Der Beitrag Christophe Zoghbi erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

Copyright by: https://www.zdnet.com

Humans in the Loop is a social enterprise founded in 2017. It helps refugees from conflict zones like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan settle in the country by acquiring digital skills that they can use for working on artificial-intelligence and machine-learning-related projects.

So far, the enterprise has helped around 2,000 refugees find work and integrate into Bulgarian society.

According to its CEO, Iva Gumnishka, Humans in the Loop can provide workers for any stages of the machine-learning model training and development cycle.

“The work ranges from collecting and labeling the ground truth dataset, to verifying the model’s predictions once it’s trained, and handling edge cases, which it’s not sure about,” Gumnishka tells ZDNet.

“We do quite a lot of work in the field of labeling and annotating images and video for computer-vision purposes, which is where the biggest demand in the market is coming from.”

The organization works mostly with refugees, internally displaced people, and people living in conflict zones. It looks to offer employment for those who are left out of the labor market. Aside from the 100-people team based in Bulgaria, the company also works with 150 people across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

“In most countries, we partner with local NGOs, which provide digital skills and IT training. We ourselves organize upskilling training for our workforce, which includes computer skills and English,” she explains.

According to Gumnishka, these opportunities are especially suitable for women who prefer to work from home and are looking to combine their projects with housework and childcare.

“We always distribute projects according to a priority score that each worker has, determined by their legal status, number of dependents, employment status, and other vulnerability factors.” she tells ZDNet.

Over the past few years, the company has worked with many startups across Europe and the US, developing products in the fields of AI and computer vision.

Its workers have also been involved in precision agriculture projects involving the segmentation of crops from drone images, insurance tech projects related to car-damage detection and assessment, facial detection, and spoofing detection for CCTV cameras.

The company is currently looking for additional partners in the Middle East, especially in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen. By 2020, Humans in the Loop aims to employ up to 500 people from conflict-affected countries, and to forge many new partnerships with AI companies.

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Der Beitrag How machine-learning jobs are giving refugees a future in tech erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

copyright by www.eurekalert.org

 LEBANON, NH – Atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH) is a breast lesion associated with a four- to five-fold increase in the risk of breast cancer. ADH is primarily found using mammography and identified on core needle biopsy. Despite multiple passes of the lesion during biopsy, only portions of the lesions are sampled. Other variable factors influence sampling and accuracy such that the presence of cancer may be underestimated by 10-45%. Currently, surgical removal is recommended for all ADH cases found on core needle biopsies to determine if the lesion is cancerous. About 20-30% of ADH cases are upgraded to cancer after surgical excision. However, this means that 70-80% of women undergo a costly and invasive surgical procedure for a benign (but high-risk) lesion.

A Dartmouth research team led by Saeed Hassanpour, PhD, found a machine learning method to predict ADH upgrade to cancer. Having this information can potentially help clinicians and low-risk patients decide whether active surveillance and hormonal therapy is a reasonable alternative to surgical excision. Evaluation of the model showed that the team’s machine learning approach can identify 98% of all malignant cases prior to surgery while sparing from surgery 16% of women who otherwise would have undergone an unnecessary operation for a benign lesion. Their results, Prediction of Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia Upgrades Through a Machine Learning Approach to Reduce Unnecessary Surgical Excisions has been recently published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics .

“Our results suggest there are robust clinical differences between women at low versus high risk for ADH upgrade to cancer based on core needle biopsy data that allowed our machine learning model to reliably predict malignancy upgrades in our dataset,” says Hassanpour. “This study also identified important clinical variables involved in ADH upgrade risk.”

Using surgical excision to rule out malignancy is not without harm as 70-80% of women undergo invasive surgical excision for benign ADH lesions. “Our model can potentially help patients and clinicians choose an alternative management approach in low-risk cases,” says Hassanpour. “In the era of personalized medicine, such models can be desirable for patients who value a shared decision-making approach with the ability to choose between surgical excision for certainty versus surveillance to avoid cost, stress, and potential side effects in women at low risk for upgrade of ADH to cancer.”[…]

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Der Beitrag New machine learning method could spare some women from unnecessary breast surgery erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

copyright by www.irishexaminer.com

According to Enterprise Ireland’s high-potential startup manager Joe Healy, these are the key enabling technologies that will drive the scaling of businesses of the future.

“We are seeing artificial intelligence/machine learning being more widely used in the development of platforms and software solutions across all verticals. These technologies are being adapted for things as complex as big data solutions, but also in many practical enterprise software solutions,” he said.

This follows a global trend which has seen the emergence of deep tech companies, using cutting edge and disruptive technologies based on scientific research, setting to work on solving some of the world’s major problems.

Irish companies operating in the deep tech space include AidTech in Dublin, the overall winner of the 2018 innovation award, which used blockchain to develop a secure way to deliver aid.

Its technology has already been used to deliver international aid to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Another Enterprise Ireland high-potential startup client this year included ServisBot, based at ArcLabs in Waterford, which uses AI conversational to enhance the customer experience.

At the Rubicon Centre in Cork, start-up FourTheorem describes itself as a new breed of software consultancy focused on cloud architecture, DevOps, and artificial intelligence.

According to its website, it provides solutions which enable customers to be leaders in the fourth wave of industrialisation.

“Companies such as ServiceBot, RecommenderX, which transforms AI to business intelligence, and AidTech not only have compelling business models but are numerous enough to attract international venture capital to Ireland,” said Mr Healy.

In addition to providing support for deep tech companies at high-potential startup level, Enterprise Ireland has also encouraged early stage startups in this space.

In July, it put out a call offering €750,000 in competitive start funding for fintech and deep tech companies, the first call to offer specific support for deep tech.

The call was one of nine during the year which provided a total of €5.75m, offering €50,000 competitive start funding to 115 companies. This was at the same level as in 2017 when 91 companies availed of it.

Other such funding calls made during the year were for graduate entrepreneurs, international entrepreneurs, and experienced business professionals, an initiative started last year.[…]

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Der Beitrag Deep tech to make deep impact erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.