AI Research Funded By Silicon Valley NEDians at Their Alma Mater in Karachi

[Riaz Haq]

Koshish Foundation, an organization funded primarily by NED University Alumni in Silicon Valley, helped fund Koshish Foundation Research Lab (KFRL) in Karachi back in 2014. It has since received additional funding from numerous national and international organizations including DAAD,  German Academic Exchange Service. The lab has been renamed RCAI- Research Center For Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications

In a letter addressed to NEDians Suhail Muhammad and Raghib Husain,  the RCAI director Dr. Muhammad Khurram said, "I would really like to thank you (and Koshish Foundation) who helped me in making things happen in the start. Still, a lot needs to be done."

Dr. Ata ur Rahman Khan, former chairman of Pakistan Higher Education Commission (HEC), believes there is significant potential to grow artificial intelligence technology and products. In a recent Op Ed in The News, Dr. Khan wrote as follows:

"Pakistan churns out about 22,000 computer-science graduates each year. With additional high-quality training, a significant portion of these graduates could be transformed into a small army of highly-skilled professionals who could develop a range of AI products and earn billions of dollars in exports."

It's notable that Pakistan's tech exports are growing by double digits and surged past $1 billion in fiscal 2018, according to State Bank of Pakistan.

Dutch publication innovationorigins.com recently featured a young Pakistani Tufail Shahzad from Dajal village in Rajanpur District in southern Punjab. Tufail has studied artificial intelligence at universities in China and Belgium.  He's currently working in Eindhoven on artificial intelligence (AI) projects as naval architect and innovation manager at MasterShip Netherlands.

There is at least one Pakistani AI-based startup called Afiniti, founded by serial Pakistani-American entrepreneur Zia Chishti. Afiniti has recently raised series D round of $130 million at $1.6 billion valuation, according to Inventiva. Bulk of the Afiniti development team is located in Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore. In addition, the company has development team members in Islamabad and Karachi.

Afiniti uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to enable real-time, optimized pairing of individual call center agents with individual customers in large enterprises for best results. When a customer contacts a call center, Afiniti matches his or her phone number with any information related to it from up to 100 databases, according to VentureBeat. These databases carry purchase history, income, credit history, social media profiles and other demographic information. Based on this information, Afiniti routes the call directly to an agent who has been determined, based on their own history, to be most effective in closing deals with customers who have similar characteristics.

This latest series D round includes former Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg; Fred Ryan, the CEO and publisher of the Washington Post; and investors Global Asset Management, The Resource Group (which Chishti helped found), Zeke Capital, as well as unnamed Australian investors. Investors in Afiniti's C series round included GAM; McKinsey and Co; the Resource Group (TRG); G3 investments (run by Richard Gephardt); Elisabeth Murdoch; Sylvain Héfès; John Browne, former CEO of BP; Ivan Seidenfeld; and Larry Babbio, a former president of Verizon. The company has now raised more than $100 million, including the money previously raised, according to VentureBeat's sources.

Drone is an example of artificial intelligence application. It now a household word in Pakistan. Drones outrage many Pakistanis when used by Americans to hunt militants and launch missiles in FATA. At the same time, drones inspire a young generation of students to study artificial intelligence at 60 engineering colleges and universities.... It has given rise to robotics competitions at engineering universities like National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and my alma mater NED Engineering University. Continuing reports of new civilian uses of drone technology are adding to the growing interest of Pakistanis in robotics.

Dr. Ata ur Rehman Khan rightly argues in his Op Ed that AI should be an area of focus for research and development in Pakistan. He says that "the advantage of investing in areas such as artificial intelligence is that no major investments are needed in terms of infrastructure or heavy machinery and the results can become visible within a few years".  "Artificial intelligence will find applications in almost every sphere of activity, ranging from industrial automation to defense, from surgical robots to stock-market assessment, and from driverless cars to agricultural sensors controlling fertilizers and pesticide inputs", Dr. Khan adds.

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[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistani #tech #startup develops #AI #journalist. “With Dante’s help, #media outlets can produce endless original content as it neither sleeps nor tires,” Founder Shiekh says produces content in different formats like online, #radio, #print, #television http://www.arabnews.com/node/1187761#.XBg9J8xM_uE.twitter

A Pakistani tech company has developed an artificially intelligent journalist, the first of its kind, which can produce a complete news item in just a few seconds.
Dante is currently producing 350-word closing reports for the Pakistan Stock Exchange, as well as six-month charts and graphs showing market trends.
“This news-writing bot produces 100 percent original content in just two to three seconds after accessing relevant data from newswires, local and international media outlets,” Anis Shiekh, founder of baseH — the company that created Dante — told Arab News.
“It’s not going to replace reporters and editors. Rather, it will help newsroom staff carry out their work smoothly and quickly.”
Dante can automatically develop and maintain its own archive, and can provide context and background to articles.
“With Dante’s help, media outlets can produce endless original content as it neither sleeps nor tires,” Shiekh said, adding that it can easily produce content in different formats such as online, radio, print and television.
Content generated by Dante was shared with senior Pakistani journalists and editors for feedback.

“It was amazing,” Khurram Shahzad told Arab News. “It was so perfect that it hardly required any editing or even proofreading.”
The working prototype can quickly adapt to new writing styles, editorial policies and preferences, so it can easily be deployed anywhere.
Shiekh said numerous brokerage firms and media houses in Pakistan have expressed their interest in buying Dante, but baseH has decided to provide services via subscription only.
Regarding the company’s future plans, he said it is concentrating on tailoring Dante to produce content on the 2018 World Cup, and to write 700-800-word articles on various subjects, including sports, education, health, entertainment and foreign affairs.
“Our subscribers will be able to get original articles instantly on their required subject by just entering a few keywords related to the topic,” said Shiekh.
His company has been working on Dante since 2009, at a cost so far of more than 6 million Pakistani rupees ($56,980).

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan’s place in #AI and #computing. “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” @ArifAlvi #technology #science #STEM https://tribune.com.pk/story/1892350/6-pakistans-place-ai-computing/

In the world of science and technology, it is being said that we are at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution. The first brought in the age of mechanised production from iron, steel, coal and steam. The second was the result of internal combustion engine and electricity. The third was the digital revolution of information technology brought in by silicon, personal computers, cellphones and the internet. With the exponential ability to store data, the skillset required to analyse it has been left far behind.

The fourth industrial revolution has now begun. It is marked by emerging technology breakthroughs primarily in the following 10 areas, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Internet of Things, 5G Broadband, 3D printing, Autonomous Vehicles, Cloud Computing, Blockchain like Distributed Ledgers Technology, Biotechnology and Precision Medicine, and Augmented Reality.

Klaus Schwab in his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution states that previous industrial revolutions liberated man from animal power, made mass production possible and brought digital capabilities to billions of people, but the fourth is fundamentally different. It is characterised by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.

Reasoning has been the biggest strength of humankind but now it can be relegated to machines. Raw, brute crunching of data was done earlier by super computers like the IBM Deep Blue that defeated Gary Kasporov in 1997. Deep Blue was tutored in the basics of chess and had in its memory the strategy employed by grandmasters in thousands of games previously played.

This year AlphaZero made by Alphabet came up with a unique Algorithm for learning of chess. It started with no knowledge of the game beyond its basic rules, but then it played against itself millions of times and learned from its mistakes. In a matter of hours, it taught itself enough to take on the biggest computational beast that exists in chess called ‘Stockfish’. The latter was doing 60 million calculations per second while AlphaZero examined only 60,000 but beat Stockfish hollow. In a nutshell this is AI and machine learning. AlphaZero thought smarter not faster.

The convergence of data with massive storage and analytical abilities when applied to available genomic and health data will be creating phenomenal change in human health. A US health service provider ‘Epic’ has health data of more than 100 million individuals. The analysis of such mega data can exponentially improve diagnostics and treatment. ReLeaSE, another algorithm-based programme, comprises two neural networks that can be thought of as a teacher and a student. The teacher neural network knows the rules behind chemical structures of about 1.7 million known biologically active molecules. By working with the teacher, the student neural network learns over time and becomes better at proposing molecules that are likely to be useful in new drugs. Combining CRISPR the gene sequencing and editing technology with AI drug development programmes, can dramatically revolutionise healthcare.

Augmented reality and virtual reality will overlay data-related information on the real world for example in surgery where layers of tissue shall not have to be dissected in search for diseased foci as the surgeon would be able to see the whole thing in 3D before dissection. Increasingly machines, for example autonomous vehicles, are making decisions with little intervention by humans. Some understanding of this new reality has enabled seven out of top 10 largest companies of 2018, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Ali Baba and Tencents to become economic powerhouses.

[Riaz Haq]

#Google chief Sundar Pichai calls for AI regulation, moratorium on facial recognition. #ArtificialInteligence #FacialRecognition | Financial Times

https://www.ft.com/content/73a3fd18-3bb5-11ea-b232-000f4477fbca



Growing up in India, I was fascinated by technology. Each new invention changed my family’s life in meaningful ways. The telephone saved us long trips to the hospital for test results. The refrigerator meant we could spend less time preparing meals, and television allowed us to see the world news and cricket matches we had only imagined while listening to the short-wave radio.

Now, it is my privilege to help to shape new technologies that we hope will be life-changing for people everywhere. One of the most promising is artificial intelligence: just this month there have been three concrete examples of how Alphabet and Google are tapping AI’s potential. Nature published our research showing that an AI model can help doctors spot breast cancer in mammograms with greater accuracy; we are using AI to make immediate, hyperlocal forecasts of rainfall more quickly and accurately than existing models as part of a larger set of tools to fight climate change; and Lufthansa Group is working with our cloud division to test the use of AI to help reduce flight delays.

Yet history is full of examples of how technology’s virtues aren’t guaranteed. Internal combustion engines allowed people to travel beyond their own areas but also caused more accidents. The internet made it possible to connect with anyone and get information from anywhere, but also easier for misinformation to spread.

These lessons teach us that we need to be clear-eyed about what could go wrong. There are real concerns about the potential negative consequences of AI, from deepfakes to nefarious uses of facial recognition. While there is already some work being done to address these concerns, there will inevitably be more challenges ahead that no one company or industry can solve alone.

The EU and the US are already starting to develop regulatory proposals. International alignment will be critical to making global standards work. To get there, we need agreement on core values. Companies such as ours cannot just build promising new technology and let market forces decide how it will be used. It is equally incumbent on us to make sure that technology is harnessed for good and available to everyone.

Now there is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. It is too important not to. The only question is how to approach it.

That’s why in 2018, Google published our own AI principles to help guide ethical development and use of the technology. These guidelines help us avoid bias, test rigorously for safety, design with privacy top of mind, and make the technology accountable to people. They also specify areas where we will not design or deploy AI, such as to support mass surveillance or violate human rights.

But principles that remain on paper are meaningless. So we’ve also developed tools to put them into action, such as testing AI decisions for fairness and conducting independent human-rights assessments of new products. We have gone even further and made these tools and related open-source code widely available, which will empower others to use AI for good. We believe that any company developing new AI tools should also adopt guiding principles and rigorous review processes.

Government regulation will also play an important role. We don’t have to start from scratch. Existing rules such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation can serve as a strong foundation. Good regulatory frameworks will consider safety, explainability, fairness and accountability to ensure we develop the right tools in the right ways. Sensible regulation must also take a proportionate approach, balancing potential harms, especially in high-risk areas, with social opportunities.

[Riaz Haq]

#Google chief Sundar Pichai calls for AI regulation, moratorium on facial recognition. #ArtificialInteligence #FacialRecognition | Financial Times

https://www.ft.com/content/73a3fd18-3bb5-11ea-b232-000f4477fbca


Regulation can provide broad guidance while allowing for tailored implementation in different sectors. For some AI uses, such as regulated medical devices including AI-assisted heart monitors, existing frameworks are good starting points. For newer areas such as self-driving vehicles, governments will need to establish appropriate new rules that consider all relevant costs and benefits.

Google’s role starts with recognising the need for a principled and regulated approach to applying AI, but it doesn’t end there. We want to be a helpful and engaged partner to regulators as they grapple with the inevitable tensions and trade-offs. We offer our expertise, experience and tools as we navigate these issues together.

AI has the potential to improve billions of lives, and the biggest risk may be failing to do so. By ensuring it is developed responsibly in a way that benefits everyone, we can inspire future generations to believe in the power of technology as much as I do.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan #AirForce Chief Opens Centre Of Artificial Intelligence & Computing. #technology has altered the nature of warfare in the 21st century & the vision of the center is to harness the potential of #ArtificialIntelligence in #PAF ops. UrduPoint

https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/air-chief-inaugurates-centre-...

Chief of the Air Staff, Pakistan Air Force Air Chief Marshal Mujahid Anwar Khan was the chief guest at the occasion, said a PAF press release.

The Air Chief formally inaugurated the newly established centre by unveiling the plaque.

Addressing the ceremony, the Air Chief said that establishment of CENTAIC was indeed a landmark initiative in the evolutionary journey of PAF which would lead Artificial Inteligence Research and Development in both civil and military spheres.

---------------------------

It’s just one AI application the Army is exploring with combat applications, said Brig. Gen. Matt Easley, head of the service’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force, said last week at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting in Washington.

Shooting down drones, aiming tank guns, coordinating resupply and maintenance, planning artillery barrages, stitching different sensor feeds together into a coherent picture, analyzing how terrain blocks units’ fields of fire and warning commanders where there are blind spots in their defenses are all military applications for which the Army will test AI.

The most high-profile example of AI on the battlefield to date, the controversial Project Maven, used machine learning algorithms to sift hours of full-motion video looking for suspected terrorists and insurgents. By contrast, Easley said, the new application looks for tanks and other targets of interest in a major-power war, he said, in keeping with the Pentagon’s increasing focus on Russia and China. https://www.militaryaerospace.com/computers/article/14069203/artifi...

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan okays locally developed #AI software that uses chest X-ray to detect #Covid in under a minute. It "shall employ Convolutional Neural Networks to predict [presence of] Covid-19 in suspected individuals" #ArtificialIntelligence #coronavirus https://www.dawn.com/news/1591603

Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) Chief Executive Officer Asim Rauf on Saturday said the body has granted approval to a locally invented software that can "detect the coronavirus infection in a person's lungs within a minute".

According to the certificate of registration granted by Drap, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the Cov-Raid — which has been developed by the National Electronics Complex of Pakistan — "shall employ Convolutional Neural Networks to predict [presence of] Covid-19 in suspected individuals" by using X-rays and it has been approved for "secondary detection" of the virus.

The Cov-raid website says the artificial intelligence (AI) technology was developed by "creating a data repository of chest X-rays (CXR) for Covid-19 or non-Covid-19 detection", adding that the software "requires a chest X-ray image as an input for the detection of Covid-19 positive or negative patients in less than one minute".

"The algorithm has been trained on more than 35,000 CXRs (data authentication done through multiple certified radiologists and PCR reports)," it said.

According to the description posted on the website, the technology "can be path-breaking to conduct screening of a large number of patients in a limited time".

The Drap CEO also said that the device would "greatly help" in the treatment of virus patients.

"This [technology] is available in only a few countries in the world. Pakistan will supply the Cov-raid technology to various countries," he disclosed.

The software will soon be available across the country, he added.

A similar algorithm was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota in the United States last month "that can evaluate chest X-rays to diagnose possible cases of Covid-19 within seconds".

"[The] model learns from thousands of X-rays and detects Covid-19 in seconds, then immediately shows the risk score to providers who are caring for patients," Ju Sun, who led the team, said.

Another such software was developed in China earlier this year by Axial AI which analysed Computed Tomography (CT) imagery in seconds.

[Riaz Haq]

This fall, the National Science Foundation selected The University of Texas at Austin — a world leader in artificial intelligence research — to lead a new, $20 million national institute for machine learning.

Gates Complex Machine Learning Lab

The NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning is another important step in the university’s contributions to AI and tech innovation, and will be housed in a new, permanent base for campus-wide artificial intelligence research: the Machine Learning Laboratory.

Austin-based tech entrepreneurs and UT Austin alumni Zaib and Amir Husain, BBA ’99 and B.S. ’98, have given $5 million to launch the Machine Learning Laboratory, which will provide a hub for collaboration among faculty, researchers, and students from across UT. Their gift will provide permanent support for the students, faculty and groundbreaking work centered there.

“UT’s strengths in computer science, engineering, public policy, business, and law can help drive applications of AI,” Amir Husain said. “And Austin’s booming tech scene is destined to be a major driver for the local and national economy for decades to come.”

----------

Amir Husain Is Building the Future of A.I.
BY
DINAH ENG

https://fortune.com/2019/02/19/amir-husain-is-building-the-future-o...

Amir Husain’s Austin-based SparkCognition is working on the future of A.I., covering everything from the battlefield to power plants. A boy from Pakistan who fell in love with computers at age 4, Husain is now a founding member of the board of advisers for IBM Watson and a prolific inventor, with 27 U.S. patents awarded and many more pending.

I grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, where my father was a businessman and an investor, and my mother was an educator. When I was 4 years old, I had my first -experience with a computer: a Commodore 64. It blew my mind that you could control what showed up on the screen. Afterward, I went to my room, grabbed some toys, disassembled them, added cardboard, and made a contraption that I called a computer. My mom knew then that I was hooked.

[Riaz Haq]

A Great Change is Coming
Software, AI, autonomy — these are the ultimate weapons. The Pentagon must get serious about integrating AI into everything it has for 'hyperwar.'

By Amir Husain

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/08/great-change-coming/167858/

Five years ago, before many were talking about artificial intelligence and its practical applications to the field of battle, retired Gen. John Allen and I began a journey to not only investigate the art of the possible with AI, but also to identify its likely implications on the character and conduct of war.

In 2017, we wrote about how developments in AI could lead to what we referred to as “hyperwar” — a type of conflict and competition so automated that it would collapse the decision action loop, eventually minimizing human control over most decisions. Since then, my goal has been to encourage the organizational transformation necessary to adopt safer, more explainable AI systems to maintain our competitive edge, now that the technical transformation is at our doorstep.

Software, AI, autonomy — these are the ultimate weapons. These technologies are the difference between hundreds of old Mig-19 and Mig-21 fighter jets lying in scrap yards, and their transformation to autonomous, maneuverable, and so-called “attritable,” or expendable, supersonic drones built from abundant air frames, equipped with swarm coordination and the ability to operate in contested airspaces. Gone are the days when effectiveness and capability can be ascribed to individual systems and platforms. Now, it’s all about the network of assets, how they communicate, how they decide to act, and how efficiently they counter the system that is working in opposition to them. An individual aircraft carrier or a squadron of strategic bombers are no longer as independently meaningful as they once were.

In the emerging environment, network-connected, cognitive systems of war will engage each other. They will be made up principally of software, but also of legacy weapons platforms, humans, sometimes in combat, and newer assets capable of autonomous decision and action. The picture of the environment in which they operate across time and space will only be made clear by intelligent systems capable of fusing massive amounts of data and automatically interpreting them to identify and simulate forward the complex web of probabilities that result. Which actions are likely to be successful? With what degree of confidence? What are the adversary’s most likely counter-moves? The large scale, joint application of autonomously coordinated assets by a cognitive system will be unlike anything that has come before. It is this fast-evolving new paradigm, powered by artificial intelligence at every level, from the tactical to the strategic, that demands our attention. We must no longer focus on individual platforms or stand-alone assets, but on the cognitive system that runs an autonomous “Internet of War”.

[Riaz Haq]

A Great Change is Coming
Software, AI, autonomy — these are the ultimate weapons. The Pentagon must get serious about integrating AI into everything it has for 'hyperwar.'

By Amir Husain

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/08/great-change-coming/167858/

Five years ago, before many were talking about artificial intelligence and its practical applications to the field of battle, retired Gen. John Allen and I began a journey to not only investigate the art of the possible with AI, but also to identify its likely implications on the character and conduct of war.

In 2017, we wrote about how developments in AI could lead to what we referred to as “hyperwar” — a type of conflict and competition so automated that it would collapse the decision action loop, eventually minimizing human control over most decisions. Since then, my goal has been to encourage the organizational transformation necessary to adopt safer, more explainable AI systems to maintain our competitive edge, now that the technical transformation is at our doorstep.

Software, AI, autonomy — these are the ultimate weapons. These technologies are the difference between hundreds of old Mig-19 and Mig-21 fighter jets lying in scrap yards, and their transformation to autonomous, maneuverable, and so-called “attritable,” or expendable, supersonic drones built from abundant air frames, equipped with swarm coordination and the ability to operate in contested airspaces. Gone are the days when effectiveness and capability can be ascribed to individual systems and platforms. Now, it’s all about the network of assets, how they communicate, how they decide to act, and how efficiently they counter the system that is working in opposition to them. An individual aircraft carrier or a squadron of strategic bombers are no longer as independently meaningful as they once were.

In the emerging environment, network-connected, cognitive systems of war will engage each other. They will be made up principally of software, but also of legacy weapons platforms, humans, sometimes in combat, and newer assets capable of autonomous decision and action. The picture of the environment in which they operate across time and space will only be made clear by intelligent systems capable of fusing massive amounts of data and automatically interpreting them to identify and simulate forward the complex web of probabilities that result. Which actions are likely to be successful? With what degree of confidence? What are the adversary’s most likely counter-moves? The large scale, joint application of autonomously coordinated assets by a cognitive system will be unlike anything that has come before. It is this fast-evolving new paradigm, powered by artificial intelligence at every level, from the tactical to the strategic, that demands our attention. We must no longer focus on individual platforms or stand-alone assets, but on the cognitive system that runs an autonomous “Internet of War”.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistani #Tech firm offers #AI to Middle Eastern growers. The #startup has developed a portable machine that uses AI to grade fruits, vegetables and dates. #ArtificialIntelligence #technology #Horticulture https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9271453/pakistan-tech-firm-offer...


Pakistani agritech firm Industrial Vision Systems is intent on selling its Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology for scanning and grading fruits and vegetables to farmers in Jordan, UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The start-up has developed a portable machine that uses AI to grade fruits, vegetables and dates. First it scans them through a camera which is connected to a computer, and then grades them by identifying their defects and creating a complete dataset on the basis of their quality.

The tech should benefit both farmers and the agriculture industry in Pakistan by enhancing export earnings and modernizing agricultural practices in the country. Being developed in Pakistan, this AI machine is also a cost effective solution to Pakistani farmers' many needs.

CEO and Co-founder of Industrial Vision Systems, Saad Tanveer Ahmed, says that the firm is engaging with farmers in several Middle Eastern countries with hopes to sell the technology there. This AI machine will help date farmers in the Middle East by allowing them to grade their dates without human shortcomings and high labor costs.