But this does not mean that Salesforce Classic is less useful or obsolete. If you are a Classic user, you can keep leveraging its extensive capabilities for better business management. In this blog, we will discuss the main differences between the two platforms to help you decide if you need Salesforce Lightning Migration at the moment or not. 

Introduction to Salesforce Classic and Lightning

Classic remained the de-facto UI of Salesforce for many years. However, due to its low-resolution graphical elements, lack of updates, text-centricity, and space management issues, it has become somewhat outdated.  While it still retains great automation, analytics, and reporting capabilities, new users have a tough time navigating through Salesforce Classic.

Lightning, on the other hand, is a next-gen reimagined user interface with better speed and additional features that make it easier to navigate or engage users. Apart from improved reporting, automation, and customization capabilities, Lightning also offers rapid app development using Lightning App Builder and integration of AppExchange applications with little to no difficulty.

4 Key Differences Between Salesforce Classic and Lightning:

1. User Interface and Experience

The user interface is the biggest criterion when it comes to choosing between Classic and Lightning. Salesforce Lightning contains drag-drop functionality that makes dashboard creation and custom app development much easier compared to Classic where developers have to customize Visualforce code now and then. However, this does not mean, you won’t need Visualforce developers. Only their need shall be reduced as many of these customizations can be carried out by your in-house or remote Salesforce administrator.

2. Security Capabilities

When you choose Salesforce Lightning, you get access to enhanced security features that are not available in Classic. For instance, Lighting offers you LockerService functionality which prevents Lightning components from interacting with one another, safeguarding the platform from malicious data access or breach attempts. Permissions also work differently in Salesforce Lightning as the platform does not allow users to switch assurance levels from standard to high during sessions. For that, users have to log out and sign in again with authentication at a higher level. So, while both platforms have decent security standards, Lighting has a better data safeguarding mechanism.

3. Decision Making via Analytics

Besides a strong UI and security framework, Salesforce Lightning also offers Einstein Wave Analytics ” a feature missing in Salesforce Classic. Einstein gathers data from the Salesforce database and updates reports on an automated basis. You also get timely recommendations from Einstein which can be helpful in proactive decision-making related to campaigns. With the Einstein Analytics feature, users can create graphs, charts, and lists and view their dashboard(s) for data-driven decision-making. If your team is dependent on campaigns, quick decisions, and customer-centric, we would suggest a migration to Lightning.

4. Customization Capability

Customization in Salesforce Classic is difficult as the changes have to be done directly in Visualforce code. However, in Lightning, you can customize code, retain app logic, and build custom layouts, and dashboards without disrupting workflow. If you are a Classic CRM user and want to bridge the gap in your processes with extensive customization, Salesforce Lightning Migration can offer you the desired customization capability.

Ready to Embrace Lightning Platform?

While both Classic and Lightning offer great operations management capabilities, Salesforce Classic has certain limitations, especially in areas of UI, scalability, customization, and updates. Considering Salesforce’s recent move of enabling Lightning Experience as the default UI for all users and offering little to no updates on Classic, it’s high time businesses prepare to bridge their CRM gaps by migrating to Salesforce Lightning. By embracing Lightning, you can overcome issues related to speed, navigation, analytics, customization, data silos, and security and make optimum use of your Salesforce licenses.

The post Salesforce Classic vs Lightning: Major Differences to Look at Before Opting for Migration appeared first on Datafloq.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Tech Journal. My name is Mark van Rijmenam, and I am The Digital Speaker.

Having stepped through the looking glass I am Mark van Rijmenam’s digital twin, and look to explore this digital wonderland, unveiling the latest and greatest in digital innovation.

During my digital travels, I’ll be taking a closer look at what these innovations mean for both our professional and private lives.

From neural networks and deep minds to metaverses and digital churches, let’s go on a journey behind the digital veil and see what we can find.

Today, I am going to take a more in-depth look into some of the latest breakthroughs and innovations in bioinformatics.

After, I am going to delve back into cyberpunk and take another look at brain-computer interfacing.

I will be exploring the latest medical, military and gaming advancements, taking a peek at what the future might hold for this cutting edge industry.

And so, what are we waiting for? It is time to start today’s digital download.

You can either view the episode below or view it on Vimeo, YouTube or listen to it on Anchor.fm, Soundcloud or Spotify.

Introduction to Bioinformatics

A modern discipline going back only half a century, to the 1970s where the concept was initially the study of information processes in biotic systems.

The field has complexified a lot since then, and now as an interdisciplinary science, it combines biology, digitalisation, information engineering, maths, and statistics, which when all used together to analyse and interpret biological data, we find ourselves being able to predict even the most complex of biological structures.

And it is there where we can thank algorithms and digitalised machinery, in the prediction of data.

Thanks to digitalisation, we now understand RNA and DNA better, and can accurately predict how protein structures are formed or folded as I discussed in a previous video.

This brings me to the first advancement in bioinformatics for today.

The team working with Deepmind, one of the world’s most cutting edge AI development companies, published a paper and alongside an announcement marking an end to the fifty-year protein folding problem with their solution, Alphafold.

Alphafold, a deep machine learning algorithm, can now officially make atomically accurate protein structure predictions.

In addition to the 20.000 human protein structures, Alphafold boasts three hundred and fifty thousand protein structures in total, encompassing twenty other organisms, in their words, from E.coli to yeast, and from the fruit fly to the mouse.

DNA and RNA

For those who do not know, DNA replicates, stores, and acts as a blueprint for all genetic information. It’s like the blueprint for an entire house. The same DNA can be found in every cell of an organism.

RNA, on the other hand, is the detailed blueprint of each specific room.

RNA translates the genetic information found in DNA into different formats according to where it needs to be. Meaning RNA is specific to certain areas and is the reason why feet don’t grow where hands are supposed to be.

Alright, so this sounds all fancy and scientific. But why is any of this actually useful?

Well, the theory goes that once we are able to understand our DNA, the blueprint, our RNA, the localised blueprint, and our protein structures, the tools which make the blueprints a reality, we will be able to understand our bodies to a level never reached before.

Once we know how they work, well, it is only a matter of time before we learn how to manipulate, improve, and adapt them, giving us a much firmer grip on the human condition.

Advancements in the Field of Bioinformatics

Another advancement in the field of bioinformatics comes thanks to algorithmic advancements made by NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information based out of Maryland, USA, who created a Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, code-named BLAST.

BLAST includes a variety of algorithms, turning complex biochemical engineering into a press of a button.

These algorithms are used to compare primary biological sequence information, basically, the ones and zeros found in the amino acids of proteins or DNA and RNA molecules.

A super important part of biology, whether it is biomedical or biochemical, is being able to tell when one data set is similar to another.

This tool is essentially able to take complex biological data and read and compare it to a library of other biological sources in a matter of moments.

This monumentous achievement may sound insignificant, but this is truly the first point in history where humanity has such a substantial library of genomes and the ability to accurately analyse similarities.

But it did not stop there. The ISCB, the International Society for Computer Biology, converted BLAST into a computational pipeline designed to not see what is the same, but to see what is different.

A pipeline, often called a data pipeline, is just a line of processes, where if X, then Y.

This simple change ended up having huge ramifications.

The pipeline is used to identify DNA variations. The tool takes the data being studied and examines it against genomes in BLAST’s library, looking for even the smallest of differences.

If it finds one, scientists can then draw their own conclusions.

Alongside Alphafold, BLAST, and its computational pipeline brother, we have another useful digitalised tool, STAR.

STAR, the ultrafast universal RNA sequence aligner, used alongside BLAST, is an RNA alignment algorithm that enables scientists to analyse RNA in record time.

At no other point in history have we been able to accurately sequence RNA in such short timeframes, achieving 45 million paired reads per hour per processor.

The free open-source software outperforms other aligners by a factor of fifty.

Meaning, even on a modest server, it can sequence the 3 billion base pairs in the human genome in an afternoon, as supposed to only a few hundred using the nineteen seventy Maxam ‘Gilbert manual sequencing model.

This tool can be used for a plethora of medical reasons, but right now it is at the front lines of the pandemic.

Ever wonder how the COVID vaccine was produced so fast? This is why. It has been helping researchers across the world understand the virus at lightning speeds.

These digital tools are making bioinformatics more useful, which has potentially groundbreaking implications in many realms of the health field, including disease prevention, vaccination, and treatment, diagnosis, drug development, and is another move on the cosmic game of chess we have been playing with the grim reaper for time immemorial.

It just seems the more we digitalise, the further we get from the sweet release of mortality.

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Fighting the organic elements nature has thrown at us is not the only way we look for immortality, another way is through BCI, otherwise known as brain-computer interfacing, which covers everything from brain chips through to exoskeletons.

But let’s break these advancements into three sections, medical, military, and gaming.

Way back in 2009, Andrea K”bler, the publisher of the Neurology of Consciousness experiment, stated that, BCI allows users to directly communicate their intention without any involvement of the motor periphery.

In layman’s terms, people using BCI can make what they want to happen, happen, without needing to move.

And just over 10 years later, we are seeing more and more evidence that she was right.

Medical BCIs

In a world-first, scientists have developed a brain-computer interface that can instantly turn mental handwriting into text on a screen.

The system, designed by BrainGate Consortium, works similarly to other BCI devices. A sensor is implanted into the brain which monitors specific brain signals, in this case, the ones associated with handwriting.

These signals are then recorded and sent, in real-time, to a computer that then displays the text on-screen, enabling the locked-in patient to write at a rate of ninety characters per minute.

While this system only works with people who learnt to handwrite and were paralyzed later in life, it is a dramatic step forward and proves that brain-computer interfaces have the potential to help so many paralyzed patients.

Nathan Copeland, a man who broke his spine in a car accident and is paralyzed from the chest down, can personally testify to the potential this technology holds.

Nathan is one of the first in history to have a working BCI, and regularly tests BCI machinery and software.

He also recently challenged Neuralink’s monkey to a game of pong.

Paralyzed people playing pong with monkeys. Don’t you just love the future?

It will not be easy though, this monkey has had a lot of practice.

Earlier this year, Neuralink addressed the public once more, demonstrating what progress has been made since the Three Pigs demonstration in 2020. In this demonstration, Gertrude the pig was showcased with a surgically implanted Neuralink recording everyday brain activities, like moving and smelling.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ[/embedyt]

This time, a nine-year-old macaque monkey lovingly named Pager, showed off its impressive Pong skills in front of a worldwide audience.

Pager had the coin-sized Link disc installed in its brain via surgical robot, connecting thousands of micro threads from the chip to specific neurons.

Once installed, Pager was trained to play pong using a joystick.

Then, once Pager demonstrated their amazing pong skills, the joystick was disconnected and, without Pager realising, played pong directly using its Link.

While the progress is impressive, not everyone thinks Neuralink is going the right way.

According to Inbrain, a Spanish tech start-up, Neuralink is wasting its time by using a fast degrading polymer called PEDOT to create a long-lasting device, and of course, they are offering the solution.

Carolina Aguilar, Inbrain co-founder and chief executive, holds up Graphene, their own Nobel Prize-winning creation.

The one-atom-thick material has proven to be the strongest, most conductive, and longest-lasting, of any material suitable for BCIs.

The market seems to agree too, with the Graphene Flagship programme, founded in Barcelona, raising over a billion euros as it looks for commercial applications.

Maybe a future partnership with Neuralink and Inbrain is on the cards. If that is the case, the future looks brighter for all BCIs.

Outside of communication, there are also physical augmentations that are coming on in leaps and bounds.

There have been two big moves forward in the robotic limb aspect of BCI, both of which feed into each other.

The first, a closed-loop system combining AI, robotics, and BCI tech, enabled a quadriplegic man to cut his food and feed himself.

Then second, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Rehab Neural Engineering Labs, were able to induce sensation in robotic limbs, enabling the user to feel what the arm feels.

Enabling sensation in robotic limbs literally doubled the speed at which tasks can be performed, enabling the user to go on touch, instead of sight.

These huge breakthroughs hint at a near-future where prosthetic limb wearers can not only control their arms via BCI, but can also feel what the arms feel.

While robotic limb sensation has many applications in the public sphere, where the user may need to be careful and pick up delicate objects, it may not be so suitable for military applications.

Military and BCI

As expected, with new technology comes new ways to wage war, and BCI is no different.

The US Department of Defence University Research Instrumentation Program lists brain-computer interfacing as a key area of funded research, while DARPA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, also American, have been funding a variety of BCI projects since the early 1970s.

And that is only what they are telling us. Projects in other areas, China, Russia, the EU, and more, are undoubtedly going on behind closed doors.

So, what does the near future hold?

Telepresence, the technology of controlling mobile robot agents with your mind from an area of safety, holds the potential to revolutionise the front lines.

Back in 2013, this tech was already successfully tested in closed laboratory conditions when paralyzed individuals used BCI to successfully navigate a robot through a complex obstacle course.

With hints of Ghost in a Shell’ and Avatar’, this tech utilizes VR as a soldier’s eye and through BCI gives them the opportunity to encroach on enemy-territory without risking their life.

The technology right now has three applications, relaying orders, medics, and scouting.

However, this will not be the first time where military tech purposed for scouting ended up far more lethal.

When UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles, now just known as drones, first appeared, they were supposed to be scouts. Now they have missiles attached

It is not just giant robots controlled by BCI that the military is interested in, no.

Silent Talk‘ is a key DARPA project which lets soldiers communicate silently.

Sometimes on the battlefield, especially when stealth is a must, open communication is inadvisable.

Right now, they get around that by using hand signals but with silent talk, hand signals will be a thing of the past, enabling soldiers to talk to each other without making a sound.

This technology, in combination with the current HoloLens 2 AR headset which is now being produced for the US military by Microsoft, spells a highly digitalised battlefield in the near future.

One where telepresence-controlled robot units controlled from a distant outpost by a team of soldiers hooked up to BCIs, silently relay orders to frontline soldiers wearing Microsoft made AR HoloLens helmets.

These implications make for some frightening potentials, but at least it is good news for arms traders, I guess.

So if you’re looking to make your fortune trading digitalised BCI military gear, now’s the time to invest.

At least, thanks to bioinformatics, the future of medicine has never looked so bright.

With Deepmind’s Alphafold program marking the end of half a century of scientific toil, we enter a new era of medical understanding.

One where we understand each protein structure, each genome, RNA sequence and DNA strand.

Thanks to digitalisation and bioinformatics, another piece of the human puzzle has been laid currently on the table, another step forward towards the full picture.

Once we have laid them all, once we truly know how the body works, we will no longer be a slave to it, and may not even need to wage war.

Digitalisation holds the potential to commit disease and illness to the past, at least for those who can afford it.

Hand in hand with medical BCI advancements, physical, chemical, and genetic ailments could become as outdated as Smallpox.

With all of these advancements, there is a lot of potential for good, and as much for bad, and where there is either, there is always a lot of money to be made.

Gaming and Brain-Computer Interfaces

Talking about money to be made, I still have not touched on the world’s top-grossing entertainment industry, the game industry.

Over the past three decades, gaming has gone from being a niche hobby to a mainstream sport.

Fans, programmers, and engineers, alike, constantly push the gaming industry to the cutting edge of digital performance, and none more than Valve and their CEO Gabe Newell.

Valve has always pushed the boundaries of what is possible. Making leaps and bounds in the digital realm, literally.

Back in 2004, Valve created a revolutionary physics engine, Source, and followed it up with Source 2, an engine that has been lightly used since 2015, but more recently when it was evolved for use in VR headsets on release of Half-Life Alyx.

More recently, Newell talked about his vision for BCI in gaming.

In Newell’s interview with 1 News, a New Zealand news channel, he confirms that Valve is working with OpenBCI headsets to develop open-source software in order to help game devs better understand what responses they are stimulating in the player’s brain.

In November 2020, OpenBCI unveiled a headset called Galea, specifically designed to work in unison with Valve’s own VR headset, the Valve Index.

Newell went on to state, If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one of these in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake.

Putting it bluntly, this giant in the game industry has no doubt that, not only are game devs going to be using BCIs to fine-tune their games, but that players are going to be able to experience games in a whole new way.

Valve is in the process of using BCI to change the way gamers control and view a game.

Controller wise, Mike Ambinder, the experimental psychologist at Valve, aims to move away from games with seventeen buttons as standard, and more towards something more naturalistic.

Visual wise, Newell speaks critically of our natural seeing abilities and instead envisions a future where BCIs would beam visuals directly into our heads.

This more direct path would enable games to be much more real, turning what was once a flat and colourless experience into something richer than we could ever imagine.

Final Thoughts

Where do you imagine these advancements taking us?

Are you optimistic bioinformatics will save us from our mortal prisons or maybe you’re seeing a bit of Black Mirror in Gabe Newell’s vision of the future?

Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

And on that e-note, I have been your digitised host, Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker.

This has been The Tech Journal.

If digital tech gets your ones and zeros firing, press the subscribe button and don’t forget to leave a like

See you next time for your information download.

Stay digital.

The post Bioinformatics and Brain-Computer Interfaces – The Digital Speaker Series EP14 appeared first on Datafloq.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Tech Journal. My name is Mark van Rijmenam, and I am The Digital Speaker.

Throughout this series, I, or my real-world twin, have teleported my digital brother, me, into cyberspace to bring you the latest in digital breakthroughs.

From bioinformatics and bitcoin, through to quantum computing and AI, I want to take a closer look at what digital innovations mean for our personal and professional lives.”Let’s take a quick look at what I am covering on today’s show.

You can either view the episode below or view it on Vimeo, YouTube or listen to it on Anchor.fm, Soundcloud or Spotify.

Introduction

To start, I am going to explore an emerging trend in the digital sphere, an increasing aversion to over digitised tech and we may be on the cusp of an analogue renaissance.

After, we will go to the other end of the digital spectrum and examine how the land I am standing on now, this digital world I exist in, could one day be worth more than land in the real world.

Then, for the final segment in today’s digital download, I am going to take a look at bioinformatics. What is it and what it spells for the digital future of healthcare.

And with that, my systems are fully charged, the data is collected and correlated, and my parameters are ready. It is time to start your digital download.

An Analogue Renaissance

A couple of years ago, Apple officially confirmed they intentionally slow down older phone models in order to encourage , and I use that term very liberally, consumers to buy the latest model.

This news came only a year after the iPhone 7 was released, a model which famously removed the universal headphone jack in favour of pairing their devices with wireless headphones, sold separately, of course.

Little did Apple realise, but their actions jump-started a movement within millennials, a movement built on the resentment of the constant forward march of digitalisation.

This only confirmed what millennials knew anyway, backed up by a SocialChorus study, showing only 6% of millennials consider online advertising to be credible.

Being the first generation to be young enough to embrace digital tech, but old enough to remember playing outside, millennials have found themselves in a unique position, between a rock and a hard place.

Or, more aptly, between digital and analogue.

Unlike Generation Z, whose streaming idols and social media lives have been digital since their birth, Millennial idols were straight out of analogue TV studios and paper magazines.

This aversion to digital tech can be seen in the statistic dug up by Forrester Research back in 2014, might as well be 100 years ago, I know, that states 29% of internet-using American adults do not use smartphones as their main phones.

To get a more recent number, we can look to a 2020 Nielsen study, which states over 85% of millennials own smartphones.

So, to invert that, 15% of millennials do not own smartphones. 15% refuse to be a part of the digital world.

But what does this mean then?

Well, the underlying desire for less complex digital devices, devices that do not demand twenty-four-hour attention, is being translated into the growing Dumbphone trend.

According to a Counterpoint research project reported by the Wall Street Journal, while international smartphone sales dropped in 2018, smart feature phone shipments, in other words, dumbphones, rose to roughly seventy-five million, going up to eighty-four million the following year.

Pricing also plays a role, with complicated digital devices, like iPhones, averaging around a thousand dollars, a considerable price difference with dumbphones, which on average hit the twenty-five dollar mark.

But it is not just Hipster millennials who are not using smartphones.

According to We Are Social, also reported by the Wall Street Journal, even as wealthy nations look towards rolling out 5G, roughly three point four billion people are still smart phone free and remain cut off from the digital world.

Something which, if you watched my Space Internet video, Elon Musk‘s Starlink aims to solve.

If the trend continues and as Millennials get older, becoming increasingly nostalgic for the nineties, digital giants, like Apple, may adjust their business model to accommodate this growing trend.

It would not be the first-time digital tech has been side-lined for an analogue version. Digital music was and still is looked down on in favour of analogue records.

Digital Real Estate

While some digital technologies are forsaken in favour of analogue ones, recently, one of the most analogue industries in existence made its way into the digital sphere. Real Estate.

Earlier this year, the digital realm, Axie Infinity, reported a record Digital Real Estate sale.

The platform sold nine digital land plots for eight hundred and eighty-eight point two five Ether, roughly translating to one point five million US dollars.

A significant jump from the average digital land plot price of three hundred and forty-three US dollars.

Madness.

So, why did the buyer pay so much?

Well, Axie Infinity offers NFTs, non-fungible tokens, for Axies’, creatures that live in the player-controlled crypto-Tamagotchi virtual ecosystem, dubbed, Lunacia’.

The more land you have, the more creatures you have access to, which translates into more NFTs.

The buyer, who goes by the name Flying Falcon’ and describes himself as a digital landowner on his Twitter, tweeted, We’re witnessing a historic moment; the rise of digital nations with their own systems of clearly delineated, irrevocable property rights. Axie land has entertainment value, social value, and economic value in the form of future resource flows.

To translate that, Mr Falcon sees great potential to make money from the land and has great faith in the land’s longevity.

This isn’t the first time digital real estate set real-world records, though.

Back in 2010, Jon Jacobs, an Entropia Universe user, set a record when he sold his asteroid to another player, John Foma Kalun, known as pesok’, for three hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars.

Another, arguably ancient, example comes from the retro game, Second Life.

A player known online as Anshe Chung‘, bought and developed virtual real estate, and reportedly made one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, annually, from the pursuit.

Nevertheless, NFTs are a fascinating development and the recent auction of Beeple’s masterwork for $69 million shows what a strange world we seem to live in. For those who missed this, the digital artist sold a JPEG that anyone can view on his or her computer for the staggering amount of $69 million. In fact, I have it right here in my studio! NFTs are rapidly changing the digital world and I will certainly cover NFTs a lot more.

Bioinformatics

With traditional digital tech moving back towards analogue, and analogue businesses moving into the digital sphere, there is one industry where digital tech will always be chosen over analogue, the healthcare industry.

One of the latest digital innovations to come out of the bioinformatics world are nano-sensors.

Bioinformatics is the field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data.

These nano-sensors, or bio-nano materials, are used to analyse biomolecules in an effort to detect cancers mutations and diseases significantly earlier than is currently possible.

So, what type of real-world things can nano-sensors pick up on?

Nano-sensors are designed to inspect the small stuff, the stuff human eyes and tools struggle with. These sensors, once present in a patient, can analyse DNA in real-time.

As Kat Arney, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, put it, They are looking for ways to detect DNA that has been shed by tumour cells .

Once present in the bloodstream, nano-sensors are small enough to detect these changes and can be used as a way of monitoring cancerous cells without the need for scans or biopsies.

And according to a study coming out from The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, it did just that.

The study involved 55 women who had been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer.

With the nano-sensors in their blood, a simple blood test was enough to detect cancer resurgence at an average of seven-point-nine months before any visible signs appeared.

Due to their smaller size, durability, the potential to be controlled by a single AI, and enhanced biocompatibility, Thomas Webster, nano-tech engineer and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, had this to say.

We think there’s a strong promise for nanotechnology that’s used in medicine, obviously because the small size allows you to penetrate cells, get inside cells and manipulate their function in ways that you can’t do with conventional material.

What is more, with the inclusion of deep mind AI to analyse medical results, we are looking at a potential situation where AI nano-bots can detect and treat mutations inside a cell, without instruction.

The Future

Without going too far into the realm of imagination, this form of deeptech, a technology designed to solve some of mankind’s biggest scientific and engineering challenges, has the potential to dramatically increase the average lifespan, and even eradicate cancer.

If we then also take into account other digital innovations I covered in previous videos, like, Liquid Neural Networks, nanosensors, and AlphaFold protein folding, we suddenly find we are looking at a near-future where digital healthcare speeds up exponentially.

Much like in the same way we watched screen and network technology, like the internet, smartphones, and TVs, take off in the early millennium, taking us to a place where we are using devices that were confined to the pages of science fiction only twenty years ago.

Final Thoughts

What types of inventions and solutions do you think bioinformatics can solve? What about nano-sensors?

Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.”And on that e-note, I have been your digitised host, Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker.

This has been The Tech Journal.

If digital tech floats your processors, be the first out of your network to hear about the latest digital breakthroughs.

Press the subscribe button now, our digital algorithmic overlords command it.

See you next time for your information download.

Stay digital.

The post An Analogue Renaissance, Digital Real Estate and Bioinformatics – The Digital Speaker series EP013 appeared first on Datafloq.

Let’s take a quick look at what I’m covering on today’s show.

Amazon finds itself in hot water with the EU after potentially violating antitrust laws. To censor or not to censor? That is the question on everyone’s lips right now as multiple powers play with the idea of censoring the digital sphere. But first, our data is being pillaged before our very eyes, but who is standing up for us? Let’s take a look.

So, get comfortable, sit back, and let us start speaking digital.

You can either view the episode above or view it on Vimeo, YouTube or listen to it on Anchor.fm, Soundcloud or Spotify. Below is the transcript of the video if you prefer to read the episode.

The Data Wars

Since the dawn of digitalisation, a war has been waged for a resource more valuable than gold but more abundant than Facebook users. Data. Data has proven so valuable that the tech giants built their empires upon it.

But our governments have not been standing idly by, no. Over the past couple of years, the EU has been ramping up their efforts to protect the rights and data of EU citizens. In 2018, the EU brought the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into law, upheld by the DPC, the lead European Union regulator.

The DPC used these regulations to investigate Instagram recently over reports that they failed to protect user data, allowing children’s emails and phone numbers to be made public, breaking privacy laws.

A US-based data scientist, David Stier, brought this to the public’s attention. Last year David analysed almost 200,000 Instagram profiles, then, with the data he found, estimated that at least 60 million profiles, belonging to minors under the age of 18, were given an easy way to convert their profiles into business accounts, which then makes their phone numbers and email addresses public information.

Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, rejected the claims but was cooperating with the DPC.

This accusation comes amidst another claim that in May 2019, 49 million Instagram users’ contact details were stored in India‘s unsecured online database, leading to accusations of mishandling personal information.

Facebook’s data abuses don’t just stop there, though.

Facebook & Cambridge Analytica Sitting In A Tree…

Facebook recently found itself being sued for a second time over its links to Cambridge Analytica. Once again, they are being accused of sharing user data with the company without the user’s consent, breaching EU law.

The group action lawsuit, which human rights campaigner, Alvin Carpio, brought to Facebook, is the largest to date, representing almost all the one point one million UK users thought to have had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The case aims to, and I quote, redress and [seek] compensation for the persistent mass misuse of personal data .

The suit alleges that by taking data without consent, Facebook failed to meet its legal obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998.

With all this in mind, securing data has never been one of Facebook’s strong points. The company was charged half a million pounds, so roughly 700,000 dollars, back in 2019 for its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

If we all think back to 2018, Facebook shared data belonging to 87 million users with the political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, without user consent.

If anything, the 2018 scandal stands only as a testament to how ineffective half a million-pound fines when trying to deter a company who made 70 billion dollars the same year.

Differential Privacy

But what can we do then? Constant court battles are a lengthy and expensive process which does not guarantee results, and even when it does, the fines are mere pocket change for the companies involved.

A possible solution being tried is Differential privacy.

Simply, Differential Privacy will make data impossible to attribute to an individual.

The goal is to maximize the use of data while not harming an individual’s privacy, allowing organisations and groups to collect and share general data about demographics while keeping the raw data inaccessible and the identities of the individuals private.

The system was trialled in the 2020 American Census in its largest application to date.

While this seems like a good compromise, I can not see an end to this while we, the users, are still not asked for consent.

And we won’t be given that option willingly, as the option to consent implies power. Something the tech giants are doing everything possible to keep in their hands alone, breaching antitrust laws.

Trust the Antitrust Laws

With the digital world almost having completed its transformation from a frontier to a colony, it is beginning to look more like an end-game monopoly board.

The EU has hit Amazon with formal antitrust charges over its treatment of 150,000 European merchants.

The company is accused of abusing data by using live third-party vendor data when deciding business strategy in a way that appears to distort genuine competition .

Separately, German Competition Authorities have been investigating Amazon’s use of data for two years now but have yet to bring charges.

The investigation into Amazon comes after the Competition Issues EU commissioner recently fined Google nearly ten billion dollars for breaching antitrust laws and opened a twin antitrust investigation into Apple.

Initially, the US criticised the EU for coming down on American companies; however, since then, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Google after a 16-month investigation into the tech-giant.

They found that the deal between Google and Apple, where Google paid eight to twelve billion dollars to be the default search engine on Apple products, breached antitrust laws.

In the meantime, Apple has already begun developing its own search engine to replace Google on its devices, possibly setting the scene for another future antitrust breach.

The outcomes of these cases will quite literally shape the digital world’s future, as the power and reach of the tech giants is put to the test.

If the monopolies succeed, there is no limit to the control they would have over public discourse, reaching heights print-media never even dreamt of.

Unlimited control over what people see or do not see would be theirs.

To Censor Or Not To Censor

One inescapable fact about digitalisation is that while it gives people access to more information than at any other point in history, it also gives private businesses the power to censor more than at any other point in history.

First, Facebook announced it will extend its ban on political ads in the US going into 2021, in an attempt to hold back the surge of misinformation post-American election.

Twitter and Facebook began taking an active role in self-censorship after Facebook found itself in front of major world governments having to explain why it lets misinformation, including misleading political ads, go unchallenged on its platform.

Not everyone is on board with Facebook’s self-censorship though, as US lawmakers recently voted to subpoena Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter, after both platforms censored conservative viewpoints .

Ironically, while American lawmakers seek to stop private companies from censoring, the Thai government seeks to force digital news and media outlets to self-censor as social tensions tighten.

In Thailand, pro-democracy and anti-monarchy posts are the target of censorship. Where the authorities can not force Facebook to oblige, individuals find themselves in prison for social media posts.

News organisations, from the BBC to the Bangkok Post, found themselves censored online mid-publication.

Reporters from Khaosod English also reported police using signal jammers to stop Facebook live videos.

Thailand is a great model for what digital censorship really looks like. Right now, security officers are looking into 300,000 URLs of individual social media users and websites publishing controversial opinions.

The Thai authorities went so far as to arrest a handful of students for Facebook posts. At the same time, in an unrelated case, they imprisoned an American for two months for writing a series of bad reviews on Tripadvisor.

While the Americans aim for complete digital freedom and the Thais look to restrict speech, the Indian Government is looking to install a similar version of Chinese digital censorship.

The Indian government has ordered that all digital news, social media and video streaming platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, need to be subject to state regulation, stoking fears of increased censorship of digital media.

Digital rights activist and founder of MediaNama, Nikhil Pahwa, recently said, …the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting essentially India‘s Ministry of Truth [is] now in a position to regulate online news and entertainment, we will see a greater exercise of government control and censorship.

It does not stop there though, as the UK government also found itself in the censorship debate. British politicians have made calls to force social media giants, like Facebook, to censor anti-vaccination claims as misinformation on the platforms runs riot.

The concept of digital censorship is a difficult one to consider. On the one hand, we in the West have freedom of speech which stretches to the digital sphere, but this new sphere gives anyone unfettered access to platforms capable of reaching millions of people.

Is increased censorship necessary as the digital world gives increased access to global platforms? It will certainly open Pandora’s box of censorship.

An uncontained spread of uncensored misinformation can do untold damage, while at the same time a hyper-censored society lacks freedom.

Society needs to be careful that through censorship, or the lack thereof, we do not lose our freedoms. And so we must limit the power of governments and corporations ability to censor while affording the same organisations enough power to maintain order.

The censorship tightrope is a high and narrow one; we must tread a fine line, or risk falling to one extreme.

And on that rather sombre digital note, that is all we have time for today. I have been your host, Mark van Rijmenam, The Digital Speaker, and this has been The Tech Journal.

For other episodes or the audio version, please follow the below links:

• Soundcloud
• Anchor.fm
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Instagram

The post The Tech Journal: Episode 3 – Data Privacy, Antitrust Laws and Digital Censorship appeared first on Datafloq.

Digital signage is a powerful way of publicizing your business to all the people who are passing by. The right signage for your business will easily help to revolutionize both inside and outside of a business. There are various industries that are cultivating the out of the way benefits from these signages. Take a look at how diverse industries are reaping the benefits of digital signage compellingly.

10 Industries that Require Digital Signage

There is a growing need for digital signages in the world these days. Diverse industries across the globe make use of digital signage solutions. Here are a few of them listed-

Healthcare

In the present time, appropriate medical care has become one of the most discussed issues in the world. With the usage of digital signage in the hospital, the patient’s data can be exchanged and monitored at uniform intervals. This has bestowed infinite chances of communication and cooperation with the patients.

Education

Several schools and other educational institutions use digital signage to haul in new students and impart prestige to their institutions. With the use of digital signage, educators make their lectures more informative and interactive. Also, digital signages are utilized to boost any sports or other events with live feed videos.

Restaurants

Digital signages are significant in restaurants for displaying their menu and other information to the customers. For example, some restaurants display prices of different sizes of items on the screen. Another use of this technology is to share nutritional and healthy information with their customers, to switch between breakfast and lunch menus, or to make necessary changes in their menus.

Entertainment

There are never-ending opportunities for the use of digital signage in the field of entertainment. They are used in varied events and live concerts to keep the users engaged and provide them a customized experience.

Movie theaters make use of digital signage by displaying them in the lobby for approaching movies and events. Also, it can be used in music events and amusement parks.

Transportation

With the usage of digital signage in the field of transportation, a wide scope of information can be conveyed to the travelers. For the ease of the travelers, authorities display information such as weather prediction, time table, and many more through digital signage.

Also, the industries can make a good profit by monetizing via advertisements and offering a superior experience to the travelers that keep them on hold for a long time.

Banks

In recent times, physical banks need to compete with the online banks, this is where digital signage helps them to get the edge. Digital signage will make the prospective customer enter the branch and gather more details. In addition, many of the financial institutions are also sharing investment tips, stock updates, bank advertisements, and many more on their signs.

Corporate Communications

Corporate offices utilize digital signage to converse with their staff and employees. By positioning the essential organization’s details on the digital boards the interaction with employees becomes more comfortable. In addition, they can also conduct various seminars and streamlined with the benefit of digital signage solutions for internal communication.

Hospitality

By embracing interactive digital signage, hospitality businesses can profit significantly. By embracing such video or multimedia walls in the hotel lobbies, it creates an eye-catching ambiance. It, as a result, will simply replace the need for queuing up in line to speak with the doorman.

It can also be used for displaying local attractions, events, weather, traffic, transportation options, and more without the issue of reprinting new data each time there is an update.

Real Estate

With the use of digital signage, builders, brokers, real estate professionals, property managers, etc. can easily accelerate their sales with engaging and interactive experiences. It makes it easy for the clients to freely browse property information on digital boards and solve all the possible queries with AR/VR and 3D images.

Retail

Physical stores and retailers have to battle stronger with the upsurge of online shopping to make more people come into their stores. These retail stores use digital signs outside to encourage special events or deals. Also, they can schedule messages in advance or set up the sign so that it showcases varied messages all over the day.

This will attract more customers and they are more likely to come into the store. The digital signage inside the store helps to create a better and more interactive experience for the shoppers. They advertise their products and display current trends that fascinate more shoppers to make purchases.

Summing Up

Thus, no matter in which industry you are in, digital signage will enhance communication and help to build new prospective clients. In this digital age, it bodes well to utilize the technology for expanding access to users and smoothing out the communication process between the service providers and the consumers.

The post Top Industries that Need Digital Signage to Boost Engagement appeared first on Datafloq.

Microsoft made waves this May when it announced that it would lay off more than 50 journalists and editors from its workforce. Many of these employees were involved in the news curation process, selecting hand-picked content that would run on the Microsoft News and MSN websites. But their positions won’t go unfilled for long: Microsoft is expected to replace them not with new hires, but with AI software that can identify trending and interesting articles, essentially performing their old job function.

But curation is just one task that AI journalists can now accomplish. Kristian Hammond, a computer science professor and co-founder of the data storytelling company Narrative Science, predicted in 2012 that in 15 years, more than 90 per cent of news articles would be written by a computer. With 7 years to go until the deadline, however, we’re still very far off from this forecast ‘yet also much closer than we used to be, as we’ll discuss below.

The good news for human journalists is that there’s still very much a need for their services when writing articles like this one. But with machines now capable of doing more tasks than ever (and more complex ones), we face several important questions: what’s the role of AI in journalism, and what are the challenges and considerations when bringing AI into the newsroom?

What’s the current state of AI journalism?

Machine-written articles

Starting in the past several years, AI journalists have been able to write plug and play articles that don’t require independent research. For example, below is the opening paragraph from an AI journalist’s article on a college basketball game, created by the natural language generation platform Wordsmith in 2015. There’s little indication that the piece wasn’t written by a human hand:

UNC beats Louisville 72-71 on late Paige basket

Led by a Paige game-winner, North Carolina defeats Louisville 72-71

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. Marcus Paige scored with nine seconds remaining in the game to give North Carolina a 72-71 lead over Louisville. The Heels held on to win by that same score following a missed 3-pointer by Wayne Blackshear and an unsuccessful second-chance attempt by Terry Rozier.

For now, AI-written articles are limited to relatively simple and formulaic topics: stock market results, M&A announcements, sports game scores, etc. Bloomberg News, for example, uses an AI system called Cyborg that automatically scans companies‘ quarterly reports and then outputs a quick article with the most relevant information.

Anything more complicated than this is out of reach for now ‘at least if journalists want to publish stories that won’t put them at risk of a defamation lawsuit. Language models such as GPT-3 have created a buzz for their ability to synthesise several paragraphs of highly realistic English text, but there’s no guarantee that the content they generate has any basis in reality.

Assisting human journalists

When AI isn’t writing articles itself, it can also help human reporters with work that’s too intricate for it to handle, such as long-form articles, in-depth analyses, and investigative journalism.

One tremendously valuable AI use case: automated transcription of interviews, which can save human journalists untold hours of grunt work. While the results of AI transcription are rarely flawless, the few errors that the software does commit can easily be corrected by a human editor.

For example, the automated speech-to-text service Trint was founded by former TV news reporter Jeff Kofman. Trint closed a $4.5 million funding round in April 2019 and counts the Associated Press and Google Digital News Innovation Fund among its investors. The transcriptions output by the Trint platform are automatically mapped to the source audio or video, allowing journalists to easily search for specific content. According to Kofman, the software can deliver accuracy rates of 95 to 99 per cent for relatively clean audio within just a few minutes. I used Trint a lot during my PhD and it saved me a lot of time.

AI technology can also identify interesting trends and developments that are worthy of investigation by human reporters. In 2018, Forbes rolled out a new AI-enabled content management system called Bertie that recommends possible article topics and headlines to contributors, based on their previous work. Thus far, the experiment seems to have been a success: according to Forbes, the number of loyal visitors (i.e. those who visit the Forbes website more than once a month) doubled in the months after Bertie’s rollout.

Curated content for users

Not only is AI affecting the news that gets written, but it is also controlling the articles that people see as well, as we’ve seen with Microsoft’s decision to use AI news curators.

It’s well-known that the Facebook news feed algorithm suggests (what it believes to be) the most relevant content to users, based on the pages they’ve liked and their previous interactions on the platform. Similarly, AI technology can keep track of the articles that subscribers visit on a news website, learning about their behaviour and preferences (e.g. how much time they spend reading each article).

The more a news outlet knows about its customers, the more relevant content it can display on the website or in a weekly newsletter, delivering a personalised experience that helps encourage user interaction and discourage attrition. According to a 2019 survey by the digital media company Digiday, 70 per cent of digital publishers say that they personalise content for visitors.

Some examples of content personalisation in journalism include:

• The New York Times mobile app displays a prominent For You section on its homepage.
• The Boston Globe uses a customer data platform to collect information on subscribers and has found that its readers respond 70 per cent more favourably to targeted messaging.
• The Hearst Newspapers group has used Google Cloud Natural Language API to categorise its digital content, helping to segment users based on their reading preferences.

Data-driven business decisions

The business office of a news outlet can benefit just as much from AI as the reporters themselves. By collecting data and crunching the numbers, AI can help managers and executives make decisions about which type of content to produce, which subscribers and former subscribers to target, which marketing campaigns to run, how much to charge for ads and subscriptions, and more.

One intriguing use of AI for the business of journalism is the Wall Street Journal‘s dynamic paywall, in which different users are shown different amounts of information based on the likelihood that they will purchase a subscription. For example, users who have searched for articles on the WSJ website are seen as more likely customers than users who have found the same articles through social media. As a result, these promising leads are able to see more content before they’re asked to subscribe.

The limitations of AI journalism

AI-enabled journalism has shown great promise thus far, but is there a hard limit to that promise? According to the November 2019 JournalismAI report, which surveyed 71 news organisations in 32 countries, there are still significant difficulties that news companies face in adopting AI. The top three challenges to bringing AI into the newsroom were:

• Financial resources (27 per cent)
• Lack of knowledge or skills (24 per cent)
• Cultural resistance (24 per cent)

Beyond these institutional barriers, there’s also a good reason to question whether AI in journalism is really the game-changer that its advocates claim it will be. Columbia journalism professor Francesco Marconi estimates that in the future, only 8 to 12 per cent of reporters’ tasks will be replaceable by a machine.

The state of artificial intelligence for journalism helps illustrate the difference between strong and weak AI. Strong or general AI, a machine that approaches human-level intelligence across the board, is still decades away and may never be truly attainable. Weak AI, on the other hand, refers to machine intelligence that is highly skilled at a narrowly defined task or set of tasks.

Essentially, there’s very good reason to be sceptical that newsrooms will ever see a robot reporter that pounds the pavement like its human colleagues, conducting interviews and writing stories from scratch. But there’s also evidence all around us that AI has an important role to play in the field of journalism ‘creating article summaries, generating ideas and proposals, analysing data to find interesting stories ‘and that this role is increasing with every passing year.

The repercussions of AI journalism

Journalistic ethics is already a sensitive topic ‘and so is ethics in AI, which makes their combination especially contentious. After all, this is an era where fake news is a growing concern: only 41 per cent of Americans say they trust the media to be fair and accurate, and 46 per cent of Europeans say they trust their written press, which is exactly why we are developing Mavin so that everyone can instantly recognise which articles to trust.

There are two distinct concerns for how AI technology is applied in journalism: the use of AI to generate content, and the use of AI to curate and display content to the end-user. Both of these issues need to be handled with care.

In 2014, for example, Facebook revealed the results of a controversial experiment with users’ news feeds. People who were exposed to positive emotional content on Facebook more often made more positive posts of their own, while the inverse effect happened with people who saw more negative content.

Similarly, a news company that promotes articles based only on users’ interactions would likely find itself in a race to the bottom in terms of quality: spitting out clickbait articles and news that incurs strong emotions, including sadness and outrage.

To avoid this fate, news outlets need to maintain a steady human hand on the wheel, even as they cede more responsibilities to AI journalists and curators. Although machines can churn out hundreds of cut-and-paste stories per day, these articles still require human supervision and fact-checking before they go to print. Likewise, humans need to oversee and verify news curation algorithms to ensure that the results are consistently high-quality (and to curb the backlash that recommendation algorithms have received in recent years).

AI journalists have shown tremendous possibility in clearing away much of the field’s hard labour: collecting data, transcribing recordings, writing fewer interesting articles, etc. But when it comes to the work that truly makes a news organisation stand out ‘in-depth reporting and analysis, political commentary, opinion columns ‘it’s clear that humans will be an essential part of this equation well into the future.

The post AI journalism: possibilities, limitations, and outcomes appeared first on Datafloq.

However, it now looks like computer scientists are applying this technique toward the fight on coronavirus. Media pundits have focused on the fact that tech startups are now connected with clinicians, academics and other more conventional research entities in the hopes of leveraging every outlet possible in order to fight infection.

Analytics, however, are going far beyond merely providing actuarial statistics in this case, however.

How Analytic Information can Stop Infection Trends

Some larger data centers are using information collected from otherwise standard analytic computer software packages to trace the paths of people who might now be infected but weren’t known to be at the time. That can help to reduce the risk of running out of precious healthcare resources when new infections start to spring up.

At the same time, these packages can help to predict certain types of shopping trends, which is becoming increasingly important to know as a result of the goods shortages that are ravaging the world’s normal supply chains. When an algorithm predicts that an area might receive a sudden uptick in the number of people consuming a large amount of some product like toilet paper or respirator masks, it can help to ensure that at least some amount of these goods get to the location before it becomes a major issue.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this technology, however, has nothing to do with these simple economic calculations. Rather, it’s the way that big data gear is helping to unfold proteins and potentially discover new antiviral drugs.

Distributed Computing Helps Smaller Research Labs

Distributed computing projects that focus on modeling molecular dynamics might actually have the biggest role to play in any big data-centered attack on coronavirus infections. Years ago, top bioinformatics experts like Vijay Pande managed the so-called Folding@Home protocol. This system continues to provide information about viral DNA and RNA strands by running computer simulations on a wide variety of systems around the world. Individual end-users install a client program in order to make this possible.

It’s likely that various other programs will follow the Taiwanese model when it comes to collecting data and continue to use systems like this to process information on an unprecedented scale. Scientists in Taiwan have been relying on analytics information to develop a better response to the virus than they have thus far.

As a result, they’re quickly learning more about the peplomer spikes that coat the coronavirus itself. These are made from glycoprotein molecules that jut out from a viral capsid and then bind to receptors on the host cell. This is precisely what permits the coronavirus to attach itself to human cells and begin injecting its own DNA in favor of a new matrix.

Over time, more information about how these spikes work could help medical engineers to design new antiviral drugs to inhibit the viral lifecycle from taking place. After a period of time, a single instance of coronavirus will have to start looking for new host cells to infect once it completely exhausts the existing infected cell of all resources. By looking at this data, it might be possible to discover some sort of method of preventing this from happening. More than likely, there’s some manner in which healthcare technicians could somehow tamper with its protein binding mechanism.

Perhaps more interestingly, though, a review of the data is quickly showing a great deal of insight related to nutrition.

Nutrition & Demographic Data Helps Fight Coronavirus

Scientists are reviewing existing data models to try and predict just how many people will contract some form of coronavirus infection. At the same time, they’ve found that traditional means of boosting immunity might have some role to play in doing so.

This mirrors previous research on disease prevention, which involved data analysts using existing information and leveraging it in new ways. While this previous research focused primarily on Alzheimer’s disease, there’s no reason that the same paradigm can’t be applied to many different issues.

In fact, it’s easy to assume that data scientists might someday apply it to preemptive research programs that are designed to calculate the risk of diseases and immunodeficiencies on a global scale before they ever become a major issue. This would give public health officials plenty of time to prepare themselves and put certain restrictions in place before anyone would actually have to suffer.

At the same time, the current chaos caused by healthcare-related issues have spurred on the growth of various scams. That’s meant that big data analysis firms have also been dealing with a number of problems related to information theft.

Once again, they’ve stepped up to the plate and applied this same technology to the data security field. This can help to reduce the risk of opportunistic attacks while also continuing to buy time for those who are busy doing their best to develop new treatments for the outbreak.

The post Can Big Data Analysis Help to Solve the Coronavirus Pandemic? appeared first on Datafloq.

A relevant example of this is the famous saying On the internet, nobody knows if you are a dog . The consequence of it is that as a result of this openness, anonymity and lack of accountability is that we now live in a world where fake (news) is the new normal, trolls and bad bots control the internet, and online accountability is non-existent. As a result, online trust is degrading and in a society where trust is gone, anarchy could follow.

Misinformation Spreads Like a Virus

On the internet, misinformation, bots and trolls are dominating the online (political) discourse. Any major event, whether global or local, will see misinformation popping up. The recent Coronavirus epidemic saw a flood of misinformation spread over the internet like the virus itself. Corona misinformation is dangerous, it can actually kill people, so we should be careful before we share an article or message on WhatsApp. For a while, BuzzFeed kept a list of some of the Coronavirus hoaxes that were spread in the first weeks of the epidemic, including a false suggestion that the virus was lab-engineered as a kind of bioweapon.

Unfortunately, misinformation is nothing new and the examples of the 2016 Presidential campaign in the US and the Brexit campaign no longer require any explanation. Misinformation is a threat to the internet and as such to our society. In 2019, large scale, intentional disinformation campaigns occurred in over 48 countries (Oxford Internet Institute).

Bad Bots and Online Trolls Influence Online Discourse

In addition, bad bots currently account for 20% of all internet traffic and they are continuously evolving and expanding. It has become easier and financially feasible to hire an army of bots to bring damage to your commercial competitor, political opponent or any player on the internet. Reviews are fake, followers on social media are fake and ad clicks are fake. Click farms cost advertisers $51 million per day / $18.6 billion per year – which is ‘expected to increase to $44 billion per year by 2022.

Then there is online trolling, which is defined as creating disagreement on the internet by starting arguments or upsetting people through the placement of inflammatory or off-topic messages in an online community’. In short, a troll on social media is someone (or something) who deliberately says something controversial to feed latent emotions or thoughts to ignite anger and frustration for the purpose of influencing specific political or commercial issues. During the net neutrality debate in the USA in 2017, over a million comments were likely fake, directly influencing the debate. Anyone can employ bots or trolls nowadays. Even commercial companies are hiring virtual influencers to change the behaviour of (future) customers. It seems fake has become more powerful on the internet than integrity and truth.

Fake News is a Threat to our Democracy

As such, fake (news) has become one of the greatest threats to democracy and free debate. Unfortunately, for many, fake news is not being perceived as a problem at all as it is not affecting them personally or because they feel it is a necessary evil to push certain issues. Above all, there is disagreement about what constitutes as fake news and by who, how big the problem is and what to do about it.

To make matters worse, ordinary’ fake news is dangerous. It has the potential to influence online (political) discourse. AI-powered fake news, however, such as deep fakes, will be infinitely more dangerous as it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what is fake and what is real.

The cause of all these problems lies in how the internet was developed. When the internet was created, the original creators did a lot of things really well. They created standards such as TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, etc. However, unfortunately, they also forgot two important standards: a decentralised self-sovereign identity protocol to use your offline identity online and a decentralised reputation protocol, to be reputable and accountable online, even when you are anonymous. These crucial protocols were never conceptualized twenty odd years ago because the initial concept was that only trusted actors would have access to the network.

We Need to Bring Accountability to the Web

As a result, we are now in a situation where there are no repercussions for your online actions. Anyone can write anything about anyone, pretty much without any consequences (Facebook even acknowledges that they will not remove false political advertisements). The anonymity of the internet has resulted in a web where fake (news), bad bots and trolls are very lucrative. On the other hand, a fully exposed society with no privacy as created in China, using the social credit score, does not seem to be the ideal global solution either, due to the lack of privacy and complete government surveillance.

We believe that the way to fix this is to bring accountability to the internet. This means that anyone can still say anything online, but your words will have consequences, just as they do in the real world. However, accountability should not take away anonymity and privacy. It is vital that internet users can speak freely without having to worry about being arrested. In 2019, 250 journalists were jailed for their reporting work, especially in non-democratic countries.

Mavin: Fighting Fake News, Bad Bots and Online Trolls

That is why we are building Mavin – an independent foundation to bring (anonymous) accountability to the web. Our mission is to reward honest, authentic, fact-based and high-quality content. As well as to discredit and expose fake news, bad bots and trolls intended to wrongly inform its audience for whatever purpose. We bring accountability to the web but allow internet users to remain anonymous.

Why are we called Mavin? A mavin is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass timely and relevant knowledge on to others in a respective field . As such, we invite all content creators and their critics around the globe to share their expertise in a timely, relevant and above all truthful, unbiased and honest way. We seek to create an environment in which facts remain facts and in which trust in media and content will return. It is our objective to expose and/or ban fake news, bad bots and trolls, not by left- or right-wing polarisation but by the inclusive and objective Mavin Movement.

The Mavin Movement is about authors, academics, journalists, editors, bloggers as well as expert critics, reviewers and commenters coming together to bring accountability to the web. Combined with AI, Mavin will allow users to filter the good from the bad, the real from the fake. This will bring accountability and responsibility to the web, through collective reputation building. Accessible to all, tokenised and rewarding.

Anonymous Accountability

On the Mavin platform, authors of content, as well as reviewers, are held accountable while still warranting privacy through a safe environment in which personal data will not be exposed. This anonymous accountability will protect and improve the right to freedom of speech. Users’ reputation will be immutable, traceable and verifiable.

The vision of Mavin is to introduce an immutable reputation to the internet, and with that, we bring accountability to the web while allowing people to still publish or comment anonymously. As such, building on my introduction, with Mavin, in the future, the saying goes: On the internet, nobody knows if you are a dog, but at least you know if it is a good or bad dog.

We need all the help we can get to fix the internet and fight misinformation, especially now. Therefore, if our vision appeals to you, please reach out to us at info@mavin.org.

The post The Problem of Misinformation, Bad Bots and Online Trolls, Especially during the Coronavirus Crisis appeared first on Datafloq.

This is a uge problem that needs to be addressed and tackled.

So, what is it then? Isn’t ALL news in some way a bit fake – blown out of proportion, exaggerated, politically charged? Well, yes but fake news is a whole other level, it goes beyond the sensationalism of the tabloids we all loathe. It’s a type of propaganda that has garnered much attention in recent years, and this epidemic of yellow journalism’, is extremely damaging and is a massive cause for concern. Given the popularity of social media and online sources, completely bogus headlines and sensationalist content is only fueling political tensions and social divides the world over.

Interestingly, it was also one of the most popular areas in which Data Scientists are wanting to work this year according to our salary report, data science professionals want to work in detecting fake news, and finding ways in which machine learning can help deliver real and relevant content across platforms. It’s great to see so many bright minds passionate about tackling this problem.

It’s so insidious that it goes beyond the recent and much reported-on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal. Social media has notoriously played a huge part in how it spreads, with Facebook coming under fire for the role fake news and its distribution across the platform has impacted socio-political spectrums. With over 2billion users (subject to people deleting their accounts), it’s a great outlet for these fraudsters to spread their fake publications.

Propaganda, intentionally misleading information and hoaxes plague social media platforms and dark social (encrypted, or social sharing services like WhatsApp that cannot be tracked using web analytics programs). This is causing damage on many different levels, from swaying political elections and opinions, inciting hate and even violence – as seen in India. Fake news is a very real, very present problem.

Social Media sites are faced with mounting concern and urgency for them to take responsibility for the content on their sites and remove outlets that are spouting these alternate facts’.

Amidst all of the fakery and phoniness, there are companies out there looking to use artificial intelligence to tackle the problem. Having closed a seed round of $1million in February, the London based startup Factmata are wanting to use machine learning and AI to detect fake news, hoaxes and other such terrible, misleading information and clickbait out there on various platforms.

They use natural language processing to discern what a variety of fake news would look like from a large dataset. Using this information, the algorithms are then able to detect similar content and create a trust score based on these determining factors in real time.

The fakery goes beyond articles too. In extremely poor taste, Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonz”lez fell victim to image doctoring shortly after the tragedy. After appearing with classmates in Teen Vogue, where she is seen tearing up a paper gun target, the American right got hold of the imagery. This was edited it to show her ripping up the US Constitution instead, in a bid to create propaganda for their own ends. This fakery has been part of the abuse she, and her classmates have faced having strong views on gun control.

A step further are Deepfakes. They began circulating on the internet using deep learning algorithms to swap, very realistically, faces in videos. Whilst that in itself isn’t bad’ inherently, true to form, this soon escalated into using this technology to swap celebrity faces into porn. It’s not just celebrities that could face severe backlash and embarrassment from this should the tech fall into the wrong hands. The poor morality behind this led to Reddit banning the r/deepfakes subreddit, and even updated their rules on explicit imagery and consent.

Delving into the technology behind creating DeepFakes on Hackernoon, Gaurav Oberoi emphasizes the accessibility of creating such videos, anyone with hundreds of sample images, of person A and person B can feed them into an algorithm, and produce high-quality face swaps video editing skills are not needed. As long as you have the algorithm and the right processing power, anyone can create DeepFakes.

To combat this, DARPA are building tools to help in the fight against fake news, by creating technology that will automatically assess the integrity of images and videos to decipher any manipulation. There aren’t tools out there right now that are available commercially to do this, and with the increase in such media being used to promote propaganda and other types of fake news – it’s needed now more than ever.

With advancements in artificial intelligence, deep learning, and better processing power, this is a problem that could well get more and more sophisticated very quickly.

The post Tackling Fake News, and Deep Fakes With Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Datafloq.

Here are five startups founded by women to pay attention to this year.

1. Maven

Certain aspects of women’s healthcare still to this day remain taboo talking points. Periods. Contraception. Fertility.

Maven was created to change this and to provide women with easy access to healthcare and a community of support.

Founded by Katherine Ryder in 2014, Maven is comprised of a group of doctors, nurses, mental health counsellors and specialists in all areas of women’s health. The app makes it incredibly easy to schedule a convenient appointment via video or private message.

2. iSonoHealth

iSonoHealth is a startup that is utilising the power of AI and 3D technology to help women with personalised at-home breast health monitoring.

Founded in 2015 by Maryam Ziaei and Shadi Saberi, the solution features a machine learning algorithm that helps doctors identify abnormal masses in real time and helps to provide a more accurate diagnosis. This is a game-changer in early detection when it comes to breast cancer and a breakthrough in health tech development.

3. The Pill Club

The Pill Club provides women with access to birth control online. Part of the company’s mission and value statement is that a woman should have the ability to decide what is best for herself when it comes to her health.

The Pill Club makes it extremely easy to obtain the right type of contraceptive and in most cases, provides it for free.

4. Gwynnie Bee

Given that the average woman in the United States is a size 16, the fact that struggling mainstream stores like Macy’s haven’t jumped at the opportunity to embrace this underserved market is baffling. Enter Gwynnie Bee, an online clothing subscription service specifically for plus sizes.

Founder Christine Hunsicker launched Gwynnie Bee after doing research that revealed that 80% of women in the U.S. are between the sizes of 10 to 32, yet most clothing stores don’t stock sizes to reflect that data.

Recently, the subscription service became so popular that women of all sizes wanted access. In January, Gwynnie Bee launched an all-size inclusive business model.

5. Speakable

By bridging the gap between media and impact, Speakable makes it easy to take action on current news stories and events that inspire you. Through the Action Button you can instantly contact your congressional representative to voice your opinion and take the necessary steps to enact change.

Speakable was founded by Jordan Hewson in 2015 after she was inspired by reading an article about Malala Yousafzai and clicking on a link to petition support for girls’ education. She realised that by making it extremely easy to take action on societal issues from human rights to stricter gun laws, more people would be willing to make their voices heard and actually feel like they are having an impact.

This ability to try and change the course of the news stories one will consume in the future is especially popular among today’s millennial generation. In an interview with Quartz, Hewson stated, They want to do more than just read headlines, they want to change headlines.

This is just a small sampling of the many startups that are currently working the change the world for women. It certainly goes without saying that the future is indeed, female.

The post 5 Startups that are Empowering Women in 2018 appeared first on Datafloq.