How Space Travel will Benefit All of Us

By | collaboration

Today Sir Richard Branson took his first trip into outer space. I don’t know about you but I think this is AMAZING!  Even though it was a short trip just outside the atmosphere, I’m still in awe of how the original astronauts went to the moon on what we consider “low-tech” technology.

Some people question the amount of money that all of these Billionaires are spending to get their ship into space.  I’ve even thought “why aren’t they spending all of this money to cure cancer and other diseases”?

I found this great infographic that shows many of the products discovered as a result of space travel. Six of them are being used in life-saving applications

Well, it turns out that space exploration has produced many spin-off products that many of us use today.

It would be interesting to see if any of you know of any other spin-offs as a result of space travel not shown in this image.

Not All IA is Evil

By | AI, bots, call center, simulations

It seems that AI (artificial intelligence) is getting more bad press than good these days. But my spin is that the good still outways the bad when it comes to the benefits of using AI-based applications and products.

For example, we are using AI to help accelerate the rate at which you can learn a new skill. I’ve seen this approach to using AI in education only at the K-12 level vs. the enterprise level as we are using it.  Most other training companies using AI to curate content to help cross-train employees on skills they need for their job. I would say this is one of the easier ways to apply AI technology.bots

Here is a list of some other “good” ways AI is being used to learn a new skill

  1. Using AI to learn how to speak in ASL (American Sign Language)
  2. Carnegie Learning is using to help teach math in a new way for K-12 students
  3. ACES (our own platform) for ensuring call center employees can demonstrate the appropriate level of English proficiency

One tail of caution though, we really want to ensure that we try to reduce the amount of bias that inherently may be embedded with these systems. I was recently asked by one of our clients if we could prove our AI did not contain any bias. I applaud them for asking this question as — again, this would suggest some sort of “evil” intent is being used.

We were fortunate to find a third-party study that showed our AI back-end (Microsoft’s NLP engine) scored the lowest word error rate. So as Spider Man’s uncle says “With great power comes great responsibility”

No Shirt No Shoes — No Coding Skills No Problem1

By | bots, podcsting, simulations

I began my college career as a computer science major. Keep in mind this was a looong time ago when the code consisted of zeros and ones. After one semester of this, I knew my brain wasn’t cut out for this type of schooling.

Flash forward 30 years, and now a run a successful software company. We are following a trend I see more and more companies following — providing “no-code” software solutions. In a recent article by Ventur Beat, they state that 8-% of software in 2024 will be built with similar no-code tools.

Let me list some of my favorite no-code software tools that I’m using to either support our customers or build other software solutions from.

  1. WordPress – website
  2. Amazon Alexa Skills –
  3. Google Dialogue Flow
  4. Hipcast for creating RSS feed for podcasting
  5. Zoho for building dynamic BI reports

Our no-code solution, ACES (Accelerated Cognitive Engagement System), allows our customers to build immersive and highly interactive simulations used primarily for customer service, sales, coaching, and onboarding to reduce the amount of time it takes to learn a new skill.

To see an example of our simulations you can visit this page on our website.

Microsoft’s four guiding principles for artificial intelligence

By | AI, bots

Without artificial intelligence (AI), organizing and extracting insights from vast amounts of enterprise data would be a nearly impossible task. Choosing the right AI capabilities is essential to successful initiatives. Read this infographic to learn the four guiding principles behind Microsoft #Azure #AI and why it remains the top choice for today’s leading corporations.

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Where Artificial Intelligence Will Disrupt Next

By | AI, bots

More and more examples of how AI is changing our business environment. Read this article to learn what Stanford University and Brookings Institution researchers uncovered about the future of #ArtificialIntelligence and which industries will be most impacted by its applications.

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