SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Zachary Amos – “Leveraging AI to Predict and Reduce College Dropout Rates”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already impacting education in many ways. Some schools are embracing it to serve students better, and many learners use it to help them with research and assignments. One of its more promising uses in this field, though, is reducing dropout rates.

Dropping out of college before finishing a degree may limit students’ opportunities in the future, but it can also be difficult for schools to predict. AI can help all parties involved through several means.

Identifying At-Risk Students

Preventing dropouts starts with recognizing which people are at risk of quitting prematurely. Machine learning is an optimal solution here because it excels at identifying patterns in vast amounts of data. Many factors can lead to dropping out, and each can be difficult to see, but AI can spot these developments before it’s too late.

Studies show early interventions based on warning signs can significantly reduce dropout rates, and AI enables such action. Educators can only intervene when they know it’s necessary to do so, and that level of insight is precisely what AI can provide.

Early examples of this technology have already achieved 96% accuracy in predicting students at risk of dropping out. Combining such predictions with a formal intervention plan could let higher ed facilities ensure more students finish their degrees.

Uncovering Non-Academic Risk Factors

In addition to recognizing known predictors of dropout risks, AI can uncover subtler, non-academic indicators. The causes of dropping out are not always easy to see in classroom performance. For example, over 60% of college students experience at least one mental health issue, which can threaten their education. AI can reveal these relationships.

Over time, AI will be able to highlight which non-tracked factors tend to appear in students with a high risk of dropping out. Once schools understand these non-academic warning signs, they can craft policies and initiatives to address them.
Enabling Personalized Education
AI is also a useful tool for minimizing the risks that lead to quitting school before someone even showcases them. Personalizing educational resources is one of the strongest ways it can do so.

The AI Research Center at Woxsen University in India successfully used chatbots to tailor lessons to individual students. Students utilizing the bot — which offered personalized reminders about classwork — were more likely to receive a B grade or higher. People attending Georgia State University showed similar results when using a chatbot to drive engagement.

Personalized education is effective because people have varying learning styles. AI provides the scale and insight necessary to recognize these differences and adapt resources accordingly, which would be impractical with manual alternatives.

Improving Accessibility

Similarly, AI can drive pupil engagement and prevent stress-related dropout factors by making education more accessible. Many classroom resources and university buildings were not designed with accessibility for all needs in mind. Consequently, they may hinder some students’ success, but AI can address these concerns.

Some AI apps can scan physical texts into digital notes to streamline note-taking for those with impairments limiting their ability to use pens or keyboards. Natural language processing can lead to better text-to-speech algorithms for users with vision impairments. On a larger scale, AI could analyze a campus to highlight areas where some buildings or walkways may need wheelchair ramps or other accessibility improvements.

Responsible AI Usage Can Minimize Dropout Rates

Some applications of AI in education — largely dealing with students’ usage of the technology — have raised concerns. The technology does pose some privacy risks and other ethical considerations, but as these use cases show, its potential for good is also too vast to ignore.

Responsible AI development and use can help universities ensure every student gets the help they need. As a result, dropout rates will fall. Schools will benefit from the higher student success rate, and the student body will benefit by achieving goals that will help them in their future careers.

About the Author:

Zachary Amos is the Features Editor at ReHack, where he writes about artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and other technology-related topics.

Der Beitrag Leveraging AI to Predict and Reduce College Dropout Rates erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

Who’s Betting, Where, and Why in AI – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar

As global AI funding levels remain elevated, this week’s investment activity reveals a tightening pattern: fewer hubs, bigger bets, and sharper focus. Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Paris now account for 80% of global AI funding, while other regions navigate capital scarcity and look for niche leverage. Meanwhile, Amazon’s CEO used his annual letter to justify billions already spent, calling AI investments a necessity for long-term competitiveness.

In San Francisco, startup Virtue AI secured $30 million to tackle deployment risk, a concern that’s becoming more pronounced as adoption scales. UK-based Synthesia reported $100 million in revenue and welcomed Adobe Ventures as a new backer, underscoring the value of enterprise AI tools that are already delivering results. And in China, a newly launched $8 billion AI fund backed by government and finance ministries will channel early-stage investments into foundational research and startup formation.

CEE continues to gain investor attention as a cost-efficient and increasingly capable AI development region, while Korea saw a domestic political pledge of $70 billion toward AI initiatives. On the infrastructure front, Nvidia’s $500 billion long-term strategy—including chips and supercomputing partnerships—continues to drive share price gains, while nEye Systems closed a $58 million round to push optical chip development further into the AI stack.

Big tech players aren’t staying out of the startup scene either. Alphabet and Nvidia reportedly invested in SSI, the new venture by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, and ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s startup is reportedly eyeing a massive $2 billion seed round. CMA CGM’s €100 million partnership with Mistral AI brings logistics into the funding spotlight, and the trend toward agentic AI for financial research continues to spread across fintech.

Previous SwissCognitive AI Radar: AI Funding Highlights.

Our article does not offer financial advice and should not be considered a recommendation to engage in any securities or products. Investments carry the risk of decreasing in value, and investors may potentially lose a portion or all of their investment. Past performance should not be relied upon as an indicator of future results.

Der Beitrag Who’s Betting, Where, and Why in AI – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

Here’s a fresh batch of stories shaping the AI conversation:

Europe plans €20B AI gigafactories to boost innovation
US tariffs risk weakening AI alliances, say experts
Alzheimer’s research taps into AI through new training program
4,000 researchers share optimism on AI’s benefits
AI analysts emerge as key to enterprise transformation
…and more!

Let’s keep tracking how AI continues to unfold!

Kind regards,

The Team of SwissCognitive

Der Beitrag AI Alliences at Risk erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

AI Funding Highlights – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar

This week’s AI investment landscape has been defined by diverging strategies, capital flows, and a widening discussion around equity, access, and economic consequence. On one side, the U.S. and EU are outlining ambitious visions for leadership. While the Stargate initiative pushes scale and speed, the EU’s dual strategy of financial commitment and regulatory positioning is placing ethical trust at the heart of its long game.

At the institutional level, signals of maturity are surfacing. Stanford’s AI Index highlighted pressure points shaping enterprise tech strategy, while BCG’s IT Spending Pulse underlined a shift: budgets are recalibrating as generative AI moves from novelty to core capability. Large investors are responding in kind—Bay Area-based SignalFire closed a $1 billion fund focused solely on applied AI companies, and Microsoft’s AI alliance with MSCI emphasizes the financial sector’s shift to AI-informed strategies.

From a regional angle, the Gates Foundation is betting $7.5 million on Rwanda as a launch point for AI scaling hubs in health, agriculture, and education. Canada attracted a CAD$150 million investment from Siemens for a global AI R&D center focused on battery production, while Italy’s Axyon AI secured €4.3 million for financial forecasting, and Ukraine’s QurieGen raised €2.2 million for AI-driven cancer drug R&D.

Meanwhile, a different class of firms is recalibrating customer interaction models. Arta Finance unveiled a suite of AI agents for portfolio insight, and startups skipping traditional funding stages—especially in Europe—signal a shift toward faster, more efficient capital strategies. But UNCTAD’s report reminds us that AI’s projected $4.8 trillion global impact comes with significant risks: unless addressed, the gap between early adopters and the rest could deepen.

This week’s updates confirm that the race is no longer about who adopts AI—it’s about how, and at what cost.

Previous SwissCognitive AI Radar: From Mega Rounds to Market Ripples .

Our article does not offer financial advice and should not be considered a recommendation to engage in any securities or products. Investments carry the risk of decreasing in value, and investors may potentially lose a portion or all of their investment. Past performance should not be relied upon as an indicator of future results.

Der Beitrag AI Funding Highlights – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

From Mega Rounds to Market Ripples – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar

The AI Investment Radar is back with another Thursday-to-Thursday round-up of the most significant developments in global AI funding and strategic investment. This week, headline attention was dominated by Anthropic’s $3.5 billion round—March’s largest raise—marking a continued race among frontier model developers. Yet beyond that, capital movements spanned from public sector commitments to corporate scaling strategies.

EY-Parthenon announced a $250 million allocation toward AI-powered edge platforms, while Deloitte reaffirmed its $3 billion commitment by expanding its Global Simulation Center of Excellence. OpenAI’s plans for a $40 billion round, led by SoftBank, underscored how large-scale compute and model development remain critical funding priorities.

At a government level, the EU pledged €1.3 billion to develop AI and digital skills under its Digital Europe Programme. On a global scale, IDC projects that AI investments will add $22.3 trillion in economic value by 2030, equating to nearly $5 for every dollar spent. Meanwhile, philanthropic and regional efforts—from Google’s $10 million AI grant to nonprofits, to Mastercard’s investment in Singapore-based AIDA—highlight the growing importance of distributed innovation.

CoreWeave’s downscaled IPO, along with continued investor concerns about AI implementation gaps, also offer a more tempered look at the market’s momentum. Yet from drug discovery at Isomorphic Labs to AI-enabled supply chain optimization, the range and depth of AI deployments continue to grow.

Tune in next week for more updates of the world of AI investments.

Previous SwissCognitive AI Radar: Global AI Capital Moves at Full Speed.

Our article does not offer financial advice and should not be considered a recommendation to engage in any securities or products. Investments carry the risk of decreasing in value, and investors may potentially lose a portion or all of their investment. Past performance should not be relied upon as an indicator of future results.

Der Beitrag From Mega Rounds to Market Ripples – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Eleanor Wright, COO at TelWAI – “Fortifying the Future: Ensuring Secure and Reliable AI”

As AI becomes further integrated into various domains, from infrastructure to defence, ensuring its robustness will become a matter of national security. An AI system managing power grids, security apparatus, or financial networks could present a single point of failure if compromised or manipulated. Historical incidents, such as the Stuxnet cyberweapon, illustrate the physical and cyber damage that can be inflicted. When considering AI’s complexity, the potential for a cascade of both physical and digital harm increases dramatically.

As such, we should ask: How do we fortify AI?

AI systems must be designed to withstand attacks. From decentralisation to layering, these systems should be constructed so that control points can seamlessly enter and exit the loop without disabling the broader system. Thus, building redundancy and backup at various control points within the AI systems. For example, suppose a sensor or a group of sensors is deemed to have failed or been corrupted. In that case, the broader system must be capable of automatically readjusting to stop utilising data and intelligence gathered from said sensors.

Another strategy for strengthening AI systems involves simulating data poisoning attacks and training AI systems to detect such threats. By teaching the systems to recognise and respond to attacks or failures, they can automatically reconfigure without the need for human intervention. If an AI can learn to identify tainted data, such as statistical anomalies or inconsistent patterns, it could flag or quarantine suspect inputs. This approach leans heavily on machine learning’s strengths: pattern recognition and adaptability. However, it’s not a failsafe; adversaries could evolve their attacks to more closely mimic legitimate data, so the training would need to be dynamic, constantly updating to match new threat profiles.

Maintaining a human in the loop to enable oversight and override is considered one of the most crucial elements in the rollout of AI in various industries. Allowing humans to oversee AI decision-making and restricting autonomy can prevent potentially harmful actions taken by these systems. Whilst critical in the early stages of AI deployment as capabilities scale and evolve, there may come a point where human oversight inhibits these systems and, in itself, causes more harm than good.

Finally, AI sovereignty may prove to be the most critical element in ensuring companies and governments fully control essential algorithms and hardware powering their operations. Without this control, these systems could be vulnerable to foreign interference, including cyberattacks, espionage, or sabotage. As the use of AI increases, the sovereignty of AI systems and their components will become increasingly important. At its core, AI sovereignty is about control, whether exercised by governments, corporations, or individuals. Through the control of data, infrastructure, and decision-making power, those who build and deploy AI systems and sensors gain control of AI.

Fortification will involve integrating resilience, adaptability, and sovereignty into AI’s DNA, ensuring it is not only intelligent but also resilient and unbreakable. It can provide technological advantages, but it may also expose systems to disruption and vulnerability exploitation. As organisations race to harness AI’s potential, the question looms: Will AI enable organisations to gain a strategic advantage, or will it undermine the very systems it was designed to strengthen?

About the Author:

Holding a BA in Marketing and an MSc in Business Management, Eleanor Wright has over eleven years of experience working in the surveillance sector across multiple business roles.

Der Beitrag Fortifying the Future: Ensuring Secure and Reliable AI erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

This is your last chance to nominate! The Global AI Ambassador Program 2025 closes next week—don’t miss the opportunity to recognize AI leaders shaping the future.

In the meantime AI is advancing in research, defense, healthcare, and business—here are this week’s highlights:

AI deciphers genetic mysteries in biomedical research
US Space Force outlines AI-driven space strategies
AI-powered brain implant enables robotic arm control
Self-healing AI systems strengthen cyber defense
…and more!

Stay ahead in AI—catch you next week with more updates!

Kind regards,

The Team of SwissCognitive

Der Beitrag Last Chance for Recognition erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Dr. Raul V. Rodriguez, Vice President, Woxsen University and Dr. Hemachandran Kannan,  Director AI Research Centre & Professor – “AI in Cyber Defense: The Rise of Self-Healing Systems for Threat Mitigation”

As cyber threats become more complex, traditional security controls have real challenges to stay in pace. AI-powered self-healing mechanisms are set to revolutionize cybersecurity with real-time threat detection, automated response, and self-healing by itself without human intervention. These machine-learning-based intelligent systems, behavioral analytics, and big data allow detection of vulnerabilities, disconnection from infected devices, and elimination of attacks while they are occurring. The shift to a proactive defense with AI-enabled cybersecurity solutions will reduce time to detect and respond to attacks and strengthen digital resilience. Forcing businesses and organizations to fight to keep pace with the fast-paced cyber threat landscape, self-healing AI systems have become a cornerstone of next-gen cyber defense mechanisms.

Introduction to Self-Healing Systems

Definition and Functionality of Self-Healing Cybersecurity Systems

In self-healing cybersecurity, an AI-based cyber security system determines, cuts off, and heals a cyber attack or security danger inflicted without the intervention or oversight of a human. Such systems utilize an automated recovery process to fix attacked networks with the least disturbance to restore normalcy. Unlike conventional security measures that require human operations, self-healing systems learn from experiences and detect and respond to dangers reactively and very efficiently.

Role of AI and Machine Learning in Detecting, Containing, and Remediating Cyber Threats

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning facilitate the cyber security-based technologies with self-healing abilities. An AI-enabled threat detection will analyze huge data wealth in real-time to spot anomalies, suspicious behaviors, and possible breaches in security. When a threat gets detected, ML algorithms analyze severity levels, triggering automated containment actions such as quarantining infected devices or blocking bad traffic. In AI-supported repair, self-healing measures are taken, where infected systems are automatically cleaned, healed, or rebuilt, hence shortening the time span of human intervention and damage caused by attacks.

How Big Data Analytics and Threat Intelligence Contribute to Self-Healing Capabilities

Processing of large data sets is a large concern for making autonomous cybersecurity systems more efficient by integrating real-time threat intelligence from multiple sources, including network logs, user behavior patterns, and global cyber threat databases. By processing and analyzing that data, self-healing systems may predict threats as they arise and provide proactive defense against cyberattacks. Continuous updates on emerging vectors of attack by threat intelligence feeds will enable AI models to learn and update security protocols on real time. The convergence of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning creates a robust and dynamic security platform, hence amplifying the efficiency of digital resilience.

Key Features of Self-Healing Systems

Self-healing cyber defense systems use artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to isolate and respond to threats as they surface and in real-time. They have the ability to react straight off, identifying and doing away with intruders in less than a millisecond. Autonomous intrusion detection employs machine learning and behavioral analysis to preemptively eradicate the chance of a successful cyber-attack. Self-healing capabilities enable a system to patch vulnerabilities, restore a breached network, and revive the security system without any human aid. These systems learn constantly in real-time and are therefore able to adapt to changing threats and enhance cyber resilience. Self-healing security solutions effectively protect organizations against sophisticated cybercrime and potential business disruption by lessening the load of human intervention and response times.

Advantages Over Traditional Cybersecurity Methods

AI-sustained self-healing systems enable instantaneous threat detection and responses to decrease the Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) to orders of magnitude below conventional cybersecurity practices.

Unlike reactive security, these systems pro-actively do live monitoring, predict, and neutralize threats before they can expand. They preclude reliance on human intervention, hence reducing errors and delays.

Self-healing systems learn and adapt to open-ended cyber threats, creating a long-standing extra-zero-day exploit, ransomware, and advanced persistent threat (APT) resilience. Automated threat mitigation and system recovery raise cybersecurity efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness for the modern organization.

Challenges and Limitations

The self-healing cyber security solutions, despite understanding their benefits, pose serious challenges to integration, making it imperative to deploy and support AI-powered security systems with the specialist skills of professionals. The issue of false positives persists as automated responses can ascribe threats to actions that are though correct, putting business continuity in jeopardy. Compliance with international data protection legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), is also a big hurdle for AI-assisted security in order to have strong privacy provisions. Compatibility with current legacy systems can be a roadblock to seamless adoption, forcing organizations to renew their superannuated infrastructure. Ethical issues on AI bias in threat detection should also receive due diligence so that fairness and accuracy in decision-making continue to receive encouragement in the field of cybersecurity.

Real-World Applications of Self-Healing Systems

Financial Institutions

AI-based self-healingcybersecurity enables banks and financial institutions to identify and block fraudulent transactions, breaches, and cyberattacks. With constant surveillance over financial transactions, AI detects anomalies to improve fraud detection and automate security controls, thereby decreasing financial losses and maintaining data integrity in the process.

Healthcare Industry

With the threats posed to patient data by cyber warfare on healthcare networks and hospitals, self-healing systems will be used in protecting patient data. These self-healing systems are built for searching for intrusions, isolating the affected parts of a system, and restored by an automated reset process to guarantee compliance with HIPAA and other healthcare regulations.

Government and Defense

National security agencies count on AI-based cybersecurity systems to protect sensitive data, deter cyber war and protect critical infrastructure. Autonomous self-healing AI systems respond to nation-state-sponsored cyberthreats and are able to react failure-point-to-failure-point around an attack’s continual adaptation while providing real-time protection against potential breaches or intrusions in the space around them.

Future Outlook

With someday ever-weaving variation of possible cyber attacks, therefore enhancing most probably probable requirement of AI self-healing cyber security systems. Futuristic advancements such as blockchain for enforcing secure data inter-exchange, quantum computing for championing encryption strength, and AI deception to falsify some attacker’s cognition. It will allow even the SOCs( Security Operation Centers) and add more autonomy, this much will further curtail human intervention and thus make the security proactive, scalable and able to thwart advanced persistent threats.

Conclusion

AI self-healing systems emerge as the next-generation of cyber defense models which will impersonate the real-time threat detection, execute the automated response, and conduct self-correction without human intervention. By utilizing machine learning, big data analytics, and self-adaptive AI, the accomplishment of these systems will be such that no one could dream of lessenedness of their efficacy in providing security and business continuity. As organizations become increasingly more susceptible to advanced cyber threats, self-healing cybersecurity will be key in future-proofing digital infrastructures and establishing cyber resilience.

References

1. https://www.xenonstack.com/blog/soc-systems-future-of-cybersecurity
2. https://fidelissecurity.com/threatgeek/threat-detection-response/future-of-cyber-defense/
3. https://smartdev.com/strategic-cyber-defense-leveraging-ai-to-anticipate-and-neutralize-modern-threats/

About the Authors:

Dr. Raul Villamarin Rodriguez is the Vice President of Woxsen University. He is an Adjunct Professor at Universidad del Externado, Colombia, a member of the International Advisory Board at IBS Ranepa, Russian Federation, and a member of the IAB, University of Pécs Faculty of Business and Economics. He is also a member of the Advisory Board at PUCPR, Brazil, Johannesburg Business School, SA, and Milpark Business School, South Africa, along with PetThinQ Inc, Upmore Global and SpaceBasic, Inc. His specific areas of expertise and interest are Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Robotic Process Automation, Multi-agent Systems, Knowledge Engineering, and Quantum Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. Hemachandran Kannan is the Director of AI Research Centre and Professor at Woxsen University. He has been a passionate teacher with 15 years of teaching experience and 5 years of research experience. A strong educational professional with a scientific bent of mind, highly skilled in AI & Business Analytics. He served as an effective resource person at various national and international scientific conferences and also gave lectures on topics related to Artificial Intelligence. He has rich working experience in Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Building Video recommendation systems, Building Chatbots for HR policies and Education Sector, Automatic Interview processes, and Autonomous Robots.

Der Beitrag AI in Cyber Defense: The Rise of Self-Healing Systems for Threat Mitigation erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

$100B for AI Chips, $40B for AI Bets – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar

AI investment shows no signs of slowing, with capital flowing across semiconductors, cloud AI, financial AI, and responsible AI initiatives. This week, TSMC is preparing a staggering $100 billion investment in U.S. chip production, reinforcing the U.S. AI supply chain. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s valuation tripled to $61.5 billion, after securing $3.5 billion in funding to keep pace with OpenAI and DeepSeek.

The private sector’s AI appetite remains insatiable. Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray emphasized AI’s dominance in global investment trends, while Guggenheim and billionaire investors assembled a $40 billion AI investment pool to fuel finance, sports, and media innovation. Meanwhile, Canva’s AI report revealed that 94% of marketers have now integrated AI into their operations, marking a fundamental shift in business strategy.

The global AI race is also drawing government interest. The European Commission announced a €200 billion mobilization for AI investments, alongside France’s €109 billion push, as President Macron aims to position Europe as a heavyweight in AI development. Across the globe, China’s Honor pledged $10 billion to AI investment, deepening ties with Google for a global expansion.

The infrastructure for AI applications continues to scale rapidly. DoiT announced a $250 million fund dedicated to AI-driven cloud operations, while Shinhan Securities backed Lambda Labs with a $9.3 million investment to advance NVIDIA GPU-powered AI cloud services. Meanwhile, Accenture is doubling down on AI decision intelligence, backing Aaru to improve AI-powered behavioral simulations.

Beyond the corporate sphere, responsible AI investments are gaining traction. Chinese firms are increasing spending on ethical AI as part of a broader strategy to align AI governance with innovation. Meanwhile, Blackstone committed $300 million to AI-driven Insurtech, supporting AI-powered safety solutions in insurance.

With tech giants, startups, and governments all placing massive bets on AI, the sector’s financial landscape is evolving faster than ever. Investors are watching closely as AI’s long-term ROI takes center stage.

How will the capital influx shape AI’s next phase? The coming months will bring more answers.

Previous SwissCognitive AI Radar: AI Expansion and This Week’s Top Investments.

Our article does not offer financial advice and should not be considered a recommendation to engage in any securities or products. Investments carry the risk of decreasing in value, and investors may potentially lose a portion or all of their investment. Past performance should not be relied upon as an indicator of future results.

Der Beitrag $100B for AI Chips, $40B for AI Bets – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Zachary Amos – “How AI Transforms EV Charging Networks”

People who drive gas-powered vehicles can lug a fuel can around if they ever run out while driving. For electric vehicle (EV) owners, it isn’t as easy. Many fear being stranded on the side of the road, which is why charging infrastructure is so important. However, chargers are often unreliable or outright out of order. Is artificial intelligence the solution?

Why EV Charging Networks Need an Overhaul

The current state of EV charging networks is less than ideal. Harvard Business School research revealed that charging stations are largely unreliable — and drivers are aware and dissatisfied. They can only successfully recharge using nonresidential stations an estimated 78% of the time, meaning one in five chargers in the United States don’t work. This makes them less reliable than the average gas pump.

Omar Asensio — the Harvard Business School fellow who led the study — said the main reason for this substandard reliability is that no one’s maintaining the stations. While these complex machines require extensive maintenance to keep the circuitry in peak shape, they are often neglected.

When electrical systems break down, equipment damage is not the only outcome. Potentially dangerous situations will occur unless companies perform electrical system maintenance regularly. Loose connections and fried circuits can ignite materials or shock users, causing injuries or death.

While the seemingly obvious solution is for drivers to recharge at home, people use home chargers just 10% of the time, according to one software company. Although modern batteries can reach hundreds of miles on a single charge, many people fear theirs will run out of power before they reach their destination, leaving them stranded. Besides, installation can be expensive, depending on their location and the type of at-home station they choose.

Companies Could Change EV Charging With AI

AI could help companies resolve the sector’s current charging challenges. For starters, it could autonomously manage loads, distributing power efficiently and safely among multiple stations. Reducing grid load — especially during peak hours — helps prevent EV charging equipment from damaging transmission lines, circuit breakers or transformers.

A study from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute proves this point. It states that large-scale, unmanaged EV charging could cause sudden current draw fluctuations, damaging the electrical grid. This inconsistency can lead to inefficient energy consumption, resulting in transformer strain. An outage is the likely outcome of accelerated equipment wear and energy waste.

Much of the U.S. power grid is already on its last legs. For instance, around 70% of the transmission lines are nearly three decades old, nearing their expected life span of 50 to 80 years. Minimizing strain with AI-powered smart load management can prevent outages while ensuring every battery is fully recharged.

A more comprehensive solution leverages predictive maintenance. Machine learning models can anticipate possible outcomes. They can use embedded, internet-enabled sensors to identify faults like a fried circuit or frayed wire. Maintenance teams would get real-time alerts, minimizing unplanned downtime.

AI could even improve battery health monitoring, maximizing charging efficiency. A research team from the United Kingdom’s Cambridge and Newcastle Universities discovered a machine learning method is 10 times more accurate than the current industry standard technique. It measures electrical pulses instead of tracking current and voltage during charge and discharge cycles. Improving EV battery reliability could transform the charging network’s layout.

Where would companies place new stations? With AI, they could analyze metrics like EV demand, travel frequency and location to determine where to build them. They could also optimize charging network design by plugging their budget, desired density and grid capacity into the algorithm.

Improving EV Charging Infrastructure With AI

Access to a reliable charging network is tightly intertwined with people’s opinions of EVs themselves — meaning companies can only make this mode of transportation more popular if they improve the reliability of the underlying infrastructure. AI is one of the few technologies that could help them fast-track this achievement.

About the Author:

Zachary Amos is the Features Editor at ReHack, where he writes about artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and other technology-related topics.

Der Beitrag How AI Transforms EV Charging Networks erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.