI can provide relevant insights into customer activity and feedback, meaning you can optimize your entire sales process for the better, thanks to AI.

Good management of customer data is imperative for the smooth running of your business
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Use a Chatbot For Your Website

You’ve undoubtedly had experience with a chatbot before, they are commonly found on websites in the form of a small pop-up box in the corner of the screen asking if you need any help.

Artificial Intelligence can be used as a robotic customer service tool, programmed to help with any customer questions when visitors are exploring your website. It’s a very helpful tool, as it means customer communication is promptly initiated, and that there is always a customer service representative available from your business, 24 hours a day – even if that rep is robotic.

AI helps you better track the activity of your competitors and see exactly what they are doing, at any time
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This is a particularly effective option for those businesses which are just starting out or have a very small team, meaning a sales team might not have been established yet; an AI chatbot can help fill in the gap in human employees.

If you’re looking to further your understanding of AI in order to better implement it into your business or future career, you can fulfill a Masters in electrical and computer engineering online, which focuses on the future development of technology such as AI robotics.

A CRM system is able to gather data across all the relevant channels, such as email, social media, and phone
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Gather Relevant Research on Your Competitors

Competitor research is a primary focus and ongoing process for any business, especially those start-ups which are new to the market. However, competitor research can be very time-consuming and often difficult to navigate; and that’s where Artificial Intelligence comes in.

AI can help you to easily analyze every single piece of information produced digitally by any competitor; anything from online content, social media posts and written content to videos uploaded. AI also helps consolidate all this feedback into an easy-to-navigate report. AI helps you better track the activity of your competitors and see exactly what they are doing, at any time.

Artificial Intelligence can be used as a robotic customer service tool
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Education is changing faster than ever, with new ideas, technologies and demands constantly emerging. As Artificial Intelligence continues to automate aspects and functions of various jobs, or even eliminate traditional roles altogether, different subjects and skills will be in demand or even become essential in the performance of future jobs.

The digital economy will create more roles that require a combination of technical, interpersonal and creative skills
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Identifying what these are, and making them accessible to students – regardless of their social and economic background or geographical location – is a monumental challenge that can only be overcome by making full use of technology.

Creative Skills for a Digital Economy

The digital economy will create more roles that require a combination of technical, interpersonal and creative skills, and building the foundation for this begins with studying a very broad range of subjects in school.

Breadth of understanding is often as important as depth of knowledge
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The argument for broadening the scope of what merits inclusion in the curriculum is simple yet compelling; nowadays most of us have access to the world’s knowledge via the supercomputers – i.e. smartphones – that we carry around in our pockets, yet these mountains of data are not valuable in isolation. It is the ability to creatively and proactively extract actionable insights from data – and to execute effectively on these – that will become invaluable in the digital economy jobs being created now, and for those which will be created in future.

“Breadth of understanding is often as important as depth of knowledge. Business leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs now need fluency in a broad range of subjects, and these go far beyond what has traditionally been taught at school and universities,” says John Ingram, CEO of Pamoja Education.

In order to thrive in the digital age, he argues that workers must equip themselves with a range of modular skills including areas such as coding and engineering, all the way through to language skills, sales, networking, marketing, design, and even social media influencing. This is effectively the only approach which makes sense in a world where project-based work will become ever more prevalent, and clearly delineated job titles are likely to be eliminated altogether. Fluid and flexible skillsets, coupled with an equally elastic approach, will be essential for the professional survival kit of professionals entering the workforce in the next few decades.

If we equip our young people with modular skills we will maximize their chances of not only weathering the inevitable disruption, but of thriving in it.
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Tackling the Opportunity Gap

Paradoxically, however, in spite of the fact that creative skills are an essential part of building the next generation’s professional profile, arts and creative subjects seem to be on the decline. A Recent Edge Foundation report found that in the last decade GCSE entries in creative subjects have fallen by 20%. This might be due to the additional budgetary and logistics pressures faced by schools in countries like the United Kingdom, where teacher numbers are dwindling. Schools faced with difficult choices often have to prioritize their resources, and the number and quality of specialist subjects on offer is often the first casualty. Yet Ingram believes that this is an area where technology can play an important role, helping to bridge the gap between limited resources on the one hand, and greater learning demands on the other:

“There’s no substitute for classroom teaching, but while schools struggle to find the staff to teach a full range of subjects, we should be exploring the technologies that can allow students to take courses they’d otherwise have to miss out on. Even when schools are well resourced and offer a good range of subjects, there are still often more niche subjects such as Film Studies they cannot cover which could otherwise allow students to follow their passions, stretch themselves, and grow as individuals.”Ingram explains.

So even though most education experts agree that face-to-face teaching cannot – and should not – be altogether replaced by tech-based alternatives, it is literally impossible to square the that circle without integrating technology into long-term strategies for delivering learning outcomes. In practice this means that while it isn’t feasible for schools to maintain the capacity on site to deliver every niche subject that students might want to study, they will now be able to do so.

It is the ability to creatively and proactively extract actionable insights from data – and to execute effectively on these – that will become invaluable in the digital economy
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Making Teaching Resources Go Further with Technology

“Having offered IB courses online to schools across the world for over a decade,we’ve found that online learning can broaden pupils’ digital and collaborative skills, encouraging them to carry out research, co-ordinate group work and discuss material in an online community,” continues Ingram.

Indeed, research has shown that these features benefit students’ wider education by encouraging them to take ownership of their learning process, helping prepare them for their university careers where they’ll need to study independently. That proactive mind-set then ideally carries through to the approach that those pupils will adopt in the workplace, collating and leveraging information towards accomplishing strategic tasks, projects and goals.

The next few years will mark an exponential disruptive shift towards automation, and that will present a threat to new and existing professionals across a wide range of industries
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At its heart, education is about opportunity, and online learning can potentially make crucial opportunities available to those who would not normally have access to them. This is why it is crucial that educators see technology not as a threat, but as a tool for enhancing their own pedagogical capacity.

The next few years will mark an exponential disruptive shift towards automation, and that will present a threat to new and existing professionals across a wide range of industries. Yet if we equip our young people with modular skills by enabling them to pursue a broad range of creative interests from early schooling onwards, we will maximize their chances of not only weathering this inevitable disruption, but of thriving in it.

At its heart, education is about opportunity, and online learning can potentially make crucial opportunities available to those who would not normally have access to them
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This article was originally published on IDG

Can creative #edtech help #teachers prepare #students for jobs in the #digital #economy? https://t.co/sASWwWjBrw @alicebonasio @IDGCN @CIOonline

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Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for all the latest curated immersive news.

The post Broadening Access to the Jobs of the Future appeared first on Tech Trends.

The central challenge for companies dealing with large amounts of data is a digitisation strategy. Here it comes to artificial intelligence and semantic technologies. The integration of these megatrends into enterprise processes and workflows will be the focus one of the subjects of the SEMANTiCS 2019, which takes place from 9 to 12 September in Karlsruhe, where top speakers from industry and academia will explore how AI systems can help businesses succeed in the digital age.

The central challenge for companies dealing with large amounts of data is having an effective digitisation strategy
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“Explainable AI is the is the key to progress and acceptance of AI,” says SEMANTICS 2019 General Chair Harald Sack. Explainability can be important in some applications, in particular, when AI is applied to humans. In other applications, it does not play any significant role. Some argue that our brain first acts and then tries to explain why it acted in a particular way, maybe mostly for communication purposes, to justify action and to convince others.

In lectures, panels and workshops numerous enterprise implementation projects and use cases will be presented which will help to bridge that gap between the complex concepts that underpin AI and the practical applications that concretely benefit businesses.

Topics include process optimization and automation, information logistics and data management as well as business development and customer relationship management. In community events, international high-tech experts will also discuss the future and significance of artificial intelligence in a broader context.

Explainable AI is the is the key to progress and acceptance of AI
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One of the core technologies for reducing complexity in business processes are Knowledge Graphs
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The keynotes will be held by prominent experts from the US and Europe, among them Willem Manders, Head of Knowledge Management at Shell, Michel Dumontier, Professor of Data Science at Maastricht University, Valentina Presutti, researcher at the Semantic Technology Laboratory of the National Research Council (CNR) in Rome and Michael J. Sullivan, Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Oracle.

One of the core technologies for reducing complexity in business processes are Knowledge Graphs.

“Those who stay on their islands will fall back. This is currently the case with a large part of the data which is kept in silos,” says Andreas Blumauer, managing director and founder of the Semantic Web Company, which organizes the conference alongside FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, Fachhochschule St. Pölten, and the Universities of Leipzig and Amsterdam.

“For every knowledge worker, it is a highly time-consuming task to identify, connect, understand, and interpret the right dots and information pieces. SEMANTiCS 2019 wants to show IT decision makers how companies can develop their own Knowledge Graphs along the whole Linked Data Life Cycle, to support decision and process augmentation based on that linked data,” adds Blumauer.

For Volker Tresp, Distinguished Research Scientist at Siemens, the

biggest challenges ahead when it comes to enterprises employing Machine Learning, Autonomous Systems and AI, is coming up with an effective business model that works for that individual company. In other words, there is no one-size-fits-all approach where it comes to leveraging Artificial Intelligence in your own business.

Those who stay on their islands will fall back. This is currently the case with many companies where a large part of their data is kept in silos
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In the coming years we need to build a strong academic basis for deep learning and machine learning in Europe
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“Machine Learning is a very strong and very robust technology. But this does not mean that each company knows how to transfer this success into a business. Currently, no company, whose business is on the internet, can do without AI. If it turns out that your company has an AI business, then you might have to drastically change the culture in your company. You can only be successful if you manage to hire the best talent and if you change the culture in your company so that it values, appreciates and listens to that talent.”

One example of an area where correct AI implementation can have a huge efficiency impact is Healthcare. Hospitals generate huge amounts of data each day, and patients can benefit from the structuring of that data into the Knowledge Graphs mentioned above.

“AI applications in image analysis have already been used for more than 5 years. Siemens Healthineers have been doing pioneering work and are working on many future use cases,” explains Tresp.

Volker Tresp, Distinguished Research Scientist at Siemens

“I am completely convinced that knowledge graphs will become more important. As in the medical area, most domains consist of unstructured data (sensory data, images, …) and structured data (diagnosis, procedures, lab results, blood counts). Roughly speaking structured data is the domain of the knowledge graph and unstructured data is the domain of deep learning. A challenge is to have both talk to one another. That is what we are working on!”

According to Tresp, Deep Learning (DL) was the reason for the recent breakthroughs in AI and it will continue to be the basis for the progress for the next years to come.

“DL builds on available labeled data, new algorithms, computational power, and an incredible community. Deep Learning will interact more strongly with other approaches and we will see more hybrid approaches. For example, we and other research groups combine knowledge graphs with machine learning and deep learning. I am also convinced that the link to cognition will become stronger: one can learn a lot from the organizational structure of the brain. We as humans can manipulate symbols and this will also become more relevant for AI. But we have to go new ways and not warm up old ones. As I like to say: AI is not only Machine Learning, but without Machine Learning there is no AI. In the coming years we need to build a strong academic basis for deep learning and machine learning in Europe and be open to new ideas that can contribute,” he concludes.

No company, whose business is on the internet, can do without AI
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Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for the latest curated immersive news.  

The post What is Your AI Digitisation Strategy? appeared first on Tech Trends.

In a beautifully kitted out room in central Paris, Colin Fillaudeau is teaching a group of youngsters how to build in Mixed Reality.

Even though my French is far from perfect and I’m unfamiliar with the program he’s using, I’m able to follow along quite well, and the same is certainly true for the 14 year olds in the room, who have come here for the day from a deprived area on the outskirts of Paris.

This room – which resembles an open-plan tech start-up office with its multiple screens, robots, VR headsets and Minecraft plush toys and LEGO – and the 3D design concepts they are learning, literally represent a gateway into another world for these students.

This room represents a gateway into another world for these students #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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It is often said that in order to address the world’s chronic digital skills problem we need to address an endemic gap in access and opportunity rather than talent or skills. The truth of that becomes abundantly clear when you observe the eagerness and engagement with which these students embrace the opportunity extended to them by such initiatives.

Microsoft's immersive classroom sits within the company’s French Headquarters in Paris #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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Favreau is a Learning Consultant working with Microsoft, and this “immersive classroom” sits within the company’s French Headquarters. It is open for schools to experiment with incorporating digital tools in learning, and has facilitated the delivery of more than 60 free workshops for over 1000 students since opening in 2018.

These digital tools, they’re keen to emphasize, are not just the company’s own, as only about 20% of the tech in the room is Microsoft’s.

The class I was observing was called 3D conception & Mixed Reality, and it incorporates Paint 3D, HoloLens and other Mixed Reality headsets, and 3D printing. Other activities also explore coding and robotics using tools such as Minecraft and Artificial intelligence, where students get to build their own chatbot.

The immersive classroom is open for schools to experiment with incorporating digital tools in learning, and has facilitated the delivery of more than 60 free workshops for over 1000 students since opening in 2018 #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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The class I was observing was called 3D conception & Mixed Reality #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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As the market for immersive technology continues to grow in the coming years, the already existing issues around a shortage of creative and skilled tech talent is only going to be compounded unless we start building purposeful learning pipelines that start teaching students like the ones I met in Paris not only the relevant skills, but the right mindset.

What it comes down to is that it’s very much in the interest of companies like Microsoft to foster such initiatives, as they are reliant on building and expanding that talent pipeline for their future survival #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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To create compelling content in a fast-evolving new medium such as Mixed Reality, you need what’s called a “growth mindset” that builds grit and a tolerance for failure. This does not mean ignoring your mistakes or being blind to shortcomings, but recognizing that success is incremental, and that iterating and improving your approach is an essential part of building a successful product. That means finding out what doesn’t work can be as (or more) valuable than finding out what does.

This broader trend is sometimes also referred to as Social Emotional Learning – an emphasis on the whole package of preparing a human being for work and society. Looking around at a room where young people who were handling these tools for the first time managed to produce interesting and workable content, it’s clear that the approach is one that is much more suitable for getting them ready to tackle the challenges of a modern workplace than traditional schooling.

To create compelling content in a fast-evolving new medium such as Mixed Reality, you need to cultivate a growth mindset #E2 #MicrosoftEDU
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What it comes down to is that it’s very much in the interest of companies like Microsoft to foster such initiatives, as they are reliant on building and expanding that talent pipeline for their future survival. But in doing so they can also help to address many of the issues around access and inequality that have long plagued the tech industry, even if it’s just because – as a CEO once told me at a conference – “there just aren’t enough white guys in the world to do all these jobs.”

This article originally appeared on The Next Web

Stepping into the immersive classroom https://t.co/j82tCZOPjF

— TNWRSS (@tnwrss) April 3, 2019

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Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for all the latest curated immersive news.  

The post The Mixed Reality Classroom appeared first on Tech Trends.

“It’s pretty common knowledge that body language plays a big role in how we communicate in real-life, and the fact is that behavioral studies have been validating the correlation between the body and mind for decades.” explains Amir Bozorgzadeh, Cofounder and CEO at Virtuleap. “In the setting of spatial computing, the whole game elevates as all of our intuitions about non-verbal expression are suddenly given a voice.”

Virtuleap is a Lisbon-based startup, a Boost VC Tribe 11 company and a member of the CMS equIP startup program.They initially began developing their API to cater towards accessibility needs, broadening the user base of immersive content adapting for inclusiveness and maximum user comfort, like an increase of color contrast or adjustment of font size through individual user preferences.

With machine learning, the mathematical models will become more accurate over time
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The @Virtuleap API will be able to anticipate the profile of an anonymous user based on their behavioral cues by calculating probabilities on their likely psychographic and demographic profile
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That human-centric inclusive angle gradually evolved into incorporating scientific approaches such as neuropsychology and fractal analysis, which has now become what the team considers to be the first native metrics for human-centric research, design, and marketing for the spatial computing era.

The team leveraged modern neuroscience research to create mathematical models that infer emotional states based on your subliminal and unconscious body postures, gestures, and motion in immersive environments. For the next phase of development, they are now looking to stress-test the algorithms by feeding the machine learning with data from a consumer-facing app. The result is the “Attention Lab” – an Oculus Go “edutainment” app which has just been launched in beta – featuring a series of games and challenges that track user interaction.

Virtuleap's human-centric inclusive angle evolved into incorporating scientific approaches such as neuropsychology and fractal analysis
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@Virtuleap leverages modern neuroscience research to create mathematical models that infer emotional states based on subliminal and unconscious body postures, gestures, and motion in immersive environments
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The @Virtuleap concept is a mix of popular VR apps like Valve’s The Lab and Job Simulator and non-VR games like Lumosity and Cognifit
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“While players get to enjoy challenging their cognitive abilities, such as memory and concentration, the real benefit of the Attention Lab is access to an unprecedented depth of self-knowledge and psychographics that is enabled thanks to the new data points captured by spatial computing devices.”

With machine learning, the mathematical models will become more accurate over time by allowing the API to track and map physical, physiological and psychological “segmentation” profiles in order to build a database that can generate predictive analytics. For example, the API will be able to anticipate the profile of an anonymous user based on their behavioral cues by calculating probabilities on their likely psychographic and demographic profile.

The real benefit of the Attention Lab is access to an unprecedented depth of self-knowledge and psychographics that is enabled thanks to the new data points captured by spatial computing devices
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“If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then our machine learning calculates the probability of how likely that otherwise anonymous user is a duck.” explains Roland Dubois, Cofounder and CXO at Virtuleap. “Everything we capture in the form of meaningful insights would otherwise require a traditional survey or user interview in order to capture.”

While players get to enjoy challenging their cognitive abilities, such as memory and concentration, the real benefit of the app is access to an unprecedented depth of self-knowledge.

“Players will get to learn about how their brains work and all sorts of insights about their neuroscience, not just about themselves specifically, but also in how it relates to the neuroscience of their friends and the community at large.” said Dubois. “Each experience will present different famous experiments that will, in turn, allow them to learn about how they react and respond in different situations. Insights that might just blow their minds.”

The Attention Lab is currently featured on the Kaleidoscope VR platform and is set to launch on the Oculus Store by Q2 2019. In parallel, the API will be made publicly available on an online platform later in the year. Virtuleap is currently accepting pilot campaigns with brands and companies in both the consumer and enterprise sectors in order to create what they are calling “template models” that will allow their biometric algorithms to be relevant for content across a range of different categories.

This article was originally featured on VRScout

The XR Attention Lab Takes Body Language To A Whole New Level via @alicebonasio https://t.co/Pa9AHYngA0 pic.twitter.com/rfKoTzzQZN

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Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for all the latest curated immersive news.  

The post Interpreting Body Language With XR appeared first on Tech Trends.