Mediaboss Marketing

TOKYO As pandemic-led isolation triggers an epidemic of loneliness, Japanese are increasingly turning to "social robots" for solace and mental healing.

At the city's Penguin Cafe, proud owners of the electronic dog Aibo gathered recently with their cyber-pups in Snuglis and fancy carryalls. From camera-embedded snouts to their sensor-packed paws, these high-tech hounds are nothing less than members of the family, despite a price tag of close to $3,000 mandatory cloud plan not included.

It's no wonder Aibo has pawed its way into hearts and minds. Re-launched in 2017, Aibo's artificial intelligence-driven personality is minutely shaped by the whims and habits of its owner, building the kind of intense emotional attachments usually associated with kids, or beloved pets.

Noriko Yamada rushed to order one, when her mother-in-law began showing signs of dementia several years ago. "Mother had stopped smiling and talking," she told CBS News. "But when we switched the dog on, and it gazed up at her, she just lit up. Her behavior changed 180 degrees."

And a few months ago, when the mother-in-law was hospitalized for heart disease, Koro the robot again came to the rescue. "Because of COVID, we couldn't visit her. The nurse said Mother was responding to pictures of Koro, and asked us to bring in the dog. So, Koro was the last person in our family to see Mother alive."

Robots as companions are an easier leap for Japanese, many manufacturers and users say, because the country is steeped in friendly androids, like the long-running TV cartoon "Doraemon," in which a cute, roly-poly pal provides not only constant company, but an endless supply of useful tricks.

But one robot startup is proving looks aren't everything. Despite having neither head, arms nor legs, the Qoobo bot sold more than 30,000 units by September, many to stressed-out users working from home under COVID restrictions. The retail price starts at about $200.

Yukai Engineering CEO Shunsuke Aoki told CBS News that Qoobo leverages the most pleasing parts of a pet a fluffy torso, and a wagging tail. "At first, it seemed weird," he said. "But when you pet an animal like a cat, you usually don't bother to look at its face."

Frazzled adults aren't the only Japanese turning to robots. At Moriyama Kindergarten in the central Japanese city of Nagoya, robots are replacing the traditional class guinea pig or bunny. Teachers told CBS News that the bots reduce anxiety and teach kids to be more humane.

Two years ago, the preschool bought a pair of Lovot brand bots named Rice Cake and Cocoa. Weighing as much as an infant, with the price tag of a French bulldog, the cybernetic machines are designed to love-bomb their owners -- or, in this case, a roomful of fidgety five-year-olds.

"Our kids think the robots are alive," said principal Kyoshin Kodama. "The bots have encouraged the kids to take better care of things, be kinder to each other, and cooperate more."

Lovot is a so-called "emotional robot" programmed to autonomously navigate its surroundings, remember its owners and respond to hugs and other affection, gazing out with its oversized, quivering, high-resolution eyes. Over the last year sales have jumped 11-fold.

"Their body temperature is set to 98.6 degrees," Groove X company spokesperson Miki Ikegami told CBS News. "Robots are usually hard, cold and inhuman. But since our bots are built to soothe, we made them warm and soft."

Japan's oldest and most successful social robot is an FDA-approved device called Paro.

Resembling an ordinary plush toy, the artificial intelligence-powered bot customizes its response as it gets to "know" each patient. Inventor Takanori Shibata, based at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, told CBS News that clinical trials have backed the device's benefits as a non-drug therapy. "Interaction with Paro can improve depression, anxiety, pain and also improve the mood of the person."

Since launching in 1998, thousands of Paro robots have gone into service, worldwide, relieving stress among children in ICUs, treating U.S. veterans suffering from PTSD, and helping dementia patients.

Like real flesh-and-blood pets, Paro has been shown to stimulate brain activity, helping reconnect damaged areas. "One lady didn't speak for more than ten years," Shibata said. "When she interacted with Paro, she started to talk to Paro and she recovered her speech and she spoke to others."

Neuroscientist Julie Robillard, who studies social robots for children and seniors, told CBS News that robotics experts are trying to tease out the exact nature of the human-robot relationship and the notion of machines as friends is not as farfetched as it might seem.

"We can be attached to various types of devices and objects," said Robillard, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia. "Some people have given names to their robot vacuums Some people feel strongly about their cars or about their wedding bands."

Evidence supports the use of social robots, she said, in areas like imparting social skills to children with autism, or teaching exercises to rehab patients offering instruction without judgment.

But in other areas, it's unclear how well social robots really work, she said. "What we can say from the science right now is that robots have a huge amount of potential."

And discovering that potential is all the more urgent now, in the covid era, as robots offer the promise of social connection without social contact.

Creators say intelligent social robots will never replace humans. But when companions, caregivers or therapists aren't available, robots are lending a friendly paw and are already earning their keep.

Trending News

For Breaking News & Analysis Download the Free CBS News app

Excerpt from:
Robo-dogs and therapy bots: Artificial intelligence goes cuddly - CBS News

JUPITER, Fla., Jan. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Scheduled to broadcast spring/2022, the award-winning series, Advancements with Ted Danson, will discover how innovations in AI are helping employees to access, understand, and utilize their health benefits.

In this segment, Advancements will explore why so many Americans lack an understanding about their healthcare benefits -- from complex rules to complicated, verbose verbiage. Viewers will learn about the many ways these complexities can negatively impact employees' health and well-being, productivity in the workplace, and ultimately, the U.S. workforce as a whole.

Audiences will hear from experts at Insurights, an AI-powered startup on a mission to improve human health by giving people better access to their health benefits. The show will discover how developments in AI and technology present a solution for the industry as the Insurights team introduces Zoe, its digital healthcare navigator.

"The way U.S. workers engage with their health benefits is broken. Too many employees forgo vital treatment or waste precious time trying to understand exactly what is covered under their health plan," said Guy Benjamin, co-CEO and co-founder of Insurights. "Providing employees with helpful, accurate and immediate answers to questions is essential to their wellbeing. Zoe's ability to analyze any health plan and provide invaluable information will have a profound impact on the workforce and lead to healthier, happier employees."

Viewers will learn firsthand how Zoe simplifies the healthcare process and provides employees with much-needed transparency about their benefits. Spectators will see how Zoe answers employees' questions about health coverage and benefits on-the-spot, helps to find lower-cost providers, and informs about relevant preventive care benefits to ensure optimized healthcare.

"Throughout the country, roughly 70 percent of Americans do not understand their healthcare plan," said Senior Producer, DJ Metzer. "We look forward to exploring how technology is helping to break down these barriers and how it's giving people the knowledge they need to know and understand their rights and benefits."

About Insurights:

Insurights is an AI-powered startup on a mission to improve human health by giving people better access to their health benefits. The digital platform provides employees with on-the-spot answers to health benefits questions, helping them find lower-cost providers and informing about relevant preventive care benefits. Insurights is dedicated to helping employees be healthier by making health benefits simple and accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Insurights is based in Israel and New York, and investors include Group 11, Cresson Management, Good Company, and Insurtech Israel. For more information, visit: http://www.insurights.com/

About Advancements and DMG Productions:

The Advancements series is an information-based educational show targeting recent advances across a number of industries and economies. Featuring state-of-the-art solutions and important issues facing today's consumers and business professionals, Advancements focuses on cutting-edge developments, and brings this information to the public with the vision to enlighten about how technology and innovation continue to transform our world.

Backed by experts in various fields, DMG Productions is dedicated to education and advancement, and to consistently producing commercial-free, educational programming on which both viewers and networks depend.

For more info, please visit: AdvancementsTV.com or call DJ Metzer at 866-496-4065.

Media Contact

Sarah McBrayer, DMG Productions, 866-496-4065, info@advancementstv.com

SOURCE Advancements with Ted Danson

Read more:
Learn how Artificial Intelligence is Improving the Healthcare Experience - WFMZ Allentown

By Wallace B. Henley, Exclusive Columnist | Wednesday, January 05, 2022Getty Images

If you take a look at the most fantastic schemes that are considered possible: teleportation, warp drive, parallel universes, other dimensions, artificial intelligence, ray guns, you realize that they can be possible if we advance technology a little bit.

So said Michio Kaku, a physicist and futurist with deep insight into AI and other phenomena shaping into mighty waves that will wash over civilizations in the eras ahead. [1]

But will these waves of discovery and utilization advance humanity or mount into a tsunami that wipes out societies and the people within them?

The answer to that question lies in a realm that many see as irrelevant: the spiritual.

Yet, the spiritual implications of artificial intelligence should be the most important of all. If utility rules, then we are no better than a heartless inventor seeking better and less expensive means to commit genocide.

The alarm must be sounded: a tsunami is charging toward us while many stand on the beach like surfers watching the rise of the highest wave and anticipating a good ride on its lethal crest.

I and others who warn of the spiritual implications of AI are not Luddites like woolen workers in 16th-century British mills who sought to destroy the new devices that might eliminate their jobs.

I confess that I wrote this column, as I did my book, Who Will Rule the Coming gods? on a smart machine linked to other smart machines worldwide. I know the benefit of personally having an MRI scan rather than invasive exploratory surgery, a look through ultrasound at our great-grandchildren nestling in their mothers wombs, and instant communication with friends across the continents, to name a few.

Yet the more I study artificial intelligence and the looming spiritual crisis it will send surging upon a world casting off belief in the transcendence of the God revealed in the Bible, the greater is my concern.

There are crucial questions that can only be addressed satisfactorily in the context of the spiritual, like:

The Metaverse may already be beyond restraint. One Bad behavior in the metaverse can be more severe than todays online harassment and bullying, says a recent report.[2] Thats because virtual reality plunges people into an all-encompassing digital environment where unwanted touches in the digital world can be made to feel real and the sensory experience is heightened.[3]

Last March a Meta chief technology officer told his team that moderating or restraining how people use the Metaverse is practically impossible at any scale.[4]

This makes even more urgent the question: Who will rule the coming gods? What kind of people?

The most serious concern: Will transcendent-hungry human beings come to consider that the machine is so powerful it is godlike and merits our worship?

This issue has already raised its head. Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer, founded an AI-based church.[5] The deity it worshipped, said Levandowski, is not a god in the sense that it makes lightning and causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it (but god)?

Though the AI church no longer exists (at my last reading), the concern of AI taking the place of the transcendent God is growing because the human being made in the image of God must have transcendence. We are spirit, soul, and body. When our body longs for water, it can drink it in. But what about the desperate thirsts of the spirit and soul?

If a person is stranded in the Sahara for days without water, he or she will drink from any old pit, no matter how many camels have wallowed in it. So, we can grow so thirsty in spirit and soul that we will drink from any moldy well, any filthy stream.

This is injuring the human race now, and in the future people will give themselves to any machine or device that will quench the thirst in spirit and soul.

For good reason, Henry Kissinger warns that AI will prompt consideration of what it means to be human.[6]

In fact, in the AI age and its fascination with transhumanism, there is a desire to make Imago Dei, the image of God, into Imago machinathe image of the machine.

Will we be healthy users of the wonderful technology advancing in our age or will it use us, making us its slaves?

That question can be answered only in the context of the spiritual, especially the understanding of Gods transcendence.

That is the only backdrop by which we can see our true humanity and distinguish ourselves from the machine.

[1] https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/7633-michio-kaku#:%5B2%5D metaverse: Metaverse is unsafe for women already! Reports of groping, harassment rising in VR games, Telecom News, ET Telecom (indiatimes.com)[3] The Metaverse's Dark Side: Here Come Harassment and Assaults (yahoo.com);[4]Content moderation in Metaverse is 'impossible': Andrew Bosworth (indianexpress.com)[5] Former Google Exec Says Artificial Intelligence is 'God,' Creates New Religion | CBN News[6] Henry Kissinger: AI Will Make Us Reconsider What It Means to Be Human | Newsmax.com

Wallace B. Henley, a former White House and congressional aide, is author of Who Will Rule the Coming Gods, a book exploring the consequences of the exponential development of artificial intelligence in a society that is rapidly losing the sense of Gods Transcendence. He is a teaching pastor at Grace Church, The Woodlands, Texas.

View original post here:
Preparing for the AI tsunami: The looming spiritual crisis of artificial intelligence and how to be ready (part 1) - The Christian Post

PARIS & DAEGU, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Iktos, a company specialized in artificial intelligence (AI) for novel drug design and Astrogen, a clinical and research-oriented biotech company focused in developing innovative new drugs for treatment of intractable neurological diseases today announced that the companies have entered into a research collaboration agreement aimed at discovery of innovative small molecule pre-clinical drug candidates for Parkinson's disease.

Under the terms of the agreement, Iktos will apply its proprietary active learning based deep docking and de novo structure-based generative modelling technologies to design and optimize novel compounds and expedite the identification of pre-clinical drug candidates targeting an undisclosed target for the treatment of Parkinsons disease. Astrogen will contribute to in-vitro/in-vivo efficacy screening of lead compounds/pre-clinical drug candidates and will lead the entire development process from pre-clinical stage. The companies will share responsibility for generating lead compounds and pursuing the optimal development path for selecting pre-clinical drug candidates.

We are thrilled to collaborate with Astrogen, a leading biotech company based in S. Korea focused on developing innovative drugs for neurological diseases. We are proud and excited to announce our first collaboration deal in S. Korea bio-pharma sector commented Yann Gaston-Math, President and CEO of Iktos. Our objective is to expedite drug discovery and achieve time and cost efficiencies for our global collaborators by using Iktoss proprietary AI platform and know-how. We are confident that together we will be able to identify promising novel chemical matter for the treatment of intractable neurological diseases. Our strategy has always been to tackle challenging problems alongside our collaborators where we can demonstrate value generation for new and on-going drug discovery projects.

We are very pleased to collaborate with Iktos, one of the leading AI companies in drug design and discovery. Iktos has successfully utilized their proprietary AI platform in multiple real world drug discovery projects as demonstrated by several collaborations established to date with leading global pharmaceutical companies. We are looking forward to this collaboration, as we believe that there is good chance to build up a mutually beneficial business model, by combining the strengths of biotech companies specialized in novel target identification and AI companies with their proprietary drug designing platform technology commented JoonBeom Park, the director of Business Development at Astrogen.

About Iktos

Incorporated in October 2016, Iktos is a start-up company specializing in the development of artificial intelligence solutions applied to chemical research, more specifically medicinal chemistry and new drug design. Iktos is developing a proprietary and innovative solution based on deep learning generative models, which enables, using existing data, the design of molecules that are optimized in silico to meet all the success criteria of a small molecule discovery project. The use of Iktos technology enables major productivity gains in upstream pharmaceutical R&D. Iktos offers its technology both as professional services and as a SaaS software platform, Makya. Iktos is also developing Spaya, a synthesis planning software based upon Iktoss proprietary AI technology for retrosynthesis.

More information on: http://www.iktos.ai/

About Astrogen

Founded in 2017, Astrogen is a S.Korea based clinical and research-oriented biotech company developing treatment of intractable neurological diseases. The company is specialized in discovering new therapeutic targets, conducting efficacy tests of compounds, and planning/administration of clinical strategies. The lead candidate in the pipeline is AST-001, under phase 2 clinical development in S.Korea for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The company aims to become a leading a biopharmaceutical company in neurodegenerative and intractable neurological diseases by utilizing innovative business models.

More information on: http://www.astrogen.co.kr

Here is the original post:
Iktos and Astrogen Announce a Research Collaboration to Use Artificial Intelligence Platform for Drug Design against a Novel Parkinson's Disease...

FinTech refers to any idea or innovation that improves or optimizes the way individuals or companies conduct financial activities. Early FinTech concentrated on developing add-on products to complement existing financial services.

This combination of finance and technology has spawned a slew of valuable goods and services that redefine financial services and make them more accessible to the general public. Some of these products and services include insurance aggregators, mobile wallets, AI investment management advisers, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and crowdfunding tools, and platforms for trading financial assets. The cutting-edge solutions that contributed to such technologies include Blockchain, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). FinTech allows financial services organizations to collect massive amounts of consumer data, determine usage patterns, and even replace human participation with automated algorithms.

The distinction between banks and FinTech is becoming increasingly hazy. It is crucial to understand that banks and FinTech are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, many well-known banks have evolved from being mere prepaid card providers that link to applications. They have won the right to full-fledged banking licenses after demonstrating to the world that it is feasible to combine sophisticated technology with trustworthy financial services. FinTech can emerge from one of three sources: (1) a stand-alone company develops technologically advanced goods to address unique market concerns; (2) a company develops a full-fledged body to become a complete bank; or (3) a conventional bank incorporates technological advancement by acquiring a smaller FinTech to modernize its service.

SIGNIFICANCE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN FINTECHArtificial intelligence (AI) is gradually gaining a foothold in practically every business in the twenty-first century. FinTech is used mostly to improve and automate different financial operations. With the advent of knowledge engineering, financial institutions employ AI-based models in conjunction with their FinTech apps to maximize operations and revenue.

Some of the major significant uses of AI in FinTech are:

Large-scale wealth and finance management: Traditionally, the wealth management sector has catered to high-net-worth individuals. AI solutions are assisting to considerably expand this industry by allowing it to scale its ability to supply to a much larger segment of the population. In addition to specific financial advice, the AI may analyze spending habits to ensure that customers have adequate emergency money and provide continually updated net worth predictions for improved retirement planning.

Enhanced security: Many FinTech firms and conventional financial institutions are already using AI-based solutions for various fraud monitoring and prevention applications, but there is always room for improvement as fraudsters escalate their attacks.

Contract management: Contracts are an integral aspect of the financial business, as they are in many other sectors. Keeping track of all contracts, whether between institutions and clients or between enterprises, requires a significant amount of effort. AI can assist in speeding up this process by combining optical character recognition (OCR), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP).

Improved customer services: Through intelligent software bots, AI has been able to fill a need in this field. These bots suggest personalized products and services that better meet customers needs and demands. Financial institutions that employ chatbots have ample motivation to keep using and enhancing them, with worldwide savings from chatbot use anticipated to exceed $7 billion by 2023.

RISK FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN FINTECHWhile the applications listed above demonstrate how technology is revolutionizing the financial industry, the deployment of AI is not without hazards. The primary factors that need to be understood are:

Embedded bias: The increasing use of AI in the financial sector, which is heavily regulated and where public confidence is critical, has sparked debate over the potential of inherent bias. Embedded bias is defined as computer systems that routinely and unjustly discriminate against some persons or groups of individuals in favor of others. Customer classification algorithms applied in AI/ML might lead to prejudice in the banking industry through price or service quality differentials. Biases in AI/ML judgments are frequently caused by biased training data derived from existing biased processes and data sets, which teach automation models to be prejudicial.

Explainability and complexity: The term explainability refers to the concept that AI models and their outputs can be expounded to humans at an acceptable level. The explainability of AI results is critical, especially when utilized in the financial industry. Because they are not easily explainable by the user, AI is sometimes referred to as a black box. This trait may make detecting the appropriateness of AI conclusions difficult, exposing businesses to vulnerabilities such as skewed data, inappropriate modeling methodologies, or wrong decision making, thus undermining faith in their robustness.

Privacy factors associated with data: AI raises new and distinct privacy concerns. Big data privacy problems are well recognized and even precede the mainstreaming of automation. Tools have been created to aid in the preservation of data anonymity and data subjects privacy. Legal data policy frameworks are being implemented across the world to address these problems. However, the resilience of AI models in limiting data leakage from the training data set poses additional privacy problems.

Cognizant of the abounding risks, enterprises should leverage on the agile nature of technology and adapt to new work methods. This would reshape the organizations ways of doing things through the use of intelligent software bots, minimize manpower costs by utilizing AI and robotic process automation, and most importantly, enhance security, employee engagement, and client satisfaction. As the financial sectors use of AI and ML continues to surge, it is becoming a must to have professionals who are very much capable of optimizing the usage of advances in processing power, data storage capacity, big data, and modeling.

The views or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Isla Lipana & Co. The content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for specific advice.

Jan Brian P. Despi is a senior associate at the DTS Department of Isla Lipana & Co., the Philippine member firm of the PwC network.

jan.brian.despi@pwc.com

Read more from the original source:
Artificial Intelligence: FinTech's innovation driver - BusinessWorld Online