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Tag: AI Cloud

  • Rockwell Automation Taking Manufacturing To Whole New Level

    Rockwell Automation Taking Manufacturing To Whole New Level

    “The acquisition today of Fiix is a really exciting one,” says Rockwell Automation CEO Blake Moret. “It spans the gap that’s traditionally existed between manually entered keystroke data and real-time data that’s coming from the equipment itself. This helps take maintenance and automation really to a whole new level.”

    Fiix Inc. is a privately-held, AI-enabled computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) company. Fiix, founded in 2008, is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

    We’re really taking manufacturing to a whole new level,” added Moret. “We’re taking the traditional operational technology and know-how that’s existed on the plant floor for so many years and we’re marrying that with IT technology and bringing those together. It’s really unlocking a whole new level of productivity across all the industries that we serve.”

    Fiix’s cloud-native CMMS creates workflows for the scheduling, organizing, and tracking of equipment maintenance. It connects seamlessly to business systems and drives data-driven decisions. The company’s revenue grew 70% in 2019 with more than 85% recurring revenue.

    “We believe that the future of industrial asset management is performance-based,” said Tessa Myers, vice president, product management, Software & Control, for Rockwell Automation. “With the addition of the Fiix platform and expertise, our customers will benefit from a 360-degree view of integrated data across automation, production, and maintenance, helping them to monitor and improve the performance of their assets and optimize how maintenance work is done.”

    James Novak, Fiix CEO, said, “From the beginning, Fiix has been on a mission to connect maintenance and operations teams to the tools, resources, and technology they need to modernize and join the future of maintenance. Joining Rockwell Automation will allow us to help even more companies modernize maintenance and increase asset performance by connecting to industry-leading data, automation, and production systems.”

    The company says that the addition of Fiix directly aligns with Rockwell Automation’s software strategy.

    Rockwell Automation CEO Blake Moret also discussed their involvement with COVID treatments and the vaccine:

    “We’re involved with virtually all of the manufacturers who are working on the treatments and the tests and the vaccines around the world for the COVID virus. We’re really helping them and helping the world to recover. So we’re involved in the formulation, the packaging, the tracing, and you obviously have to do this at unbelievable scale to be able to meet the need.”

    Rockwell Automation Taking Manufacturing To Whole New Level
  • Darktrace CEO: People Are Going To Give a Hard Look At Cloud Security

    Darktrace CEO: People Are Going To Give a Hard Look At Cloud Security

    “People are going to really give a hard look at cloud security,” says Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan. “At the end of the day, it also says when you have something of this scale why not use some artificial intelligence or something that could have spotted this. Actually what was done was pretty blatant. It was 30 gigabytes of data moving to unusual storage locations. So there were a lot of ways that something like an AI system could have detected this and also prevented it from becoming an issue.”

    Nicole Eagan, CEO of Darktrace, discusses how the Capital One cyber attack happened and how it could have been prevented, in an interview on Bloomberg Technology:

    People Are Going To Really Give a Hard Look At Cloud Security

    There is so much positive momentum around cloud and so many benefits that I don’t anticipate seeing a pendulum swing back to on-prem data centers (because of the Capital One cyber hack). What I do think it means is people are going to really give a hard look at cloud security. This attack was a result of a vulnerability known as a configuration error in a Web Application Firewall that was specific to Capital One. What it does show is these configuration errors are actually really very commonplace. They’re commonplace in on-prem data centers and in cloud.

    This does highlight a few things. It does highlight insider threats, someone who had some insider knowledge. It also highlights supply chain level security. At the end of the day, it also says when you have something of this scale why not use some artificial intelligence or something that could have spotted this. Actually what was done was pretty blatant. It was 30 gigabytes of data moving to unusual storage locations. So there were a lot of ways that something like an AI system could have detected this and also prevented it from becoming an issue.

    Capital One Attack Was Human Error

    Configuration errors are basically a human error. Somebody somewhere made a human error, a mistake. We have to expect that humans are fallible and we’re going to see those type of errors. What’s so strange about this one is how public the disclosure was by the attacker on Twitter and GitHub and other places. That was what made it so unusual but also meant that the investigation moved very quickly. It seems like there’s been quite a bit of transparency as well.

    It’s interesting timing because we’re actually going into Back Hat and DEF CON, which is often known as a summer camp for hackers. There will be literally tens of thousands of people in Las Vegas next week. All of this is going to change the conversation. We’re going to see a lot about cloud security, about 5G security, about encryption and decrypting data, and of course, the evolution towards AI-based attacks. 

    What’s interesting is that people want to kind of say let’s make sure we prevent the kind of attacks we saw in 2016 (regarding the election).  The reality is the way the cybersecurity industry works the attackers keep moving on. They keep changing what’s called threat vectors. I do think we’ll see plenty of threats for 2020 but they may not look anything like the ones we saw in 2016.

    People Are Going To Give a Hard Look At Cloud Security – Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan
  • Microsoft AI CTO: A Cloud AI Service Behind Every Device

    Microsoft AI CTO: A Cloud AI Service Behind Every Device

    What could change us from having to wrestle with physical devices? That was the question posed by Microsoft AI CTO Joseph Sirosh at the 2018 AI Summit in San Francisco. He was specifically referring to a prosthetic, but that is only an example of how Cloud AI Services could impact the usefulness of all devices.

    Joseph Sirosh, AI CTO at Microsoft, talks about how a Cloud AI Service will eventually be driving every device:

    Top Macro Trend: A Cloud AI Service Behind Every Device

    The most important macro trend is a cloud AI service behind every device. It might be a prosthetic, it might be any device that you use in your house. Of course, your apps on your phone have AI services behind them eventually, some of them already have AI, but others well. Everything in the world that is connected with Wi-Fi or Internet connectivity can now be backed up by an AI service. That’s very powerful and profound when you think about it.

    Now, think about this one, the grip classification (on a prosthetic). How it works is there’s a muscle sensor that I’ve attached to my arm here, there’s a camera in the hand. So, through the electronics, it goes to an Azure Custom Vision Service, where our classification model has been set up, a deep-learned model that recognizes objects and classifies it to the right action and then that triggers the appropriate grip classification in the Servo motors connected to an Arduino board in the arm.

    The Magic Provided by a Cloud AI Service

    Two undergraduates built this. Hamayal Choudhry from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and Samin Khan from the University of Toronto. They did this for the Microsoft Imagine Cup. They were the winners in 2018. Building this took them a few weeks. Of course, then the magic was provided by a cloud AI service to be able to make this device intelligent. That’s a power. Even an undergraduate can build something as powerful as this today.

    Why is this Revolutionary?

    So, why is this revolutionary? Step back and think about this device. Look, there are over a million amputations per year. That’s an amputation every 30 seconds. WHO estimates that 30-100 million people in the world live with limb loss. Only 5 to 15 percent of these have access to prosthetics, even though prosthetic devices have been around since the Egyptian times. Even though these devices have been there, they have been purely physical devices and very severely limited. Limited by cost.

    The bionic arms that you have heard about today, they cost tens of thousands of dollars and it takes a lot of effort to fit them on you. They’re limited by availability, very few people have access to it, and they’re limited by the interface you can attach to the body.

    Breaking Physical Limits via Cloud AI Service

    Above all, they’re limited by the nervous system that we have because we’ve got to train ourselves to use that device. In fact, literally, we had to force our will into these devices to be able to use them effectively. How could we change all of that? What could change us from having to wrestle with physical devices? How could we break these limits? The answer is an AI or a cloud AI service backing it up.

    Think about this, what if you had low-cost electronics to build with it? What if we could change the game of availability with 3D printing? So, you can print these things anywhere in the world. What if you had a Cloud AI service behind it that provided the ability to recognize things and make the movements? What if it could be personalized? What if it could be adapted? What if other people, your friends could train your arm to make the right kind of movements, in the right kind of environments? How could you have customizability of all types? What if you could tap into the knowledge of the world beyond our senses through the cloud service so that you can keep improving it? What if all of these things came together for a very low cost like the $100 it took for this arm to be built?

    That would be revolutionary, right? Imagine, now every prosthetic in the world or orthosis in the world which is, let’s say you break your arm and [inaudible] sling and you need assistance? What if you could get something very cheap that you could move around but it’s controlled by a Cloud AI service and all you have to do is express your intent to that Cloud AI service somehow and it does the more complex task of actually doing the grasp?

    Affordable, Intelligent, Cloud-Powered and Personalized

    See, this is the difference that the services can make. What you do is you express your intents and your constraints, and the service generates the behavior you need. So, it’s a generative service. The behavior is generated but from high-level intention that you communicate. So, the future is affordable, intelligent, cloud-powered, personalized, prosthetic devices and really devices of every type. That’s hugely revolutionary.