Samsung unveils AI-powered Digital Avatar NEON that "Converse & Sympathise" like Real Humans

A Samsung lab on Tuesday unveiled a digital avatar it described as an AI-powered "artificial human," claiming it is able to "converse and sympathise" like real people.

The announcement at the opening of the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas touted a new kind of artificial intelligence called NEON, produced by the independent Samsung unit Star Labs.

But some industry experts questioned the lack of detail provided by Samsung on the underlying technology.

"As far as we can tell, there's no mystery here at all. NEON is just digital avatars - computer-animated human likenesses about as deserving of the 'artificial human' moniker as Siri," said the specialised tech website, The Verge.

"Don't worry about any 'AI android uprising' - these aren't the artificial humans you're looking for," it added.

According to the California-based unit of the South Korean giant, the technology allows for the creation of customised digital beings that can appear on displays or video games and could be designed to be "TV anchors, spokespeople, or movie actors" or even "companions and friends."

"NEONs will be our friends, collaborators and companions, continually learning, evolving and forming memories from their interactions," said Pranav Mistry, chief executive of the lab.

The NEON creators said the new virtual humans are the product of advances in technologies including neural networks and computational reality.

According to Star Labs, NEON is inspired "by the rhythmic complexities of nature and extensively trained with how humans look, behave and interact." The avatars "create life-like reality that is beyond normal perception to distinguish, with latency of less than a few milliseconds."

While digital avatars have long been able to be programmed for specific tasks such as role players in games, NEON goes further by enabling interactions that can incorporate human emotion.

Although the artificial humans may borrow features from real people, "each NEON has his or her own unique personality and can show new expressions, movements, and dialogs," the company said.

The announcement comes amid a proliferation of AI-manipulated computer videos known as "deepfakes," and growing concerns about how they could be used to deceive or manipulate.

Some analysts fear these fakes could be misused during an election campaign to exacerbate political tensions. Jack Gold, analyst at J. Gold Associates, said Samsung may be ahead of the pack if it can develop avatars that can show emotions and expressions."We have to wait and see what this means," Gold said.

"But it has major implications for many fields like customer service, help desk functions, entertainment, and of course could also be used to 'fake' a human interacting with a live person for bad or illegal purposes." Avi Greengart of the consultancy Techsponential said the avatars could be realistic but also "creepy."

"Leaving aside how impressive the technology is, will NEON be used in ways that people like, just tolerate, or actively hate?" he said.

According to Samsung and Star Labs, NEON offers avatars with lifelike reality "that is beyond normal perception to distinguish." The company envisions commercial opportunities to create avatars to be service representatives, financial advisors, healthcare providers or concierges.

"We have always dreamed of such virtual beings in science fictions and movies," Mistry said.

"NEONs will integrate with our world and serve as new links to a better future, a world where 'humans are humans' and 'machines are humane.'" The laboratory was launched in 2019 by Mistry, who had previously been a senior Samsung vice president and head of innovation at Samsung Mobile.

He was known for developing Sixth Sense, a gesture-based wearable technology system built at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The India-born Mistry also worked on projects with Microsoft and Google and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (AFP)

10 Things in Tech You Need To Know Today [02 – 07 October]

The world of tech had a busy week. From new announcements, to updates on the emerging technologies to brand new launches, a lot happened this week. In order to keep you updated, we at IndianWeb2 bring to you the top 10 things that happened in the tech world this week.

1) Here’s First Beer Named By Artificial Intelligence

When Brewers at Old Nation Brewing Company couldn’t find the right name for their new double dry hopped saison, they decided to turn to neural networks for help and well, they succeeded. Introducing The Fine Stranger: World’s very first beer named by a neural network.
According to the Michigan Brewery, considering the drink is a “blend of Old World and New” and combines a “strong, peppery, fruity Belgian Saison yeast strain with the low-bitterness/high-flavor hop goodness of the New England style,” the name The Fine Stranger suits the beer quite well.

The neural network naming method was introduced to the brewery by research scientist Janelle Shane, who makes use of the char-rnn neural network framework to train the computer to “speak” using only beer words, then turns on the creativity and makes it think.

For Old Nation Brewing Company, Shane only trained the neural network on a constrained list, including beers with the brewers’ keywords: Juice, haze, New England, Vermont, citra, Belgium, spicy, clove, saison, farmhouse, and “all these trendy new hazy IPA names.”

2) Facebook Launches ‘Context’ Button In a Bid To Fight Fake News

Social networking giant Facebook is not ready to drop its tame the fake news mission anytime soon. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company is currently testing out a new ‘Context’ button that will allow its more than 2 billion users get a little more context about the source of the news that they’re reading on the platform.

With the context button, Facebook users reading news on the platform will be able to get context on the source of a news article with just a single click without having to leave Facebook and their news feed.

The additional contextual information about a news piece will be gathered from across Facebook and other sources, such as information from the publisher’s Wikipedia entry. In cases where information is unavailable, the social networking company “will let people know, which can also be helpful context.”

3) IBM Partners With Banks For A Blockchain-Powered Trade Finance Platform

Global technology and innovation company, IBM has joined hands with five banks – UBS, Bank of Montreal, CaixaBank, Commerzbank and Erste Group – to launch a blockchain-based trade finance platform called Batavia.

To be accessed by organisations of all sizes anywhere in the world, the platform aims to
support trade finance transactions by helping banks and their clients automate the trade finance process, something which still majorly remains manual and paper-based. The platform will be powered by the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework.

According to IBM, Batavia will be supporting trade finance for transactions across all modes of trade, whether it be by land, sea or air. The software firm has decided to take the responsibility of acting as a consultant alongside transportation industry experts as well as the banks’ customers so as to ensure that the platform always remains flexible and intuitive.

4) Introducing ’emCash’ – Dubai’s Own Official Cryptocurrency

While several countries around the world are still making their stance on whether to legalise digital currency or not, Dubai is on its way to unveil its very first official state cryptocurrency.

The government of Dubai has decided to develop an encrypted blockchain-powered digital currency called emCash, which will enable the citizens of the city to pay for both government and non-government services alike.

To be developed in partnership between UK-based blockchain startup Object Tech and Emcredit, a subsidiary of Dubai Economy, emCash will be based on the currently in trend blockchain technology and would require users to download a mobile wallet called emPay on their smartphones.

5) Bias, Not Robots, Is The Real AI Danger

Tech magnate Elon Musk recently termed Artificial Intelligence (AI) as “the greatest risk we face as a civilisation.” But, Google’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, has different point of view to offer on the issue.

According to Giannandrea, it isn’t the robots that we have to worry about, it is the danger that might be lurking inside these machine-learning algorithms used to make millions of decisions every minute.

Speaking before a recent Google conference on the relationship between humans and AI systems, Giannandrea said, “The real safety question, if you want to call it that, is that if we give these systems biased data, they will be biased.”

Considering the fact that AI is currently spreading like wild fire, the problem of bias in machine learning has the potential of becoming more significant as the technology enters into more critical spheres of life such as law and medicine, and people without a deeper technical understanding of the technology are given the task of deploying it.

6) Stolen Data From Over 6,000 Indian Businesses Available On Darknet, Claims Quickheal

A forum on DarkNet is reportedly selling data stolen from over 6,000 Indian businesses that includes Internet Service Providers (ISPs), some of the key government organisations, banks and enterprises. The advertisement was recently spotted by global IT security firm Quick Heal’s Enterprise Security brand Seqrite.

In a company statement, Seqrite shared further details about the advertisement they discovered along with its partner seQtree InfoServices. According to the statement, the mastermind hacker behind the advertisement is demanding 15 Bitcoins (nearly INR 42 lakh) for the information and is offering network takedown of affected organisations for an unspecified amount.

The security firm believes that if the information falls into wrong hands, it has the potential of becoming a major tool of mass disruption.

7) BSNL To Offer Low-Cost Smartphones Bundled With Low Tariff Plans

Indian state-owned telecommunications company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) after completing 17 years of its services has plans to offer low cost smartphones to its customers in the form bundled offers. Although in 2014 too BSNL had launched low cost smartphones and tablets called BSNL Penta Bharat, however, it didn’t succeed and failed miserably in front of other private low cost smartphone manufacturers such as Micromax and Spice.

This time, the news from The Hindu reveals that BSNL has tied up with Micromax and Lava, two local smartphone manufacturers that will offer some low cost handsets to the operator.The nationwide launch will follow shortly as the operator is in the process of signing the deals with Micromax and Lava from whom BSNL will source smartphones.

While the pricing of the devices have not been fixed, the operator expects the devices to be priced in the range of “Rs 2,500 or less.” Principal general manager- Hyderabad telecom district, K, Ramchand told The Hindu that the final cost is still being worked out, but the devices will be affordable.

8) IoT Alone Make 15 Million Jobs in India

In a future optimistic announcement made by India’s telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan recently in an interview, she stated that new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) have the latent potential of giving birth to 10–15 million jobs in the country even though currently the IT services sector is finding it hard to open any new job avenues for the Indian workforce.

Speaking at the recently held IoT India Congress 2017, Sundararajan took the podium and said, “In other places including Bengaluru, there have been worries about how IT sector in India will deal with new technologies and new challenges. We think, or rather it is guessed, that India can receive 10–15 Million new jobs made in IoT alone.”

She further backed his claims by explaining, “IoT has major possibility for job creation and most of these will not be made by large firms but by small companies.” Sundararajan highlights that it is the startups that are the innovative ones as they have been able to conceive solutions in sports wearable, diagnostics, and water managements. These areas which were once considered problematic have turned out to be great opportunities for the Indian startup industry.

IoT is one of the few technologies that has the real potential of changing the way the entire world works. Gartner predicts that there will be about 8.4 billion connected devices by the end of this year, a figure which has increased by a whopping 31% from 2016.

9) ISRO Will Make SpaceTech As New Frontier for Indian Entrepreneurs and Startups

In the near future, we might see space technology opening new frontier for Indian entrepreneurs and startups, according to a statement made by ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar.

Speaking at the recently concluded IIMA’s Red Brick Summit (RBS), Kumar said that there are tremendous opportunities opening up with the fast-evolving technology, and there is growing scope for collaboration between public and private sectors.

Kumar further revealed that currently there is a huge demand for location-based services and geospatial technology for various applications such as vehicle tracking.

Space technology is a technology developed by space science or the aerospace industry for use in spaceflight, satellites, or space exploration. Space technology includes spacecraft, satellites, space stations, and support infrastructure, equipment, and procedures.

10) Despite Talent, Tools India Can’t Handle Big Cyber Attacks – Report

India is a land of abundant talent. We all know that by now, but despite of having such talented workforce, the country is still unprepared to protect itself if a cyberattack to the scale of ‘WannaCrypt’ or ‘Petya’ ever hits home turf.

According to a recent IBM study conducted by Ponemon Institute, while the average cost of a data breach in 2017 decreased by 10 per cent globally when compared to the 2016 figure, but for the Indian enterprises, it grew by 12.3 percent from Rs 97.3 million in 2016 to Rs 110 million in 2017.

Elaborating on the findings of the report, John Shier, Senior Security Expert at the Abingdon, UK-headquartered Sophos, did an interview with IANS and said, “India has well-trained, well-educated and capable IT people. The country has got access to all the tools it needs to secure its systems. Yet, in the case of a big cyber attack, India is still unprepared.”

Giving solution to the problem he mentions, Shier said that the country needs to do just three simple things to fix the issue to a certain extent, he said, “It is the time to look at the procedures and make sure they are implemented to secure the data. Firstly, it is needed to see that the things are done. Secondly, it needs to be checked if the things are done correctly and thirdly, test it repeatedly to make sure what has been done is done right.”

Sher believes that by doing the basics right, the companies can helps cybersecurity firms in staying one step ahead of the criminals.

10 Things in Tech You Need To Know Today [02 – 07 October]

The world of tech had a busy week. From new announcements, to updates on the emerging technologies to brand new launches, a lot happened this week. In order to keep you updated, we at IndianWeb2 bring to you the top 10 things that happened in the tech world this week.

1) Here’s First Beer Named By Artificial Intelligence

When Brewers at Old Nation Brewing Company couldn’t find the right name for their new double dry hopped saison, they decided to turn to neural networks for help and well, they succeeded. Introducing The Fine Stranger: World’s very first beer named by a neural network.
According to the Michigan Brewery, considering the drink is a “blend of Old World and New” and combines a “strong, peppery, fruity Belgian Saison yeast strain with the low-bitterness/high-flavor hop goodness of the New England style,” the name The Fine Stranger suits the beer quite well.

The neural network naming method was introduced to the brewery by research scientist Janelle Shane, who makes use of the char-rnn neural network framework to train the computer to “speak” using only beer words, then turns on the creativity and makes it think.

For Old Nation Brewing Company, Shane only trained the neural network on a constrained list, including beers with the brewers’ keywords: Juice, haze, New England, Vermont, citra, Belgium, spicy, clove, saison, farmhouse, and “all these trendy new hazy IPA names.”

2) Facebook Launches ‘Context’ Button In a Bid To Fight Fake News

Social networking giant Facebook is not ready to drop its tame the fake news mission anytime soon. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company is currently testing out a new ‘Context’ button that will allow its more than 2 billion users get a little more context about the source of the news that they’re reading on the platform.

With the context button, Facebook users reading news on the platform will be able to get context on the source of a news article with just a single click without having to leave Facebook and their news feed.

The additional contextual information about a news piece will be gathered from across Facebook and other sources, such as information from the publisher’s Wikipedia entry. In cases where information is unavailable, the social networking company “will let people know, which can also be helpful context.”

3) IBM Partners With Banks For A Blockchain-Powered Trade Finance Platform

Global technology and innovation company, IBM has joined hands with five banks – UBS, Bank of Montreal, CaixaBank, Commerzbank and Erste Group – to launch a blockchain-based trade finance platform called Batavia.

To be accessed by organisations of all sizes anywhere in the world, the platform aims to
support trade finance transactions by helping banks and their clients automate the trade finance process, something which still majorly remains manual and paper-based. The platform will be powered by the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework.

According to IBM, Batavia will be supporting trade finance for transactions across all modes of trade, whether it be by land, sea or air. The software firm has decided to take the responsibility of acting as a consultant alongside transportation industry experts as well as the banks’ customers so as to ensure that the platform always remains flexible and intuitive.

4) Introducing ’emCash’ – Dubai’s Own Official Cryptocurrency

While several countries around the world are still making their stance on whether to legalise digital currency or not, Dubai is on its way to unveil its very first official state cryptocurrency.

The government of Dubai has decided to develop an encrypted blockchain-powered digital currency called emCash, which will enable the citizens of the city to pay for both government and non-government services alike.

To be developed in partnership between UK-based blockchain startup Object Tech and Emcredit, a subsidiary of Dubai Economy, emCash will be based on the currently in trend blockchain technology and would require users to download a mobile wallet called emPay on their smartphones.

5) Bias, Not Robots, Is The Real AI Danger

Tech magnate Elon Musk recently termed Artificial Intelligence (AI) as “the greatest risk we face as a civilisation.” But, Google’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, has different point of view to offer on the issue.

According to Giannandrea, it isn’t the robots that we have to worry about, it is the danger that might be lurking inside these machine-learning algorithms used to make millions of decisions every minute.

Speaking before a recent Google conference on the relationship between humans and AI systems, Giannandrea said, “The real safety question, if you want to call it that, is that if we give these systems biased data, they will be biased.”

Considering the fact that AI is currently spreading like wild fire, the problem of bias in machine learning has the potential of becoming more significant as the technology enters into more critical spheres of life such as law and medicine, and people without a deeper technical understanding of the technology are given the task of deploying it.

6) Stolen Data From Over 6,000 Indian Businesses Available On Darknet, Claims Quickheal

A forum on DarkNet is reportedly selling data stolen from over 6,000 Indian businesses that includes Internet Service Providers (ISPs), some of the key government organisations, banks and enterprises. The advertisement was recently spotted by global IT security firm Quick Heal’s Enterprise Security brand Seqrite.

In a company statement, Seqrite shared further details about the advertisement they discovered along with its partner seQtree InfoServices. According to the statement, the mastermind hacker behind the advertisement is demanding 15 Bitcoins (nearly INR 42 lakh) for the information and is offering network takedown of affected organisations for an unspecified amount.

The security firm believes that if the information falls into wrong hands, it has the potential of becoming a major tool of mass disruption.

7) BSNL To Offer Low-Cost Smartphones Bundled With Low Tariff Plans

Indian state-owned telecommunications company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) after completing 17 years of its services has plans to offer low cost smartphones to its customers in the form bundled offers. Although in 2014 too BSNL had launched low cost smartphones and tablets called BSNL Penta Bharat, however, it didn’t succeed and failed miserably in front of other private low cost smartphone manufacturers such as Micromax and Spice.

This time, the news from The Hindu reveals that BSNL has tied up with Micromax and Lava, two local smartphone manufacturers that will offer some low cost handsets to the operator.The nationwide launch will follow shortly as the operator is in the process of signing the deals with Micromax and Lava from whom BSNL will source smartphones.

While the pricing of the devices have not been fixed, the operator expects the devices to be priced in the range of “Rs 2,500 or less.” Principal general manager- Hyderabad telecom district, K, Ramchand told The Hindu that the final cost is still being worked out, but the devices will be affordable.

8) IoT Alone Make 15 Million Jobs in India

In a future optimistic announcement made by India’s telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan recently in an interview, she stated that new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) have the latent potential of giving birth to 10–15 million jobs in the country even though currently the IT services sector is finding it hard to open any new job avenues for the Indian workforce.

Speaking at the recently held IoT India Congress 2017, Sundararajan took the podium and said, “In other places including Bengaluru, there have been worries about how IT sector in India will deal with new technologies and new challenges. We think, or rather it is guessed, that India can receive 10–15 Million new jobs made in IoT alone.”

She further backed his claims by explaining, “IoT has major possibility for job creation and most of these will not be made by large firms but by small companies.” Sundararajan highlights that it is the startups that are the innovative ones as they have been able to conceive solutions in sports wearable, diagnostics, and water managements. These areas which were once considered problematic have turned out to be great opportunities for the Indian startup industry.

IoT is one of the few technologies that has the real potential of changing the way the entire world works. Gartner predicts that there will be about 8.4 billion connected devices by the end of this year, a figure which has increased by a whopping 31% from 2016.

9) ISRO Will Make SpaceTech As New Frontier for Indian Entrepreneurs and Startups

In the near future, we might see space technology opening new frontier for Indian entrepreneurs and startups, according to a statement made by ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar.

Speaking at the recently concluded IIMA’s Red Brick Summit (RBS), Kumar said that there are tremendous opportunities opening up with the fast-evolving technology, and there is growing scope for collaboration between public and private sectors.

Kumar further revealed that currently there is a huge demand for location-based services and geospatial technology for various applications such as vehicle tracking.

Space technology is a technology developed by space science or the aerospace industry for use in spaceflight, satellites, or space exploration. Space technology includes spacecraft, satellites, space stations, and support infrastructure, equipment, and procedures.

10) Despite Talent, Tools India Can’t Handle Big Cyber Attacks – Report

India is a land of abundant talent. We all know that by now, but despite of having such talented workforce, the country is still unprepared to protect itself if a cyberattack to the scale of ‘WannaCrypt’ or ‘Petya’ ever hits home turf.

According to a recent IBM study conducted by Ponemon Institute, while the average cost of a data breach in 2017 decreased by 10 per cent globally when compared to the 2016 figure, but for the Indian enterprises, it grew by 12.3 percent from Rs 97.3 million in 2016 to Rs 110 million in 2017.

Elaborating on the findings of the report, John Shier, Senior Security Expert at the Abingdon, UK-headquartered Sophos, did an interview with IANS and said, “India has well-trained, well-educated and capable IT people. The country has got access to all the tools it needs to secure its systems. Yet, in the case of a big cyber attack, India is still unprepared.”

Giving solution to the problem he mentions, Shier said that the country needs to do just three simple things to fix the issue to a certain extent, he said, “It is the time to look at the procedures and make sure they are implemented to secure the data. Firstly, it is needed to see that the things are done. Secondly, it needs to be checked if the things are done correctly and thirdly, test it repeatedly to make sure what has been done is done right.”

Sher believes that by doing the basics right, the companies can helps cybersecurity firms in staying one step ahead of the criminals.

AI Startup Talespin Expands Its Technology Offering, Launches Computer Vision As A Service

Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning startup, Talespin has announced its foray into image tagging as a service, in addition to its chatbot. Talespin enables retail and online businesses with solutions to increase customer conversion. Its technology stack uses deep learning to classify and tag product images on different attributes like colour, collar, sleeves, occasion, etc. This coupled with the chatbot helps retail brands answer three core questions for customers shopping online - “What should I buy?”, “Is this available in my size?” and “Is there anything similar to this?”.

Founded by a team of 4 co-founders in July 2016, Talespin works as a plug and play solution for businesses enabling them to leverage advanced technologies to increase customer conversion - both in-store and online. It offers in-store tablet based assisted selling solutions to retail brands across various categories such as apparel, footwear, eyewear and beauty and wellness. It is now live in stores across Delhi/ NCR, Punjab and J&K.

Commenting on the recent development, Tapan Dixit, CEO and Co-founder, Talespin said, “Image recognition and classification which forms the crux of image tagging, is one of the simpler applications of computer vision. Computer vision is the science that aims to give capabilities similar to that of the human eye to a machine or computer. It helps computers develop a high-level understanding from digital images or even videos. Bring the two - (AI powered) chat and computer vision together, you get a chat with vision. One good example of its application is a frame finder solution for eyewear stores.”

How Does It Work?

Chat with vision can be used to build an in-store frame recommended AI which will help the store associate suggest the right kind of frames for his/her customers. With the Talespin’s in-store kiosk, a store associate at an eyewear brand captures a picture of the customers' face. Once the image is clicked it is run through a deep learning model to generate tags based on face structure and skin tone. The frame selection takes place using a digital inventory to support hard-to-fit and picky customers and prevents the loss of a sale. Basis the tags’ match, the system suggests the design type for the frame and products that fit the selection - all in a conversational format. All suggestions are based on the data in the inventory available. Once the customer selects a frame the payment can be received on the kiosk itself. Talespin also enables integration within a brand’s current loyalty program.

Talespin’s computer vision technology stack trains a series of deep learning models (one for each of a small group of attributes) and then creates a system for using those trained models to tag new images. The training process of the models can be a long task (measured in days) but once the models are trained and tuned, tagging a new image only takes seconds.

“The applications of computer vision are multiple. All current tasks performed by the human vision system can be taught to be executed by a machine algorithm. This coupled with a chat bot gives you an AI capable of processing information from images in real time and presenting it in a conversational format”, said Dixit.

The image tagging service can help brands cut down on costs that come with current manual processes of tagging as well as reduces room for error. With the right attributes available for every product, the discoverability factor goes up several notches. Talespin’s AI and deep learning technology stack at www.talespin.ai is now available to transform how brands interact with customers and vice versa.

Year 2017 Update of 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2016

With the onset of every new year, the tech industry comes with a list of breakthrough technologies that are going to hit the ball out of the park that year. Since, we at www.indianweb2.com have already covered the top 5 Notable Upcoming Changes in Tech World in 2017, we decided to evaluate last year's MIT Technology Review highlighted 10 breakthrough technologies for the year 2016, and where they stand now.

1) Conversational Interfaces

In the starting of last year, the world came to know that certain improvements in machine learning had made software much more capable and accurate at transcribing human speech than it ever was, thus opening the doors for computers to be used in more situations and places in our lives. Since then, the year witnessed a number of large technology companies coming forward with their innovations to encourage people to make use of their own voices to interact with computers. We saw a competition brimming in the space of voice-operated assistants, such as Apple's Siri and Google's newly launched Google Assistant. In fact, tech giants Amazon and Google both believe that voice interfaces can have a major role to play in the houses. This could be seen when Google launched Google Home in competition with Amazon's already established and much appreciated Echo. Amazon is now trying to up the ante by figuring out how speech interfaces can be improved if they could recognize signs of emotion human voice.

2) DNA App Store

Meet Helix, a San Francisco–based company whose goal is to make the process of information extraction hidden in one's genome as easy and cost effective as it is installing a mobile application on our phones. The company invested a whole year in getting this idea from paper to reality. The process included building a huge, centralized DNA sequencing facility in the city of San Diego. Helix's app store finally saw the daylight in November last year. The app store offers National Geographic’s ancestry research service, called Geno 2.0, as well as an app that gives parents-to-be advises about the genes they might be passing on to their children and another app that makes use of one's DNA to give them recommendations about the wines that would best suit their palate. In order to participate, a user will be required to order any of the tests and give their spit sample. After that is done, the person's DNA will remain on file so that any new apps that they buy can access it without any delay.

3) Slack

Slack, a service conceptualised and built for the era of mobile phone and short text message, offers instant messaging and chat rooms for use at the workplace. Its features such as seamless syncing across desktop and mobile devices and easy file uploading have proved to be major attractions among office workers sick and tired with the e-mail. Such has been the success of Slack that tech giants like Microsoft is soon going to launch a service called Teams, similar to Slack, suggesting that instant messaging at work has a huge scope for growth.

4) Power from Air

Since the human race nowadays figuratively lives in a ocean of Wi-Fi signals; wouldn't it be interesting if we could design gadgets that could innovatively use them to communicate and power themselves? Some University of Washington researchers decided to develop this very approach, which them named passive Wi-Fi, and launched a startup called Jeeva Wireless.

The startup is currently considering adding connectivity to disposable medical products, and is in talks with some pharmaceutical company foe the same. The researchers have been successful in demonstrating a Wi-Fi-powered contact lens that can easily link to a smartphone over Wi-Fi, and a prototype skin patch that makes use of the very same approach for collecting and communicating data about a human being's breathing patterns and temperature.

5) Immune Engineering

The year 2016 witnessed major progress being made in high-tech cancer cures enabled by using gene editing to tune the human immune system. The first great step was when scientists in America got an approval to start making use of CRISPR, a gene-editing technique, to customize T cells and turn them into cancer killing cells. The study had Internet billionaire Sean Parker's backing, who had announced that he would give away a whopping $250 million towards “hacking” the immune system. In November, a China-based company made an announcement that it had successfully been able to dose a patient with the first T cells edited with CRISPR.

6) Precise Gene Editing in Plants

CRISPR, the gene editing technique isn’t just limited to cancer treatment. It can also be put to make the process of genetically modifying crops easier than ever. The year 2016 saw the United States regulators reaffirming that many of CRISPR crops won’t be regulated, meaning they could come to the market much faster than any of the previous genetically modifying crops could. A front-runner in this is DuPont created “waxy” corn plant that can be used in canned food goods and as an emulsifier for salad dressings. The plant can be commercialized within a period of just five years. Then there are also scientists who created non-browning mushrooms. In December, New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's researchers were successful in demonstrating that gene editing could even make the commercial tomato varieties ripen on the vine two weeks faster than the usual time taken to achieve the same.

7) SolarCity’s Gigafactory

Elon Musk’s solar company in New York has built a 27-acre SolarCity that can start the production of solar cells this year. If this happens, the cost involved in installing those big solar panels on houses can come down sharply, as Musk's SolarCity is not only capable of manufacturing and selling them, but also in installing them. Unfortunately, still the SolarCity has been losing money consistently. Although, a recent deal which will involves SolarCity merging with Musk’s Tesla Motors does offer a ray of hope, but it is no secret that the car company has issues of its own to deal with.

8) Tesla Autopilot

Tesla's software update to upgrade sixty thousand cars on the road with the ability to steer themselves on certain roads made it earn a spot on the breakthrough technologies list of last year. Tesla’s automated driving technology has now driven Tesla car owners more than 200 million miles. Late last year, the car company made an announcement about the addition of a new hardware to its vehicles that allow full self-driving capability, but when will the capability be launched is slightly unclear right now, although Musk is clear that it would earlier than its rivals. The data connections in all Tesla vehicles might prove to be advantageous for the company as it could help it in testing the software against real-world data. Currently, the project's progress is a little slow because of the two federal investigations that the company is facing because of the first fatal crash involving Tesla Autopilot, in which a Tesla drove into a tractor-trailer turning across the road.

9) Reusable Rockets

In the year 2015, two robots did something that no robot had done before- they were successful in landing back on their launch pads on folding legs. These two innovative robots came from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Reusable rockets have the potential of making space access much cheaper than it is currently. Since the first landings achievement, Musk's SpaceX has been successful in making five more landings, four of them were on an uncrewed barge in the Atlantic ocean.

This year, SpaceX aims to start reusing the rockets that have been previously launched and landed. Bezos' Blue Origin has already reflown one of its lighter, smaller reusable rockets. The booster that first flew and landed in the year 2015 has now successfully blasted off and safely touched down 5 times.

10) Robots That Teach Each Other

Brown professor Stefanie Tellex is trying to make robots klutz free by making teams of robots experiment with the real world, pool in their experiences in attempting to pick up simple objects such as toothbrushes and hair brushes so that their software can build up their knowledge faster. Tech biggies are now adopting professor Tellex's ideology and approach. Fanuc, which is one of the largest manufacturers of industrial robots in the world, recently announced that it will be designing future products so that parallel learning technique can be used in factories. Google researchers recently disclosed information about how a collection of robotic arms called as the “arm farm” has successfully learned to operate door handles.

Happy Finish Launches AI Technology Prototype Ahead of Crowdfunding

Happy Finish, the VR content specialists and global production studio, today announced the launch of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. Shoegazer, currently a proof of concept (PoC) for the fashion-retail industry, uses image recognition and transfer learning technologies to identify brands and models of trainers in real-time – with 95% accuracy. To support the full launch of Shoegazer, Happy Finish is also embarking on a round of capital fundraising for £395,000.

Happy Finish’s Shoegazer is a unique PoC for the fashion and retail industry. The current prototype uses image recognition to identify certain features of trainers – including logo to shape and style. By using transfer learning technology, the app is able to match the picture a consumer takes of a trainer on their smartphone with pre-existing data sets, identifying the exact brand and style of the trainer in real-time. Using two comparative tests for benchmarking, one based on accuracy and the other on computational time, Shoegazer identifies trainers with 95% accuracy.

There is also opportunity to apply the transfer learning technology from Shoegazer to other areas within fashion and retail, including clothes, accessories and bags. The nature of the application also means that it is not solely limited to individual brands - there is also an opportunity for retailers to use the application to cross-sell other products within their portfolio. The prototype is already being presented to partner brands with a view to market launch in late 2016.

Commenting on the company’s exciting new growth opportunities, Stuart Waplington, Global CEO of Happy Finish, said, “Retail is always one of the first markets to adopt new and emerging technologies. We have seen the retail industry successfully adopt VR and AR and we have even been heavily involved in the process - which means diversifying into AI is a natural next step for us. While we have hired a small team to work exclusively in this area, we're looking forward to vastly accelerating our rate of research and growing our team to serve as the global home base for Happy Finish’s machine learning efforts.”

Renowned for its work in virtual and augmented reality and boasting an impressive portfolio of commercial VR and AR experiences, Happy Finish will use its first-hand market experience to support its diversification into AI. According to Bank of America, the global market for AI is set to be worth $70 billion by 2020. Rapid adoption of AI is set to transform a range of markets, including advertising and media, finance and retail, offering benefits such as improved productivity and increased customer satisfaction.

Happy Finish is embarking on a round of crowdfunding, which will open today, to support to launch of its AI technology. The funds raised will be used to grow Happy Finish’s AI research team and help bring its PoC to market, as well as expand its current VR and AR offering into the thriving Asia Pacific market.

“Artificial intelligence is designed to mimic human functions like learning and problem solving. So when Google DeepMind beat champion AlphaGo player Lee Sedol earlier this year, it was seen as a major breakthrough - and the world woke up to the reality of artificial intelligence,” said Carl Davies, Global CMO at Happy Finish. “Our Shoegazer PoC provides great revenue opportunities for brands and retailers alike. Not only does it mean consumers can identify trainers that they may in fact go on to purchase, but brands and retailers can also make further recommendations – whether that is trainers of a similar style or other pieces of clothing to match. AI is set to transform a number of industries, and our Shoegazer is just one of many use cases of how this new technology can be applied and monetised.”