Mediaboss Marketing

By Neal Reid.

Five alumni of Auburn University who teamed together to create the software development company SmartWiz have been awarded $150,000 in developmental funds by Google to advance and distribute their tax accounting software.

Samuel Ginn College of Engineering graduates Olumuyiwa Aladebumoye, Tevin Harrel and Jordan Ward, as well as Bre Johnson from the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business and Justin Robinson from the College of Sciences and Mathematics, founded the Birmingham, Alabama-based company in 2018 and have grown it into a trusted service-based tax business. The company is a tax professional software and digital accounting firm that optimizes accounting, tax management, legal and consulting services.

SmartWiz has used artificial intelligence (AI) and modern integrations to create the first-ever all-in-one tax softwarefor tax professionals serving underserved communities. SmartWiz is one of 46 U.S. recipients of the 2023 Google for Startups Black Founders Fund and Latino Founders Fund awards. Its software was approved by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) last year, and the company also recently spent three months in Los Angeles as part of a TechStars cohort.

Our team is very big on strategic partnerships, said Johnson, a 2018 graduate who played on the Auburn womens basketball team. We are big on working with partners who understand our vision to change the world with the way taxes are done forever, and Google has offered such amazing resources and opportunitiesto us. This funding means tous theability to build our product faster, scale our organization and really take over the digital space with improved support on how we market our software using Google SEO.

The six-figure Google for Startups investment will allow SmartWiz to impact the way millions of Americans file their taxes. The funds are equity-free, and SmartWiz also will receive sales and fundraising training, technical support from Google mentors, up to $100,000 in Google Cloud credits, mental health coaching from a team of Black and Latino therapists and participation in the funds interactive community.

As we build out our engineering team, we now have the ability to really focus on improving thetechnology and AI capabilitiesto bring tech to the tax industry, said Johnson, who was named to the 2017 SEC Academic Honor Roll. We will be giving our users a more innovative, fun and revolutionary approach to tax preparation while ensuring every single person who gets their taxes done by someone using our software will have an improvedexperience every singleyear. Being Black founders, and even me being a woman, we dont take this opportunity for granted because we know it is a blessing from God to be chosen by Google for Startups to be a part of this journey.

Since 2020, the Google for Startups Founders Fund has provided more than $45 million in funding to more than 500 Black and Latino founders, and past recipients have raised more than $400 million in investments after their selections in the fund.

SmartWizs founding quintet graduated from Auburn between 2014-18 and created the company shortly after their days on the Plains.

We are five founders from Auburn University, and we graduated from three different colleges, Johnson said. That just speaks to the education and opportunity at our university on all levels to develop and grow into a business owner and have the skills in any industry to be successful.

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Five Auburn Alumni Receive Award for Work to Advance Tax Prep ... - CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

The world increasingly runs on code.

Accelerating the work of those who create that code will boost their productivity and thats just what AI startup Codeium, a member of NVIDIAs Inception program for startups, aims to do.

On the latest episode of NVIDIAs AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz interviewed Codeium founder and CEO Varun Mohan and Jeff Wang, the companys head of business, about the companys business, about how AI is transforming software.

Codeiums AI-powered code acceleration toolkit boasts three core features: autocomplete, chat and search.

Autocomplete intelligently suggests code segments, saving developers time by minimizing the need for writing boilerplate or unit tests.

At the same time the chat function empowers developers to rework or even create code with natural language queries, enhancing their coding efficiency while providing searchable context on the entire code base.

Noah spoke with Mohan and Wang about the future of software development with AI, and the continued, essential role of humans in the process.

Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen Explains How AI Lets Amputee Control Prosthetic Hand, Video Games

A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota discusses his efforts to allow amputees to control their prosthetic limb right down to the finger motions with their minds.

Overjets Ai Wardah Inam on Bringing AI to Dentistry

Overjet, a member of NVIDIA Inception, is moving fast to bring AI to dentists offices. Dr. Wardah Inam, CEO of the company, discusses using AI to improve patient care.

Immunai CTO and Co-Founder Luis Voloch on Using Deep Learning to Develop New Drugs

Luis Voloch, co-founder and chief technology officer of Immunai, talks about tackling the challenges of the immune system with a machine learning and data science mindset.

The AI Podcast is now available through Amazon Music.

In addition, get the AI Podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Google Play, Castbox, DoggCatcher, Overcast, PlayerFM, Pocket Casts, Podbay, PodBean, PodCruncher, PodKicker, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher and TuneIn.

Make the AI Podcast better. Have a few minutes to spare? Fill out this listener survey.

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Codeiums Varun Mohan and Jeff Wang on Unleashing the Power of ... - Nvidia

Through partnership with Sway Medical, Inc. every high school athletic trainer has access to state-of-the-art software to help provide the best care possible for their athletes.

Sway Medical, Inc., a leading provider of mobile balance and cognitive testing and Banner Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care systems in the country, have announced a partnership to provide baseline testing for every high school athlete in Arizona. This partnership will ensure that every high school athletic trainer has access to state-of-the-art software to help provide the best care possible for their athletes.

Concussions are a serious concern for student-athletes, and the prevalence of these injuries has increased in recent years. The CDC estimates that there are approximately 1.6 to 3.8 million sports-related concussions each year. Testing before the season can help establish a pre-injury cognitive and balance function baseline for an individual athlete, making it easier to detect changes in the athlete following suspected head injury.

Banner Health will be providing Sway Medical's technology to every high school in Arizona, making baseline testing available to all student-athletes in the state. The partnership is part of Banner Health's commitment to providing exceptional care to the communities it serves.

"Banner Health has always been at the forefront of sports medicine and technology," saidSteve Erickson, MD, director of Banner Health Sports Medicine. "This partnership truly cements the legacy Banner Health and the team members that are a part of this organization have created around concussion management and sports performance.

The partnership is the first state-wide deployment of Sway Medicals revolutionary software that has taken the athletic training world by storm. Sways customer base has grown by 500% since 2019 and has become the standard for baseline testing athletes.

"Sway is thrilled to partner with Banner Health to bring our software to the dedicated athletic trainers in the state of Arizona. This partnership is a testament to our shared commitment to using technology to improve healthcare outcomes, said Chase Curtiss, CEO and founder of Sway Medical.

This is an offering made possible through the Lentsch Family Concussion Clinic atBanner Sports Medicine Scottsdale.

The baseline testing program will be available to every high school in Arizona starting this summer. For more information about Sway Medical, Inc. and Banner Health, visit their websites atswaymedical.comandbannerhealth.com/sportsmedicine. High school athletics programs in the state of Arizona can request a free Sway system by visitingswaymedical.com/banner.

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Banner Health provides free concussion baseline testing for every ... - Queen Creek Sun Times

A coalition of a half-dozen open-source AI stakeholders -- Hugging Face, GitHub, EleutherAI, Creative Commons, LAION and Open Future -- are calling on EU policymakers to protect open source innovation as they finalize the EU AI Act, which will be the world's first comprehensive AI law. From a report: In a policy paper released this week, "Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act," the open-source AI leaders offered recommendations oefor how to ensure the AI Act works for open source" -- with the "aim to ensure that open AI development practices are not confronted with obligations that are structurally impractical to comply with or that would be otherwise counterproductive."

According to the paper, "overbroad obligations" that favor closed and proprietary AI development -- like models from top AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google -- "threaten to disadvantage the open AI ecosystem." The paper was released as the European Commission, Council and Parliament debate the final EU AI Act in what is known as the "trilogue," which began after the European Parliament passed its version of the bill on June 14. The goal is to finish and pass the AI Act by the end of 2023 before the next European Parliament elections.

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Hugging Face, GitHub and More Unite To Defend Open Source in ... - Slashdot

Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren, writing at The New York Times: Enough is enough. It's time to rein in Big Tech. And we can't do it with a law that only nibbles around the edges of the problem. Piecemeal efforts to stop abusive and dangerous practices have failed. Congress is too slow, it lacks the tech expertise, and the army of Big Tech lobbyists can pick off individual efforts easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Meaningful change -- the change worth engaging every member of Congress to fight for -- is structural.

For more than a century, Congress has established regulatory agencies to preserve innovation while minimizing harm presented by emerging industries. In 1887 the Interstate Commerce Commission took on railroads. In 1914 the Federal Trade Commission took on unfair methods of competition and later unfair and deceptive acts and practices. In 1934 the Federal Communications Commission took on radio (and then television). In 1975 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took on nuclear power, and in 1977 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission took on electric generation and transmission. We need a nimble, adaptable, new agency with expertise, resources and authority to do the same for Big Tech.

Our Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act would create an independent, bipartisan regulator charged with licensing and policing the nation's biggest tech companies -- like Meta, Google and Amazon -- to prevent online harm, promote free speech and competition, guard Americans' privacy and protect national security. The new watchdog would focus on the unique threats posed by tech giants while strengthening the tools available to the federal agencies and state attorneys general who have authority to regulate Big Tech.

Our legislation would guarantee common-sense safeguards for everyone who uses tech platforms. Families would have the right to protect their children from sexual exploitation, cyberbullying and deadly drugs. Certain digital platforms have promoted the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, suicidal ideation and eating disorders or done precious little to combat these evils; our bill would require Big Tech to mitigate such harms and allow families to seek redress if they do not.

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Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren: When It Comes To Big Tech ... - Slashdot