Amelia is an artificial intelligence platform created by Dube managed IT services firm IPSOFT, a virtual agent avatar poised to redefine how enterprises operate by automating
and enhancing a wide range of business processes. The product of an obsessive and still-ongoing 16-year developmental cycle, shees, everyone at IPSOFT speaks about Amelia using feminine pronounseverages cognitive technologies to interface with consumers
for example, and her patent-pending intelligence algorithms absorb in a matter of seconds the same instruction manuals
She relies on that baseline information to reply to customer email and answer phone calls; if she understands the query,
she scans the web or the corporate intranet for clues. Only when Amelia cannot locate the relevant information does she escalate the case to a human expert,
observing the response and filing it away for the next time the same scenario unfolds. Amelia unprecedented ability to process natural language
and comprehend complex problems is what sets her apart from rival AI breakthroughs like IBM Jeopardy!
which specializes in data analytics. It also what brings her closer to humanness than any technology before her.
Soon it represents the cumulative intellect of all the different employees who have been fielding these different calls.
NTT Group and Baker hughes, tackling everything from overseeing technology help desks to supporting financial operations to advising remote workers in the field.
because Amelia learns the same way a conventional employee does, she fits comfortably into virtually any business environment,
and since she cloud-based, she can be deployed any time and anywhere, exploiting her fluency in more than 20 languages to communicate with customers and staffers across the globe.
Experts say Amelia arrival could even herald the end of outsourcing as we know it.
he says. ou have to drive a car, vacuum the floor or take the garbage out.
The company occupies four floors in 17 State street, a 42-story commercial building overlooking the Statue of liberty and New york Harbor;
by year end, IPSOFT will take over three more floors to accommodate its growing staff. eople argued with me,
because this is almost double the price of per-square-foot real estate compared to Midtown. They said this is the stupidest move to get seven floors in this building,
says the 46-year-old Dube, clad in a designer blazer and bow tie, his sartorial signature. said to our board,
he quality of life of our staff is very important to us. These people are our brainpower.
We need to provide them an environment for creative thinking.?Born in New delhi and raised in Paris and London,
Dube came to the U s. to pursue a doctorate in theoretical computer science at New york University.
While at NYU he began exploring the artificial intelligence principles and philosophies that form the basis of the Amelia platform, convinced that his research into cloning human thought processes would stretch no longer than a couple of years.
That was close to 20 years ago. y advisor, professor Dennis Shasha, who knew a lot more about this than I did looked,
The person who invented the term rtificial intelligence, computer scientist John Mccarthy, himself said that the problem turned out to be a lot harder than anticipated,
With Amelia still little more than a gleam in its founder eye, the fledgling company built remote infrastructure management solutions designed to automate a range of IT environments and business processes.
According to IPSOFT, one client, a large financial services firm, adopted IPCENTER and cut the mean time to resolution of failed trades from 47 minutes to less than four minutes. he question we would ask is,
Dube says. y father used to have some power plants, and I would go there, and they would have almost nobody managing them,
the network and the servers become self-aware and self-governing? IPCENTER was the product realization of adaptive learning systems that would be able to self-govern.
That was our first big steppingstone toward cognitive technologies. Pcenter vaulted IPSOFT to the forefront of the IT infrastructure services segment.
IPSOFT efforts capitalized on research in the field of affective computing. e. interactions between humans and computing systems capable of detecting
and responding to the user emotional state based on cues like facial expressions, gestures, speech, even the force or rhythm of key strokes or the temperature of the hand controlling the mouse. f Amelia is to become the most faithful service agent,
she also needs to be able to respond to man need to communicate with somebody who can understand emotionsot just a robotic ress 1 for thisand ress 7 for that,?
executives from IPSOFT traveled to Barcelona to share an Amelia case study with European executives at a private event held in conjunction with the Gartner Symposium.
You don want to come up with a search engine or a pattern-matching engine. It needs to stand up to the test of doing
We were uncomfortable faking it for financial gains with intermediate levels of evolution. We wanted the baby to be 9 months-plus before we could unveil to the world that there is a better way
and a more efficient way to conduct e-commerce. melia is already making good on IPSOFT promise to streamline the IT environment.
automation technology innovations like Amelia will assume control over tasks that are performed now by 250 million knowledge workers worldwide,
freeing the remaining work force to devote their time and energy to more creative pursuits. That good news for employees frustrated by the status quo.
According to a survey conducted by business and IT advisory company Quocirca IT staffers devote 30 percent of their professional lives to completing basic,
and energy they could be spending on more rewarding projects. But what may sound like a utopian ideal also presents enormous logistical challenges for enterprises. here a lot of talk about technology taking over the drudgery work
and allowing people to focus on more creative, more value-added work, but there also the potential to replace a lot of human functions,
Do you focus on reducing staff, or do you focus on new ways to make people more productive?
utonomics, cognitive computing and robotic process automation are already reconfiguring the outsourcing segment. Alsbridge reports that in recent months,
He believes cognitive technologies could eventually automate everything from reviewing medical X-rays to commodities trading. he potential goes way beyond automating repetitive tasks,
the experts at MIT were predicting we would never have a driverless car, and now Google has them on the road.
The pace of change is so rapidlmost exponentialhat even though Amelia is not yet really operational in too many situations,
and the landscape two years from now could be completely different. all center employees aren the only ones keeping a watchful eye on cognitive technologies. think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence.
he development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. rian Christian, a poet with degrees in computer science and philosophy, is the author of The Most Human Human,
a book exploring the history and future of artificial intelligence, as well as humankind evolving relationship to AI technologies. hen
I was on my book tour, the No. 1 question I would get from audiences would be,
It not just people on the street, Christian says. t also true for a lot of the people at the very places developing these technologies. hristian cites the example of Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley,
and co-author of the textbook Artificial intelligence: A Modern Approach, which Christian declares he bible of AI.
and that computers must be programmed to understand human values to guarantee they don do harm to their creators.
Russell has made an abrupt shift in the emphasis of his own work, Christian says. s he put it to
But then I talk to people at the biggest computer science departments in the U s. laces like Google
whether artificial intelligence represents a promise or a threat seems likely to grow even louder in the months and years ahead.
or complete eradication of all diseases and poverty is up for debate. But the fact is this is going to have an impact bigger than any other impact that man has seen before.
She works the best on simple, yes/no questions. In the next phase, wee ready to make her even better,
The company offers a range of pricing models for existing IT services like IPCENTER including a fixed monthly charge for specified infrastructure
and customized tiered pricing. IPSOFT does not disclose revenue and still funnels 70 percent of all profits back into R&d.
The privately held firm has solicited never venture financing, instead relying on the largesse of two Dube family trusts to fuel its growth.
Dube insists he will never sell IPSOFT but says an IPO is likely in the next two to three years.
he says. n the next few years you will start to see customers hanging up the phone and asking,
Within the next decade you might pass somebody in the hallway and not be able to tell if it a human or an android.
I think we are very much approaching that. hat Blade runner future may seem more dystopian than utopian to some.
#This MIT Grad Is Changing Medicine With a Needle-Covered Pill While medical injections are unpleasant and inconvenient, theye also necessary for people with illnesses like diabetes.
But that might not be true for too much longer. Carl Schoellhammer, 28, has created a pill that would render syringes unnecessary.
A graduate student at MIT, he recently won $15, 000 at the Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Student Prize in the health-care category. hen I received the phone call telling me I won,
I made them tell me three times to make sure I wasn dreaming, he says. His prizewinning innovation is the Microneedle Pill (mpill
if administered via injection. Although an image of the pill that was used in testing might remind people of a cactus or a porcupine,
freeing the needles to introduce the medicine. Once the drugs are delivered, the capsule can pass through the body safely.
and he hopes to market it as a diagnostic technology that can be used for a wide range of injections such as insulin and growth hormones.
pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced this week that it testing similar technology through a collaboration with a startup called Rani Therapeutics.
a handheld device inserted suppository-style that uses ultrasound waves to push medicine into the tissues of the GI TRACT.
This allows the body to absorb the medicine faster. Schoellhammer sees this being helpful for the 1 million people in the United states who have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as well as other conditions.
While he wants to advance the uprobe further and conduct more animal testing, he estimates the product can be on the market in five years.
#Big U s. Data Breaches Offer Treasure trove for Hackers A massive breach of U s. federal computer networks disclosed this week is the latest in a flood of attacks by suspected Chinese hackers aimed at grabbing personal data,
industrial secrets and weapons plans from government and private computers. The Obama administration on Thursday disclosed the breach of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management
and said the records of up to 4 million current and former federal employees may have been compromised.
U s. officials have said on condition of anonymity they believe the hackers are based in China but Washington has blamed not publicly Beijing at a time
It was the second computer break-in in less than a year at the OPM, the federal government's personnel office.
The first breach has been linked to earlier thefts of personal data from millions of records at Anthem Inc, the second largest U s. health insurer,
Guidance Software, a cybersecurity firm, said the first signs of data"exfiltration"were detected originally with Einstein
"It's a different form of Cold war at this point, "said Rob Eggebrecht, cofounder and chief executive of Denver-based Intelisecure, a private cybersecurity firm.
which cost the firm hundreds of millions of dollars in sensitive research and development work. Eggebrecht declined to identify the firm,
"We've seen a huge uptick in opportunistic exfiltration of high-value data, "he said, adding that the attack on the pharma company involved malicious software installed together with the Chinese-language search engine Baidu.
Admiral James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a cyber conference at West point military academy last month that U s. adversaries like China
and Russia were rapidly increasing their assaults on military networks.""We're hemorrhaging information at a dizzying rate,
China has in recent years introduced two new stealth fighters that analysts say bear a striking resemblance to the F-22
and F-35 built by Lockheed martin Corp. Lockheed redoubled security efforts focused on suppliers after a"significant and tenacious"attack on its computer networks in 2011 that was enabled by lax security at a supplier.
U s. senators have added $200 million in funding to their proposed fiscal 2016 budget to fund a detailed study of the cyber vulnerabilities of major weapons systems.
The move came after the Pentagon's chief weapons tester told Congress that nearly every major weapons program tested in 2014 showed"significant vulnerabilities"to cyber attack,
including misconfigured and unpatched software. U s. government officials and cyber analysts say Chinese hackers are using high-tech tactics to build massive databases that could be used for traditional espionage goals,
such as recruiting spies, or gaining access to secure data on other networks. The latest incident gives hackers access to a treasure trove of personal information,
including birth dates, Social security numbers, previous addresses, and security clearances. All that data could help hackers identify information about specific targets
including potential passwords for websites that may be portals to information about weapons systems or other research data."
"They can dig down into that data and learn more about the individuals, what their hobbies are,
what their vices are, what skeletons they have in their closet, "said Babak Pasdar, president and chief executive of Bat Blue Network, a cybersecurity firm.
which hackers gained access to private data of a website administrator by finding passwords on a public website linked to the person's hobby."
with 23 percent completing all or some of their work from home, up from 19 percent in 2003.
Most employees who work remotely have a hybrid situation where they work from home part of the time,
These cutting edge companies rely heavily upon mobile and cloud technologies and a wide variety of online services and platforms.
having run companies in both a traditional on-site environment as well as a completely remote business model. A few years into running my first remote company,
and collaborative in ways that rivaled---if not beat--the work cultures of other great companies
Fire engine Red, which does marketing, technology and data solutions, was founded as a remote company in 2001.
It now has 64 team members working from 24 remote locations. Communications Director Chuck Vadun attributes the accomplishments of the company to location-independence. he fact that we can hire the most talented people,
the president and founder of 10up Inc. 10up is a website design and development company with 115 team members working remotely from 20 locations.
While most remote companies reported using phone and video conferencing to conduct job interviews, some used other means.
Automattic, the web development company that operates Wordpress. com and has more than 325 remote workers,
conducts interviews mainly over text chat. Head of Human resources, Lori Mcleese, says, t a good introduction for the person interviewing about how we communicate (very heavily text-based)
and this also allows us to be able to interview people in different time zones no matter where the interviewer is located. emote companies also look for specific attributes that make people not only excellent remote workers,
but also exceptionally productive employees. Remote companies Lovetoknow, Scrapinghub, and Speak, all say they specifically look for great communication skills,
regardless of job function. e stay productive by staying in touch, offering status reports, working through challenges,
and these things are all easier when everyone is communicative, says Ann Macdonald, director of content strategy at Lovetoknow.
Origin Eight, a web and application development company with 25 remote workers, takes time to build culture.
The ater coolerconversations might have to happen in a chat room, and it uses Yammer for extracurricular discussions. t takes consistent and thorough communication,
The 8 Essential Steps to Building a Winning Company Cultureone of the biggest concerns of in-office managers who allow employees to work from home is knowing
but in a remote environment, managers must adopt more accurate and focused measurements of productivity.
Acceleration Partners, a marketing agency with 45 team members, emphasizes individual goal-setting to track productivity. e also use tools like Harvest for time tracking,
and quarterly check ins to make sure everyone is on track with their core job responsibilities and individual goals,
Scrapinghub, a data and information extraction company with 107 remote workers, focuses on motivation over productivity.
So, rather than asking how to keep your workers productive, you should ask how to keep them motivated.
You need to know the priorities of your employees and strive to align their work to them,
within your company constraints of course. n looking at what remote companies do differently than office-bound companies,
I believe that most--if not all of these tips are est practicesin either environment. It just that remote companies don have the physical presence to fall back on
Specifically, communication skills are essential for the modern knowledge worker. Company culture is vital to hiring and retaining workers.
Switching management techniques to focus less on face time and more on goals and results would increase productivity at every company.
all companies can learn from those that embrace remote work l
#Public-Private Partnership to Create Long-term Water supply The Los angeles County Business Federation has endorsed a water project that will capture
#France First to Introduce Mandatory Carbon Reporting for Investors Pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors in France will be required to disclose how they are managing climate change risks.
The announcement was made by France finance minister Michel Sapin at the Climate Finance Day conference in Paris on May 22.
France is the first country in the world to introduce a carbon reporting obligation on financial institutions.
It could pave the way for other countries with well-developed responsible investment movements such as Sweden to follow suit.
France lead will strengthen the drive among investors worldwide to consider the environmental impacts of their investments and the risks to their businesses of failing to do so.
Carbon-intensive companies face severe challenges to their valuations and ability to repay loans as a result of carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes and other legislation.
For many financial institutions, the first step on the road to understanding these risks is to commission a carbon footprint of their investment portfolios or loan books.
Many investors already recognize these risks and disclose how they are managing them on a voluntary basis. Almost 50 investors are signed up to the Montréal Pledge launched late last year
which commits them to measuring and publicly disclosing the carbon footprint of their investment portfolios on an annual basis. The new legal requirement is contained in Article 48 of The french Energy Transition Law
which was passed recently by The french parliament and is due to be debated by the senate. The original text is here.
An English translation provided by the 2°Investing Initiative is here. The draft legislation requires institutional investors to disclose how they consider environmental,
social and governance issues in decision-making processes. These issues include the risks of climate change associated with carbon-intensive assets
and the opportunities to invest in low-carbon and renewable energy. Investors will need also to set targets to measure progress
and explain if they are achieved not. The text also obliges banks and credit providers to disclose the risks they face.
The french government will publish a report on climate change risks by December 31 2016, placing it alongside other risks such as credit risk, counterpart risk and excessive leverage.
Listed companies will also be required to report on the risks of climate change to their business
and on the measures taken to mitigate them. Other countries such as the UK already require companies to disclose this information.
Alongside The french government announcement, Axa said it will divest#500 million ($547 million) from companies most exposed to coal-related activities
and triple its green investments to reach#3 billion ($3. 28 billion) by 2020. In other announcements, BNP PARIBAS said it would sign the Montréal Pledge.
The growing market for responsible investment in France is one reason why Trucost is to open an office in Paris in June.
The new premises will enable Trucost to better serve its many existing French clients, including Montréal Pledge signatories ERAFP and FRR,
as well as develop new business in the country e
#Partnerships Critical to Solving Nationwide Water Issues We have a problem. A water problem. Our sources in the United states are in real danger,
and conditions are more likely to worsen before they get better. Many factors are contributing to this current reality.
Our families, our communities and our businesses depend on this precious commodity. While we continue to identify
Tomorrow, on World Environment Day, as hundreds of organizations worldwide link together to drive collective action to positively impact our environment,
bringing awareness and change to water challenges our communities face is not only timely but necessary.
originating from the Mammoth Lakes Basin in central California Inyo National forest. In this time of significant drought and water scarcity, the function and efficiency of this watershed is of the utmost importance.
A partnership with Caltrout will work to improve the ecological health of the Mammoth Lakes Basin
Funding will also work to shape a stream re-route of Mammoth Creek to connect properly to its natural stream source.
The neighboring forests surrounding Fort Collins catch and filter the water. Thus, if the forests are harmed,
so too is the water supply in this community. Partnering with The Nature Conservancy will work to improve forest conditions
and make advancements that proactively minimize wildfires in the region by instituting treatment testing and informing larger-scale restoration projects in the future.
Funding will also serve as means to proactively stabilize the world-class recreational activities and spectacular scenic areas that serve as the region identity.
supporting water conservation initiatives outside of your company walls reinforce efforts being made inside to preserve this precious commodity throughout the production process.
For example, Anheuser-busch US breweries have reduced water consumption by 47 percent in the last 10 years and by 22 percent in the last five years.
This year on World Environment Day, Anheuser-busch employees in Fort Collins, Los angeles and across the United states will honor these water journeys
and provide funding to Water. org, a global organization that increases water access and quality around the world.
World Environment Day is an opportune time to discuss water conservation, showcase how wee working to reduce water use
From public and private companies to environmental organizations and to individuals in communities across the country we all have to make the commitment to preserving
Shana Ruffus is the director of corporate social responsibility, environment at Anheuser-busch s
#DOE, EEI to Boost Production, Use of Electric vehicles The Edison Electric Institute and the Department of energy announced a partnership that aims to boost the production
and use of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in the United states. DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz and EEI President Tom Kuhn signed a memorandum of understanding Monday to take several joint actions,
including research and outreach programs that promote the widespread adoption of EVS. The first action to be taken under the agreement will be a study on the economic impact of electric transportation in the United states. The EEI
an industry group that represents investor-owned US electric companies, also announced that its fleet electrification initiative has exceed the anticipated $50 million annual industry commitment.
The initiative will total more than $90 million in 2015 with EEI member companies adding more than 800 new plug-in vehicles
and 740 new charging ports to utility fleets. The EEI launched the fleet electrification initiative last year,
which includes a commitment by the industry group and its partnering member companies to invest at least 5 percent of their annual fleet budgets in plug-in vehicles and technologies.
Last month Ford motor company announced it would allow competitors to purchase its electrified vehicle technology patents in an effort to help accelerate industry-wide research and development of electrified vehicles
#Toyota, Nissan, Honda Fund Hydrogen infrastructure Project Toyota, Nissan and Honda have agreed on key details regarding a new joint support project for the development of hydrogen station infrastructure in Japan.
In addition to partially covering the operating costs of hydrogen stations the companies will pay up to $90, 000 per station the three automakers have agreed also to help infrastructure companies deliver the best possible customer service
and create a convenient, hassle-free refueling network for owners of fuel cell vehicles (FCVS). The joint project (conducted alongside the Japanese government support for hydrogen stations) will partially cover hydrogen station operating expenses incurred by infrastructure companies.
Toyota and Nissan are also members of the US Energy department public-private partnership focused on advancing hydrogen infrastructure for FCVS.
& Gas Efficiency Battelle has developed a data analytics platform to increase oil and gas industry efficiency.
and machine learning methods originally developed for data-heavy applications such as national security and the healthcare industry to the oil and gas industry,
and money by using statistical modeling. Elucidata can pinpoint factors that separate good wells from poor performers,
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