News

The idea of a 4-day work week is nothing new. Various companies and governments have been experimenting with pilot programs in the past. However, the on-going pandemic has continuously pushed for more flexible working arrangements. As a result many campaigns for more flexible work have reignited. For example, last month Spain’s Vice President Pablo Iglesias made a proposal for a 4-day work week that could lead to more jobs, improved health, and increase productivity. Similarly, the British company Unilever announced they would by trialing a year-long program and access the outcome. Whenever the subject [...]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released its first artificial intelligence and machine learning action plan. The action plan describes a multi-pronged approach to advance the Agency's oversight of AI/ML-based medical software. The Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Based Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) Action Plan is a response to stakeholder feedback from an April 2019 discussion paper. "This action plan outlines the FDA's next steps towards furthering oversight for AI/ML-based SaMD," said Bakul Patel, director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health. "The plan outlines a holistic approach [...]

The job and company review site Glassdoor has released its annual 100 Best Places to Work list for 2021. To compile the list, Glassdoor analyzed 70 million employee reviews across 1.3 million companies. The organizations considered for the large businesses list required at least 1,000 employees with at least 75 ratings across all attributes. Attributes include rating things like management, career opportunities, compensation & benefits, work/life balance, and culture & values. Management consulting Bain & Company was ranked as Glassdoor’s #1 of 2021. NVIDIA, HubSpot, Google, and Microsoft came out in the top 10 ranked 2nd, 4th, 6th, [...]

The creation and spread of immunization and vaccine misinformation has been a persisting problem for some time. Now, with the global rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine the issue is getting worse. To help put a stop to misinformation, the Google News Initiative has announced the launch of a global open fund. The “COVID-19 Vaccine Counter-Misinformation Open Fund” is worth up to $3 million. Its aims are to support journalistic efforts to effectively fact-check misinformation about the COVID-19 immunization process.  “While the COVID-19 infodemic has been global in nature, misinformation has also been used to target specific populations,” Google [...]

Valo Health is a technology company developing a drug discovery platform powered by artificial intelligence and large patient databases. Its aim is to transform the discovery and development process to accelerate the creation of new medicine.  The company has raised $190 million in Series B financing bringing the total raised to date to $285 million. The news is accompanied by their announcement of working on select therapeutic programs.  With over 125-million patient-years of data, and combining it with machine learning, Valo is creating a new approach to R&D across the entire development lifecycle. The approach has already shown [...]

Modern weather forecasts are typically done by powerful computers performing detailed physics calculations. This taxing method required solving complex equations in an attempt to predict temperature, wind, rain, and other weather events. Utilizing modern artificial intelligence techniques could prove a useful alternative. A newly developed global weather model makes predictions based on the past 40 years of weather data. This analysis of past weather patterns could yield more efficient and potentially accurate results than current models. The simple, data-based AI model can simulate a year's weather around the globe much more quickly and almost as well as traditional [...]

The hackers behind the SolarWinds compromise were able to break into Microsoft Corp’s internal network. Gaining access to internal accounts, they were also able to access some Microsoft source code repositories.  It is not clear how much or what parts of Microsoft's source code repositories the hackers were able to access. According to Microsoft, the hackers didn’t make any changes to the repositories. Nor were any production systems or customer data breached. The hackers had used SolarWinds Orion software as a way of breaking into sensitive U.S. government networks. Furthermore, the hacks were used to access networks of [...]

Graphcore is a UK company that develops computer chips designed for use in artificial intelligence. They have now raised $222m from investors, valuing the company at $2.77bn. The company's latest round of funding was led by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan as well as investors including Fidelity International and Schroders. The new funding will be used to expand its technology which competes against chips from Nvidia and Intel. The $2.8bn valuation propels Graphcore further up the ranks of the UK's most valuable private tech companies. Graphcore first achieved a valuation above $1bn, in 2018, when it raised $200m [...]

During major economic events, citizens look to their governments for credible information, guidance, and leadership. Technology used in developing smart cities could be the way forward.  Back in 2015 India launched an initiative, Smart Cities Mission. It was designed to enable cities to effectively leverage technology in improving citizen services and quality of life. This year the Indian government was able to leverage this as part of their emergency response to the pandemic. The World Economic Forum and Deloitte compiled a report on 3 Indian cities that were able to utilize this technology. The report is titled Technology [...]

Google has launched a “sensitive topics” review to tighten control over research papers written by its scientists. This might be affecting the bias and/or content of the papers. Reuters reported three cases where authors were requested to keep its technology in positive light. The new policy requires researchers to consult with legal, policy, and public relations teams before pursuing certain topics. A senior Google manager reviewing a study on content recommendation technology shortly before publication this summer told authors to "Take great care to strike a positive tone," according to internal correspondence read to Reuters. Further correspondence shows [...]