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.

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.

Copyright: intelligencebriefing.substack.com – “How AI Is Accelerating Industry Disruption And Leadership”

If you follow the tech news, there’s no way around the claims of disruption: industries, jobs, tasks—everything is going to change massively. But most likely, it’s not the case in your own area of influence. Change seems to happen at a much slower pace than management consultants make it appear. But does it?

At the end of last year, I shared my experience creating the AI-narrated version of my book, AI Leadership Handbook. I had previously recorded about 45 minutes of myself reading blog posts to create a voice clone using an AI tool called ElevenLabs. My family and friends couldn’t tell the difference between my voice clone and my own voice. Yes, that’s how good the technology is. Since then, things have moved incredibly quickly in this space.

When Industry Heavyweights Move Quickly

The industry is moving incredibly fast and evolving from a human-only to an AI-embraced approach to narration. Just because progress seemed slow doesn’t mean that the pace can’t change in a short period of time and in your industry, too:

• December 2024: Rakuten Kobo was the only distributor to accept AI-narrated audiobooks created using AI tools outside the distributor’s platform, such as the author’s voice clone. Findaway Voices by Spotify allowed AI-generated narration using stock voices, and Amazon/ Audible had a close beta program using AI voices provided via their platform.
• January 2025: Audiobooks.com was the second platform to accept AI-narrated audiobooks using outside technology.
• February 2025: Findaway Voices by Spotify announced a partnership with ElevenLabs as part of which authors can create the audiobook using their own voice clone and distribute the AI-narrated audiobook via Spotify. The distribution includes additional platforms, including Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and audiobooks.com.
• March 2025: Amazon/ Audible expands its Virtual Voices beta program. Authors can now narrate their Kindle-based ebook using stock voices.

With every new platform opening up to AI-narrated books, I have added the AI Leadership Handbook for distribution there. As of the publication of this article, the audiobook is available on the following platforms (from least to most realistic narration):

• Amazon/ Audible — Stock voice
• Spotify/ Barnes & Noble — Andreas’s voice clone
• Audiobooks.com/ Kobo — Andreas’s voice clone + Matt’s voice clone for the forward

So, why care about Amazon’s approach? More on that in the next section(…)

Read more: www.intelligencebriefing.substack.com

Der Beitrag How AI Is Accelerating Industry Disruption And Leadership 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.

Global AI Capital Moves at Full Speed – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar

AI funding momentum hasn’t slowed. From global infrastructure projects to nuanced questions about investor confidence, this week brought high-dollar commitments alongside critical reflections on where the money is flowing—and why.

The United Arab Emirates made headlines with a bold $1.4 trillion, 10-year commitment to invest in the United States, a move that reflects the centrality of AI and tech collaboration in long-term statecraft. Meanwhile, BlackRock’s joint initiative with Microsoft, NVIDIA, and xAI signals continued investor appetite for large-scale AI infrastructure, with $100 billion earmarked for global data centers and energy solutions.

Several firms are also reinforcing their US presence: Hyundai announced a $21 billion investment, Siemens followed with $10 billion, and Schneider Electric added another $700 million—all aimed at fortifying AI-driven manufacturing and operations amid ongoing trade policy uncertainty.

Vietnam’s small businesses are setting the tone in Asia-Pacific, where 44% named AI their top tech investment for 2024. Fractal Analytics’ $13.7 million investment into India’s first reasoning model and Germany’s €2.1 million seed round for enterprise AI search show how national AI goals are increasingly shaped by local strategies and use cases.

Yet, not all attention is on infrastructure. Thought leaders at Man Group and other investment firms raised flags about the sustainability of AI stock valuations. An AI model under a top-performing fund has been flashing warnings on mega-cap tech stocks, including Nvidia. Still, audiences from pharma to finance are assessing AI’s value not just in terms of returns, but in ethics and relevance, particularly when it comes to pharma’s future and the realities of Artificial General Intelligence claims.

As global interest in AI capital remains high, this week’s updates highlight a shift from novelty to operational depth. More investment—yes—but also more scrutiny.

Previous SwissCognitive AI Radar: New AI Investment Funds and Strategic Expansions.

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 Global AI Capital Moves at Full Speed – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Zachary Amos – “Is Healthcare AI Prioritizing People or Profit?”

In many sectors, artificial intelligence (AI) is largely a tool for driving efficiency, but in healthcare, it can save lives. However, medical practices are still businesses at the end of the day, so AI’s cost-saving benefits are hard to overlook. While that’s not an issue in and of itself, the push to save money can lead to healthcare organizations prioritizing profit over people.

How Healthcare AI May Put Profit Before People

AI is a powerful financial management tool. It can analyze vast amounts of data to highlight opportunities to increase profits and emphasize areas that may not pay back investment. 

AI insight in healthcare could lead private practices to drive high-value drug or treatment sales instead of focusing on care accessibility. It may also lead to preferential treatment of more profitable patients. Some hospital systems claim they have lost as much as $640 million on Medicare recipients. AI-driven cost analysis may drive hospitals to reduce their investment in these populations because of the lower financial incentive.

AI’s profit-driving capabilities can influence healthcare ethics in subtler ways, too. Staff may over-rely on automation and machine learning because it saves them time. However, AI hallucinations are still possible. Similarly, the underrepresentation of diverse patients in training datasets can lead to biased AI results, which may negatively impact a medical system’s ability to care for historically underserved groups.

Prioritizing convenience and efficiency goals over avoiding these missteps may come at the cost of effective and equitable care. Even if medical profits increase, patient outcomes and healthcare disparities could worsen.

How to Ensure Responsible AI Usage in Healthcare

Despite these risks, AI has many beneficial implications for patients, so the industry cannot ignore it. Healthcare organizations can use these steps to ensure ethical, patient-centric AI usage.

1. Focus on Direct Patient-Impacting AI Applications

First, hospitals must prioritize AI use cases that directly impact patients over those that drive economic or efficiency gains for the organization. Medical imaging and diagnostic tools are among the most crucial. 

AI can identify Alzheimer’s with 99.95% accuracy and achieve similar results with many cancers and other conditions. Investing in these applications rather than in AI-based financial analysis will ensure AI’s benefits go directly to promoting better care standards.

Personalized treatment is another promising area for responsible AI usage. Machine learning models can analyze an individual patient’s medical history and physiology to determine which courses of action will help them most. This application is more ethical than using AI to compare the profitability of different treatment options.

2. Ensure Responsible AI Development

Healthcare organizations must address the bias issue in their AI models. Studies have found that removing specific biased factors from training datasets can maintain model accuracy while reducing the risk of prejudice. Common examples of these factors include names, ethnicities, age and gender-related labels.

Having a diverse team of AI developers who regularly inspect models for signs of bias or hallucinations can help. Relying on synthetic data is also a useful strategy, as this can make up for gaps in historical real-world information that may lead to unreliable or biased results.

3. Train Medical Staff on AI Best Practices

Finally, medical companies should train their staff so they’re familiar with how AI can affect care equality. When users understand how misusing AI or failing to catch errors can harm patients, they’ll be more likely to use it responsibly.

Cybersecurity deserves attention, too. A criminal can hinder reliable AI results by poisoning just 0.01% of its data, which can lead to harmful results if unnoticed. Training employees to follow strict access policies and resist phishing attempts will mitigate some of these concerns.

Healthcare teams should also write formal policies to ensure a human expert always makes the final decision on anything affecting patients. AI can provide insights to inform human choices, but it should never be the ultimate authority, given the risk of bias and the temptation to prioritize profit over equitable care.

Ethical Healthcare AI Is Possible

When organizations use it responsibly, healthcare AI can make the industry a safer, more equitable place. However, failing to account for possible shortcomings and errors will create the opposite effect. Learning about how AI can influence both ethics and profitability is the first step in creating a better future for patients and their care providers.

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 Is Healthcare AI Prioritizing People or Profit? 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.

New AI Investment Funds and Strategic Expansions – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar

This week’s AI investment landscape sees bold financial commitments, expanding cloud infrastructure, and the growing influence of AI across industries. Oracle is set to invest £3.9 billion in the UK, alongside an additional $5 billion cloud expansion to strengthen AI adoption, signaling the company’s deep confidence in Britain’s AI future. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is launching a $40 billion AI fund, further establishing its role as a major player in the global AI race.

Microsoft’s AI investment strategy continues to gain momentum, earning an analyst upgrade as it builds out critical infrastructure. ARK Invest has joined a $403 million funding round for robotics firm Apptronik, highlighting investor enthusiasm for AI-powered automation. At the same time, Mirakl aims to push past $200 million in revenue with increased AI investments, showing how AI is reshaping business growth strategies.

In Asia, Thailand is attracting millions in AI data center investments, while Vietnam focuses on edge AI to compete in the global market. Azerbaijan is also setting its sights on AI by creating a strategy to attract foreign investment, positioning itself as an emerging tech hub.

AI’s role in finance and investment decision-making remains a focal point. National Grid Partners is committing $100 million to AI-driven energy solutions, while GapMinder Fund II is backing Romanian AI startup VoicePatrol, targeting real-time AI solutions for gaming. However, with AI’s growing influence, investors are warned about misinformation risks, reinforcing the need for well-vetted AI strategies.

With AI investments accelerating across industries, we continue to track how these financial commitments shape the broader technology and business landscape. Stay tuned for more insights in next week’s AI Investment Radar.

Previous SwissCognitive AI Radar: Major AI Funding Shifts.

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 New AI Investment Funds and Strategic Expansions – SwissCognitive AI Investment Radar erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.