Brothers From Rural Pakistan Teaching AI to American High-Schoolers

[Riaz Haq]

Haroon and Hamza Choudhry, born in rural Pakistan, are teaching artificial intelligence (AI) American high-schoolers. Twenty-something Choudhry brothers were 8 and 6 when they came from Pakistan to the United States in 1998. They have co-founded "AI For Anyone", a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization that sends volunteers to teach artificial intelligence to high school students. A recent study shows that Pakistani-Americans are among the top 5 most upwardly mobile groups in the United States. Other top most upwardly groups are Chinese-Americans from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China and Indian-Americans. Pakistani-Americans are known to volunteer for non-profit organizations like AIForAnyone to help the communities they live in. Several Pakistani-Americans are successful social entrepreneurs. 

Hamza (right) and Haroon Choudhry in their village in Pakistan

Choudhrys lived with 9 relatives in a 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and later on a poultry farm in Maryland on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Their father worked several different odd jobs to make ends meet, according to a CNBC report.

In addition to their volunteer work at AI For Anyone, both brother work in high tech positions. Here's how CNBC describes their education careers:

"Haroon won a Gates Millennium scholarship, which gave him a full ride (including tuition, housing, food and transportation) to both Penn State for undergrad and to University of California, Berkeley, where he got his masters in information and data science. After college, Haroon did data science work for Mark Cuban Companies and was a technology consultant at Deloitte Consulting. He is now a data scientist at Komodo Health. Hamza graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland. He previously worked at Facebook, and now works in business operations at WeWork."

A recent study shows that Pakistani-Americans are among the top 5 most upwardly mobile groups in the United States. Other top most upwardly groups are Chinese-Americans from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China and Indian-Americans. Pakistani-Americans are known to volunteer for non-profit organizations like AIForAnyone to help the communities they live in.

Knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important. Pakistan and Pakistanis can not afford to be left behind in the world of AI. 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.

Hamza and Haroon Choudhry brothers, co-founders of AIForAnyone, are an example of a recent study that shows that Pakistani-Americans are among the top 5 most upwardly mobile groups in the United States. Other top most upwardly groups are Chinese-Americans from Hong Kong, Taiwan and People's Republic of China and Indian-Americans. Pakistani-Americans are known to volunteer for non-profit organizations like AIForAnyone to help the communities they live in. Several Pakistani-Americans are successful social entrepreneurs. 

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[Riaz Haq]

AI drives driverless trucks being tested right now on public roads
60 Minutes climbs aboard for a look at the very near future of transportation and technology that could eliminate as many as 300,000 jobs, Sunday.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/driverless-trucks-being-tested-on-publ...

Few are aware that driverless 18-wheelers are already on the road. The test runs on highways have humans in them just in case sensors or computers fail, but an autonomous trucking executive says by next year, they won't. The future of freight on America's roads can be a driverless one, this executive says. And that's news to many, especially the truck drivers who stand to lose their livelihoods. 60 Minutes cameras ride aboard a test run and Jon Wertheim reports on the potential disruption to a storied American industry on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, March 15 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

"We believe we'll be able to do our first driver-out demonstration runs on public highways in 2021," says Chuck Price, chief product officer at TuSimple, an autonomous trucking firm with operations in the U.S. and China. With a proving ground in Arizona, TuSimple is one of several firms hoping to make billions in an industry that moves over 70% of the nation's goods

Sensors, cameras and radar devices affixed to the rig feed data to the artificial intelligence-driven supercomputer that controls the truck. Price says his product is superior to others. "Our system can see farther than any other autonomous system in the world. We can see forward over a half-mile… day, night and in the rain. And in the rain at night," he says.

Maureen Fitzgerald, a truck driver who works for TuSimple, says the system drives the truck better than she could. "This truck is scanning mirrors, looking 1,000 meters out. It's processing all the things that my brain could never do and it can react 15 times faster than I could," says Fitzgerald.

Steve Viscelli is a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on freight transportation and automation. He says the disruption to the industry will be severe, "I've identified two segments that I think are most at-risk. And that's-- refrigerated and dry van truckload. And those constitute about 200,000 trucking jobs," says Viscelli. "And then what's called line haul and they're somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000-90,000 jobs there."

Truckers 60 Minutes spoke to were understandably wary of the new technology, especially how it will react when a human, such as a police officer, issues commands on the road in an emergency. The companies say they're working on all these scenarios, but won't divulge business secrets. That's a problem for Sam Loesche, a representative for the Teamsters and 600,000 truckers. He thinks there isn't enough federal, state or local government oversight on the new technology. "A lot of this information, understandably, is proprietary. Tech companies want to keep… secret until they can kind of get it right. The problem is that, in the meantime, they're testing this technology… next to you as you drive down the road," Loesche tells Wertheim.

[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.

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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]

Top Artificial Intelligence Companies in Pakistan

https://clutch.co/pk/developers/artificial-intelligence