Automation

AI AI everywhere: Latest innovations in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been venturing into several sectors, the number of sectors increasing with time and better innovation.

In a recent report, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2024, 40% of large enterprises will further the usage of AI/ML throughout all business-critical horizontal functions such as HR, procurement, marketing, legal, and supply chain.

To boost AI adoption in India, Nasscom and Microsoft announced the second edition of the ‘AI Gamechangers’ awards.

“India was ranked 8th in the top 10 countries by AI patent families on a global level, an impressive accomplishment considering India had no AI related patent filing prior to 2002,” Business Standard quoted Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.

The Tech Panda takes a look at how AI is innovating.

AI to tackle sustainability & adaptability problems for climate change

Organisations need innovative technology to tackle the global problems of sustainability and adaptability to climate change.

AiDash, a provider of satellite and AI-powered operations, maintenance, and sustainability solutions, acquired geospatial and AI-powered farming solutions provider, Neurafarms.ai in an undisclosed deal.

With the addition of Neurafarms.ai’s team and assets, AiDash builds on its vision of becoming a global leader in leveraging satellites and AI to revolutionize operations, maintenance, and sustainability for core industries. To do that, AiDash is actively hiring talent with a passion for solving these critical problems. Neurafarms.ai shared AiDash’s goal of leveraging technology to provide actionable insights to their customers.

Neurafarms.ai’s vision was to change the way Earth Observation (EO) data is consumed in India, and I strongly believe that our acquisition by AiDash will not only help us accomplish our goals, but also transform the way stakeholders use data for decision-making across industries worldwide

Bhavesh Patidar, Neurafarms.ai co-founder and leader of the startup’s data science innovations said, “Neurafarms.ai’s vision was to change the way Earth Observation (EO) data is consumed in India, and I strongly believe that our acquisition by AiDash will not only help us accomplish our goals, but also transform the way stakeholders use data for decision-making across industries worldwide.”

“Neurafarms.ai has developed an AI engine that combines data from multiple satellites and provides daily insights about the conditions on the earth. Our EO technology can be used across sectors to drive risk-optimised outcomes.”

The talent and assets of Neurafarms.ai will help AiDash lead the charge in making the Earth a safer and sustainable place.

Chatbots selling jewelry

Chatbots are becoming a necessary part of every business, with superpowers when it comes to solving customer queries. It’s no wonder that any customer facing business is adopting AI chatbots.

Amplify.ai, a conversational AI company in collaboration with Meta recently partnered with Tata-owned Tanishq to boost consumer engagement on the launch of their latest collection ‘Utsaah’. The conversational AI-driven campaign was a huge success for the brand and resulted in 8700+ users exchanging 75K+ messages online. The campaign garnered more than 288K views for the 30 min long event.

Conversational AI has changed the way brands and marketers view consumer engagement. For Tanishq, we are driving consumer engagement through automated conversations to announce the launch of its new collection. We were able to engage with every potential lead for the brand with real-time conversational responses

Amplify.ai’s conversational AI and Live comment moderation system enabled Tanishq to engage with their Live audience in real-time. The partnership between Amplify.ai and Meta enabled the targeting of the users who commented during the Live Event Streaming via direct messages using Messenger and helped the brand pursue potential leads. The AI also directed the interested consumers to landing pages via CTA (Call-to-Action) links.

Manoj Malhotra, Co-Founder and CTO, Amplify.ai, said, “Conversational AI has changed the way brands and marketers view consumer engagement. For Tanishq, we are driving consumer engagement through automated conversations to announce the launch of its new collection. We were able to engage with every potential lead for the brand with real-time conversational responses.”

Gaurav Midha, Dep. Group Manager, Tanishq, said, “Partnering with Amplify.ai helped us seamlessly interact with our social community in an immersive and personalised manner. The conversational AI campaign run by Amplify.ai enabled us to boost our consumer engagement for the Utsaah launch event and take the campaign to the next level.”

Computing-in-memory innovator solves speech processing challenges at the edge

Computing-in-memory technology is poised to eliminate the massive data communications bottlenecks otherwise associated with performing AI speech processing at the network’s edge but requires an embedded memory solution that simultaneously performs neural network computation and stores weights.

Microchip Technology Inc. via its Silicon Storage Technology (SST) subsidiary, announced that its SuperFlash memBrain neuromorphic memory solution has solved this problem for the WITINMEM neural processing SoC, the first in volume production that enables sub-mA systems to reduce speech noise and recognize hundreds of command words, in real time and immediately after power-up.

We were the first to develop a computing-in-memory chip for audio in 2019, and now we have achieved another milestone with volume production of this technology in our ultra-low-power neural processing SoC that streamlines and improves speech processing performance in intelligent voice and health products

Microchip has worked with WITINMEM to incorporate Microchip’s memBrain analog in-memory computing solution, based on SuperFlash technology, into WITINMEM’s ultra-low-power SoC. The SoC features computing-in-memory technology for neural networks processing including speech recognition, voice-print recognition, deep speech noise reduction, scene detection, and health status monitoring. WITINMEM, in turn, is working with multiple customers to bring products to market during 2022 based on this SoC.

Shaodi Wang, CEO of WITINMEM said,“WITINMEM is breaking new ground with Microchip’s memBrain solution for addressing the compute-intensive requirements of real-time AI speech at the network edge based on advanced neural network models.

“We were the first to develop a computing-in-memory chip for audio in 2019, and now we have achieved another milestone with volume production of this technology in our ultra-low-power neural processing SoC that streamlines and improves speech processing performance in intelligent voice and health products.”

Microchip’s memBrain neuromorphic memory product is optimized to perform vector matrix multiplication (VMM) for neural networks. It enables processors used in battery-powered and deeply-embedded edge devices to deliver the highest possible AI inference performance per watt. This is accomplished by both storing the neural model weights as values in the memory array and using the memory array as the neural compute element. The result is 10 to 20 times lower power consumption than alternative approaches along with lower overall processor Bill of Materials (BOM) costs because external DRAM and NOR are not required.

Permanently storing neural models inside the memBrain solution’s processing element also supports instant-on functionality for real-time neural network processing. WITINMEM has leveraged SuperFlash technology’s floating gate cells’ nonvolatility to power down its computing-in-memory macros during the idle state to further reduce leakage power in demanding IoT use cases.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard