Google’s AIY Vision Kit, Amazon’s Alexa for Business, and more in today’s top stories in data science news.
Amazon Web Services in news
Amazon is putting “Alexa for business”
Amazon Web Services has announced a new initiative to get companies use Alexa in the office. Under the plan, the virtual assistant will help employees launch conference calls, organize room bookings, and even discuss their expenses. With the new scheme, Alexa for Business, companies will be given the tools to manage a fleet of Alexa-enabled devices. Admins will be able to enroll users, enable and disable skills, and connect Alexa to their conferencing equipment. They’ll also be able to build their own apps for the assistant, with Amazon suggesting functions like helping with directions around the office, reporting problems with equipment, and ordering new supplies. Users will also be able to access their company’s apps from home devices, checking what’s on their office calendar and remotely joining meetings. Alexa for Business is being seen as a direct competition to other virtual assistants like Apple Siri, Google Assistant, or Microsoft Cortana.
DigitalGlobe to leverage AWS suite of machine learning capabilities
DigitalGlobe has migrated its entire 100-petabyte imagery library to Amazon Web Services, thus giving its customers instant access to Amazon’s vast library of geospatial images. DigitalGlobe’s sister division Radiant Solutions and its partner ecosystem are also leveraging AWS’s frameworks and tools to build machine learning applications that allow their customers to incorporate valuable geospatial information extracted from commercial satellite imagery into their workflows. “Few companies work with the sheer volume of data that DigitalGlobe does. When working at this volume, it’s nearly impossible to scale and rapidly innovate without the cloud,” said AWS VP Teresa Carlson said, adding that DigitalGlobe was the first customer to use AWS Snowmobile – AWS’s Exabyte-scale data transfer service that uses a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container pulled by a semi-trailer truck – to move their massive image library to AWS.
Google in news
Introducing the AIY Vision Kit: Add computer vision to your maker projects
Google’s AIY Team has announced its next project: the AIY Vision Kit — an affordable, hackable, intelligent camera. The AIY Vision Kit is easy to assemble and connects to a Raspberry Pi computer. Based on user feedback, this new kit is designed to work with the smaller Raspberry Pi Zero W computer and runs its vision algorithms on-device so there’s no cloud connection required. The kit materials list includes a VisionBonnet, a cardboard outer shell, an RGB arcade-style button, a piezo speaker, a macro/wide lens kit, flex cables, standoffs, a tripod mounting nut and connecting components. “For those of you who have your own models in mind, we’ve included the original TensorFlow code and a compiler. Take a new model you have (or train) and run it on the the Intel® Movidius™ MA2450,” Google said adding that users can extend the kit to solve their real world problems.
A blockchain for health data
Health Wizz unveils blockchain platform to give patients control of health data
Health Wizz announced the upcoming launch of its blockchain-based solution designed to address the mounting problem of electronic health records, and provide patients more power over their own health information. Using the Health Wizz platform, every patient would become the arbiter of his or her own medical records. “Each time medical records are produced – by a doctor’s appointment, ER visit, hospital intake or self-reporting app – the platform would standardize them using a specification known as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources,” the company said. “Once done, the records are secured on the user’s own mobile devices in an encrypted space accessible only by that user’s own private cryptographic keys.” To power its system, Health Wizz today announced a pre-sale of its digital token, which will run from Nov. 30 until February 2018. Proceeds will be used to develop the platform further and augment already existing venture capital investments. The formal launch of the platform will happen in March 2018.
Other data science news
H2O.ai secures $40 million to democratize artificial intelligence for the enterprise
H2O.ai announced it has completed a $40 million Series C round of funding led by Wells Fargo and NVIDIA with participation from New York Life, Crane Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Transamerica Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund of Transamerica and Aegon Group. The Series C round brings H2O.ai’s total amount of funding raised to $75 million. The new investment will be used to further democratize advanced machine learning and for global expansion and innovation of Driverless AI, an automated machine learning and pipelining platform that uses “AI to do AI.” H2O’s signature community conference, H2O World will take place on December 4-5, 2017 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
Impetus Technologies to host meetup on anomaly detection techniques using Apache Spark
Big data company Impetus Technologies announced it will host a complimentary meetup “Anomaly Detection Techniques and Implementation Using Apache Spark” on Tuesday, December 5, 2017 from 6-8 pm Pacific time at the Larkspur Landing Hotel in Milpitas, Calif. The company said that space is limited for the event, and interested data scientists, developers and information technology (IT) professionals are asked to reserve a seat at the complimentary event by emailing at [email protected]. In the meetup, the StreamAnalytix team from Impetus will share insights on choosing the right anomaly detection techniques and demonstrate real-world use cases for finding variances in network traffic and financial transactions.
Uptake raises $117M at $2.3B valuation for industrial predictive analytics
Uptake, a SaaS startup that uses machine learning to read and understand how machines are working, and also anticipate when they may break down or need other attention, has closed a Series D round of $117 million at a post-money valuation of $2.3 billion, led by Baillie Gifford, with participation also from existing investors Revolution Growth and GreatPoint Ventures. It brings the total funding to over $250 million. “We’re on a growth trajectory now where there is virtually nothing standing in our way from being the predictive analytics market leader across every heavy industry, from oil & gas to mining and beyond,” said Uptake Co-founder and CEO Brad Keywell in a statement.
CrowdRiff releases ‘smart’ visual content marketing platform
Visual marketing software provider CrowdRiff said it has now processed over 500 million images for over 300 travel brands, and is releasing new visual marketing capabilities powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. CEO Dan Holowack announced this new release at the DTTT Global conference in Brussels, Belgium, where he is co-presenting a session, “Making the Shift to Visual Marketing,” together with Amber King, Director, U.S. Marketing at Colorado Tourism Office. “The volume of available visual content is larger than ever before, and finding the perfect visuals that meet both brand and performance goals is a time-consuming and largely manual process,” Holowack said, adding that CrowdRiff’s latest release addresses “the most common problems marketing teams face when producing visual content, at every stage of the visual content lifecycle.”