SigmaWay Blog

Proper implementation of Machine Learning(ML) techniques in the organisation can turn out to be a blessing for the organisation. Leaders should consider that implementation of ML can be beneficial not only for them but for the whole organisation as well. Machine Learning can do the repetitive and mindless tasks, providing time for employees to focus on more important tasks. Out of the box solutions can be tempting but at the same time they should put some effort and investment in outlining the best usage of this blooming technology.

The ultimate goal of any customer-facing department is to provide an advanced, instant and trouble free customer support. This real time customer support wasn’t as possible as it is today. With the advent of innovative chatbots, businesses can now offer their clienteles a convenient and self service solution. They have not only cut down on the long periods of time when customers had to wait both physically and virtually to have their queries addressed but also have cut down on the necessity of speaking with humans for the same. The question that arises in this context is that whether buyers are really comfortable in interacting with chatbots. Yes, it is true that many people found it pretty strange to speak to a bot initially, but as more people learned about the benefits of the artificial tools, the more convenient it appeared to them to communicate with chatbots. Chatbots can collect data based on recent interactions and respond to a message or a solution that directly suits the needs and preferences of the customers. The combination of humans and chatbots have always been successful in providing a results driven and around-the-clock hassle free service thus enabling them to increase productivity and customer satisfaction.

Read more at: https://www.clickatell.com/articles/customer-relationship-management/consumers-chatbots-customer-support/

Data is very valuable for any business. It can help in decision making, planning, and more. Here, Business Intelligence comes into action. BI uses various softwares, applications, tools and services that enables access to and analysis of data. This improves and optimizes decisions and performances. Using Business Intelligence can help you to get more value by improving customer service, employee productivity, and more.

Following are the few ways one could get more value from Business Intelligence:

1. Build real-time BI into your customer-facing services
2. Improve employee performance through BI
3. Improve Customer Service
4. Predict new revenue streams
5. Automate budgeting and forecasting
6. Shift the emphasis to analysis
7. Embed BI into other platforms
8. Cut time wasted on data gruntwork
9. Bring unstructured data on board

Read more about them at: https://www.cio.com/article/3254646/business-intelligence/9-ways-to-get-more-value-from-business-intelligence.html

Business and IT are two completely different fields. Yet there is always a need to mix them for the betterment of both fields. However, there is a huge gap between these two and to bridge them a Business Analysts is comes into role. A business analyst is responsible to take IT and Business together by using data analytics to analyse the ongoing processes and methods, determine plans and requirements and recommend future plans on the basis of current studies. Now days, data is very important for a business. It can help in planning, decision making etc and thus business analysts are a need for an organization. It is important for a business analyst to be good in both hard skills and soft skills. He must be good at sharing the information he was able to figure out with the team. Similarly, he must have a strong IT background.

To know more about a Business Analysts visit: https://www.cio.com/article/2436638/careers-staffing/project-management-what-do-business-analysts-actually-do-for-software-implementation-projects.html

Slowly and steadily we are moving towards digital transformation and its has become one of the important tasks for businesses. With the evolving technology, businesses are also growing and evolving. Here are the top 12 tech trends that we need to look for in year 2018 :

1. Computer Vision
2. Deep Learning
3. Natural Language Generation
4. Businesswide Networking Fabric
5. Distributed Ledger Technology
6. Edge Computing
7. Quantum Computing
8. Serverless Computing
9. Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality
10. Digital Twin
11. Additive Manufacturing
12. Nanotechnology

It is believed that to stay in the competition of business, one should welcome new forms of technology and implement them helping business to grow. This will bring the needed digital transformation and help in decision making and planning strategies. 

Read more at https://www.techrepublic.com/article/here-are-the-12-tech-trends-that-will-dominate-business-in-2018/

After Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the next most emerging field in todays world is the field of Data Science. It is said to be the cousins of AI and ML and mainly deals with data. It intakes data, uses processes, algorithms and scientific methods to extract knowledge and valuable data from large data sets. This field is need of each and every type of organization. Whether it be business or an IT firm, every organization needs data for improvement. Thus, outcomes from the processing of data are further used for decision making and for improving current functioning.

People often gets confused between Data Science, Data Analytics and Big Data. The key difference between them is that Data Analytics and Big Data are components of Data Science. Data Science extract values from the output of Data Analytics and Big Data to solve problems.
The goal of Data Science is to extract business-focused insights from business. This could help organizations in many ways.

Read more about this topic at: https://www.cio.com/article/3285108/data-science/what-is-data-science-a-method-for-turning-data-into-value.html

Every day a new problem statements emerges in the field of technology and machine learning proves to be a solution in most cases. These days, we tend to find smart solutions for our problems and machine learning is the backbone for the same. Thus, we can correctly state that Machine Learning has already invaded in our lives in some way or another.

However, with the emergence of machine learning, misunderstanding and misconceptions associated with it enters the field. There are few common myths about what and what not machine learning can do. Few of them are mentioned below:

1. Machine Learning is AI
2. All data is useful
3. Anyone can build machine learning system
4. Reinforcement learning is ready to use
5. Machine learning will replace people

One could achieve better results if he avoids these common myths.

To read more about this, visit: https://www.cio.com/article/3263776/artificial-intelligence/machine-learning-myths.html?upd=1531678835984

With advancement of technology, one field that will be highly demanded in upcoming years is turning up to be Artificial Intelligence. It is bringing changes that is transforming the world. AI comes with its sub streams such as data mining, machine learning, neural networks etc. This field has already become the area of interest for many programmers and developers. However, still there are not many developers in this stream. 

Schools, Colleges and Organizations have started providing courses on AI. It is one of the best career option. But Artificial Intelligence is just a main stream. One should have a clear mind about his career opportunities. Following are few options you can opt if interested in Artificial Intelligence and want to have a career towards it:

1. A.I. Research Scholar
2. A.I. based Software Developer
3. Data Scientist
4. Machine Learning Engineer
5. Automation Engineer

To know more about them visit: https://www.technotification.com/2018/04/top-5-career-opportunities-in-artificial-intelligence.html

Any successful home assistant robot should have the ability to deal with every sort of “disturbance”. A similar Spotmini robot weighing 66 lb has been designed by Boston Dynamics to fit comfortably in a home or an office. Unlike Boston Dynamics’ other robots which are created to help people during disasters, Spotmini is designed to be a vaguely cute home or office assistant which calls for some extra capabilities than a disaster robot. Boston Dynamics has shown that progressive iterations of Spotmini can perform various tasks ranging from climbing stairs to bringing someone a Diet Coke. The mention of hazards to small children is not explicitly mentioned by Boston dynamics but the description of the robot depicted in the YouTube videos does hint at those types of challenges.

Read more at: https://www.livescience.com/61840-robot-dog-fights-off-human.html

There is a growing concern about AI replacing human workers in almost all areas thus spelling out the fears of massive job loss, rise of robots and sophisticated computer changes to replace our world as we know it.  AI is being increasingly used in Financial Institutions where anyone availing robotic advisory services or has paid for transactions using bitcoins has also made use of AI in finance. We have probably noticed banks cutting on their staffs for addressing questions and processing transactions. This is because such financial institutions are deploying AI to help manage complicated programs, automate some trading systems and minimize the need for human support. It also plays an important role in helping with fraud detection and smart banking. Because of such advanced capabilities of AI, researchers like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk have pointed out the growing possibilities of AI developing  destructive methods against humans or teaching itself over time to fight against humans as it sees itself as a super intelligent system. According to the recent estimates by the experts, AI will gradually replace workers who perform repetitive tasks, thus predicting job loss numbers as high as 800 million people by 2030.

Read more at: https://finance.toolbox.com/articles/ai-in-finance-present-concerns-and-future-applications

Built around 3250 years ago, the Tomb of pharaoh Ramesses II’s favourite wife, Queen Nefetari , is located in the valley of the Queens, near Luxor. The paintings of the tomb are so stunning that they have been compared to Italy’s Sistine Chapel. However in recent times the tomb is being opened to small group of visitors as the increase in humidity on entrance of the visitors, leads to increase in bacteria and fungi which are further damaging the beautiful paintings. = The virtual reality tour of Nefatari’s tomb is shown as it appears today although many have tried to recreate the site as it looked thousands of years ago. Improvement of holography technologies and virtual reality will surely fasten the process of making vivid virtual reality tours thus teleporting audiences across space and time.

Read more at: www.livescience.com/63010-ancient-egypt-sistine-chapel-virtual-reality.html

The major challenge facing any business organization is to use the massive amount of people data to nurture relevant insights on improving business performances. Analytical techniques varying from reposting to predictive analytics to experimental research help in directing company HRs. Following the comprehensive implementation of the cloud HR systems, companies are using data in all facets of workforce management and operational improvement, moving beyond employee engagement and retention. HR has been emerging as the “intelligent platform” with analytics becoming a critical part of the high-performance hiring in the talent acquisition trend. In order to reduce unconscious bias in hiring, businesses resort to the use of interview data and careful parsing of job posting language. With commensurate technological advancement, analytics will deliver personalized recommendations.

Read More at:  https://www.analyticsinsight.net/using-people-analytics-to-drive-business-performance/

The new, soft, folding “Pokemon” like robot called, "Rotary Actuated Dodecahedron" (RAD) is cutting across the obstacles faced by humans when they use hard tools underwater and hurt the soft and delicate ocean creatures for the purpose of studying them. From the result of the collaboration among marine biologists, engineers and designers, the soft, plastic and four fingered device is driven by a single motor which drives it to fold along all of its joints, forming a 12-sided hollow container around whatever it's trying to snatch. The device has been tested, first at Connecticut's Mystic Aquarium and then in the open ocean near Monterey, California. It successfully captured squid and jellyfish unharmed after being mounted to an unscrewed underwater vehicle and controlled remotely via joystick.

Read more at: https://www.livescience.com/63105-harvard-underwater-pokeball.html

Artificial Intelligence coupled with machine learning algorithms has taken the defenSe industry to great heights by bringing in this paradigm shift from descriptive to prescriptive analytics where soldiers have the knowledge of potential ceasefire beforehand. Data mining and machine learning algorithms help in analyzing unusual movements round the border thus making combat systems more effective at the decision juncture. The US Defense department has approximately spent US$1.6 billion in cyber defense. Although India is not far in the race, it is catching up for the time being. Many India based analytics firms are providing technologies to measure border infiltrations, detect smuggling and possible future agitations. However, India is progressing in the race of cognition of AI with machine learning to give a new shape to the country’s military services.

Read More at: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/data-and-guns-how-ai-is-changing-the-defense-sector/

In the digital age, social media is the most effective tool that helps improving and promoting any type of business content, get customer feedback and improve the overall reach of the company. This has led to the emergence of social media analytics which involves optimizing analytics and social median data into usable information to interpret how exactly the business content is going with the community of followers. 

A clear definition of the company goals lies at the root of such social media analytics with business objectives varying from prioritizing customer service to establishing a name in a niche or industry. Once a goal is defined, social media analytics could be used to frame strategies for accomplishment of such desired goals. Without a goal in the background, the system might go haywire bringing no effective results.

Being saturated with millions of click bait type contents, generic content does not work for the social media and the marketing world. Social media has restricted amount of characters hence, drawing of these characters should be maximized which helps to see the type of content that resounds best with the followers. Analyzing the increasing leads attained through content makes way for an inflated sales basket for the business. Average content does not acquire any place and being concise and thought-provoking in a post yields better results.

The success of a business lies in the timing of a post. Posting about a particular content at a specific time can increase sales. Also publishing a post on high traffic days can bring in commendable results for the business concerned. 

Read more at: https://www.smartdatacollective.com/use-social-media-analytics-increase-business-success/

Few science-fiction writings and popular movies like, "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), “2001: A Space Odyssey”, ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Robot” have showcased the speculation about artificial intelligence (AI) that surpass the expectations of its creator and escapes their control, gradually enslaving humans or targeting them to extinction. Although these are all based on fictional stories and imaginative instances, what is buried inside them is a flavor of truth and seeds of unease. An ‘Existential Threat’ is what has been used in a speech by Elon Musk at a meeting of the National Governor Association in July 2017 when he expressed his concern about his exposure to cutting-edge AI and the fact that people should be concerned about the rapidly advancing technologies. Even physicists like Stephen Hawking had expressed his concerns about malicious AI, telling the BBC in 2014 that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." However AI functions under specific limitations marked by certain algorithms that control its behavior. So fears like developing consciousness and awareness to overthrow humanity are beached in delusion of what AI truly is. The real fear as expressed by Kilian Weinberger, an associate professor at Cornell University should be when AI is harnessed for detrimental reasons by unscrupulous humans.

Read more at: https://www.livescience.com/62775-humans-why-scared-of-ai.html