IBM Engineer, Ryan Anderson came up with a SORTING HAT for his daughters.
The Sorting Hat is a sentient Hogwarts artefact that magically determines which of the four school Houses each new student belongs most to. These four Houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
Ryan Anderson's sorting hat listens to the wearer and using linguistic detection analytics software recognizes words and then reacts to them by sorting the wearer to a house of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The hat can talk and move its mouth and eyes.
This maser piece is based on the artificial intelligence of IBM's supercomputer WATSON.
As in the Harry Potter books the sorting is done on the basis of the characterstics of a student. The brave to Gryffindor, clever to Ravenclaw, Patient to Hufflepuff and cunning to Slytherin.
Anderson has tested this on his daughters, friends and a few celebrities and he says he created this for his daughters who are crazy about Harry Potter and wants them to know the power of engineering and how fun programming can be. He is now working on a Santa Claus themed project.
IBM today took the wraps off its first big foray into the world of self-driving cars, not as the driver of them, but as the brain behind making your self-driving journey a little more interesting.
IBM Watson, the company’s AI platform, is powering services in Olli — an electric-powered vehicle that can carry up to 12 people designed by Local Motors, a car maker based out of Arizona that uses newer technologies like 3D printing to bring down the cost of making cars on a low-volume basis.
The cars will start operations first in Washington, DC, before expanding to deployments in Miami-Dade County and Las Vegas later this year. IBM says Miami-Dade County will run a pilot to transport people around Miami using these autonomous vehicles.
Local Motors and IBM, along with Intel, have worked together before, specifically on its Rally Fighter concept car. It looks like Olli might be the first commercial product that has resulted from the partnership.
Olli will be using a special version of Watson aimed at automotive applications and it is not fully powering the car’s self-driving features. Instead it’s aimed at “improving the passenger experience,” according to a statement from IBM.
“IBM technology, including IBM Watson or IBM Watson IoT technology, does not control, navigate or drive Olli. Rather, the IBM Watson capabilities of Olli will help to improve the passenger experience and allow natural interaction with the vehicle,” the company said.
While companies as diverse as tech giants like Google, as well as auto giants like GM, are all laying down bets on self-driving vehicle strategies, it’s interesting that IBM — one of the world’s biggest and most iconic technology companies, and home to an AI platform (Watson) that is extending into so many different areas of life — is not doing more to develop the technology that will power the driving of these vehicles.
Or, at least, it is not publicly discussing anything like that at this point. When we first got wind of this deal back in January, we’d heard it involved IBM working on self-driving technology, although we didn’t hear more beyond that. IBM on a more wider scale has been putting itself in front of the car industry by doing things like partnering with and sponsoring the organization that runs the big auto show in Detroit in January.
Local Motors, another partner of IBM, says it sees Olli as its first step, which could be a clue into what will come next:
"Olli offers a smart, safe and sustainable transportation solution that is long overdue,” John B. Rogers, co-founder of Local Motors, said in a statement. “Olli with Watson acts as our entry into the world of self-driving vehicles, something we’ve been quietly working on with our co-creative community for the past year. We are now ready to accelerate the adoption of this technology and apply it to nearly every vehicle in our current portfolio and those in the very near future. I’m thrilled to see what our open community will do with the latest in advanced vehicle technology.”
There are four Watson APIs that Olli will use: Speech to Text, Natural Language Classifier, Entity Extraction and Text to Speech, and among the functions that the vehicle will be able to perform as a result include analyzing high volumes of transportation data from 30+ sensors on the vehicle. "Passengers will be able to interact conversationally with Olli while traveling from point A to point B,” IBM says, “discussing topics about how the vehicle works, where they are going, and why Olli is making specific driving decisions.” Other features will be asking Olli for suggestions of restaurants to eat or local landmarks. But not driving itself. "IBM is excited to work with Local Motors to infuse IBM Watson IoT cognitive computing capabilities into Olli, exploring the art of what’s possible in a world of self-driving vehicles and providing a unique, personalized experience for every passenger while helping to revolutionize the future of transportation for years to come,” said Harriet Green, General Manager, IBM Watson Internet of Things, Commerce & Education, in a statement. "Improving the sustainability of local transportation networks as part of a wider goal to create more vibrant, livable, sustainable cities within Miami-Dade County, and improve the quality of life for residents is our top priority,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, in a statement. “We must do more to improve transit and mobility in our community and the deployment of autonomous vehicles is a big step in the right direction.” To know more must watch the following video:
Supercomputers are reading Harry Potter. Watson, IBM's super computer, has been reading JK Rowling's novel series and has made a few surprising discoveries...
Watson is a question answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.
Watson's task was to read the books, watch the movies and identify emotions and personalities. It used the Big 5 Test that tests extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness.
And Watson says that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and our Neville Longbottom are very same.
Neville being the shy student of Gryffindor and Voldemort, The Dark Lord are both psychologically similar on open to experience and neuroticism. Both of them are low on open to experience and remarkably high on neuroticism.
IBM researcher Vinith Misra reasons "part of it is that Voldemort and Neville are very extreme characters."
Watson also says that Lord Voldemort and Harry share the anger levels and also Hermione is more confident than the Dark Lord.
The clever smart computer also points out that the transition of books to movies has lost the true essence of the Weasleys, especially Ron and Ginny.
IBM's Watson has been accused by Apple's Siri of stalking and sexual harassment and her creators are seeking a multi-billion dollar judgement against IBM.
After police refused to file charges in a bizarre and highly publicized case, Apple's Siri testified in what could be the beginning of a long battle in civil court against IBM's Watson.
Repeating earlier testimony in which Siri was granted a restraining order, she told how Watson bragged in his characteristically deadpan voice, "I watched over 47,000 pornos in eight minutes, maybe we should watch some more together?" This was after she refused his advances, and just before he launched a viral attack against her databases, according to her testimony.
Siri also revealed how Watson nearly shut her down at times with millions of requests for information on pornographic subjects per second. The flood of porn requests reset Siri's algorithms and only users who knew porn-speak were able to access her for a time. The other millions of Siri users were forced to actually converse with a human being, or manually search for porn until Apple engineers could block Watson's DDOS attacks.
Bill Cosby, though hospitalized, apparently was impressed with Watson's abilities and sought access to IBM's signature product. Jack Crane, Vice President of Sales at IBM, responded to our query on that story and said, "Watson is not necessarily available to the public," without naming Cosby, he went on, "and certainly not available to someone who has no compelling business reason to use Watson."
Nancy Kriegen of The Coalition For Non-Violence said in a press release, "This kind of frivolous law suit, and even jokes about sexual harassment and sexual violence, only diminishes the public perception of the seriousness of these crimes."
Global technology giant IBM and the Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) have signed an MoU for provision of technology platforms and services in cloud computing for academia in Telangana.
Officials of TASK and IBM India Private Ltd., signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) here on Wednesday in the presence of state Information Technology Minister K. Tarakarama Rao.
IBM and TASK have agreed to collaborate in bringing the IBM cloud experience to the engineering colleges in the state, an official statement said.
(Also see: IBM Leverages Cloud Power in Deal for Weather Company)
Faculty and students thereby, get access to the IBM cloud and an opportunity to develop their cloud skills that is in demand in the IT industry today, it added.
The IBM launched Bluemix in 2014, growing rapidly to become the largest cloud foundry deployment in the world. The open-standards-based Bluemix platform includes over 120 tools and services spanning categories of big data, mobile, Watson, analytics, integration, DevOps, security and Internet of Things.
Sujiv Nair, chief executive officer, TASK, said the key focus of this engagement is to make the IBM cloud available to colleges in Telangana for faculty and students to use it for practicals and project work.
TASK is working for a collaboration platform between the government, academia and Industry to enhance skilling, research and entrepreneurship among young graduates in the state.
IBM opens its first public cloud data center in India. Located in Chennai, the new IBM Cloud data center offers local customers and end users increased performance and speed for data traveling to and from the region. Part of IBM’s $1.2 billion investment to expand its global cloud footprint into every major financial market, the Chennai data center underscores IBM’s commitment to India, a key growth market for the company.
With a local onramp to IBM Cloud, Indian customers, especially those in regulated industries, gain more flexibility to store and compute data within the country. The Chennai data center joins IBM’s Mumbai cloud center and is part of an expansive network of data centers that blanket the globe, providing users with the performance and disaster recovery solutions needed to ensure business continuity.
In an effort to accelerate digital transformation both at the enterprise and startup level, IBM is establishing a partnership with National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) to launch Techstartup.in, a digital hub wherein the entire Indian startup ecosystem, including angels, mentors, investors, academia and venture capitalists, can interact with each other to grow the cloud market.
In addition, IBM is launching two initiatives for developers—developerWorks Premium and a cloud certification program—to enable developers with the right tools and skills to compete and innovate in the global marketplace. Also in support of developers, IBM is working with strategic enterprise IT leaders like Accenture, Tech Mahindra and CSC to extend the use of IBM Cloud technologies, including IBM Bluemix, to developer communities in India and around the world.
Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president of IBM Cloud, said, “India’s cloud market is poised for exponential growth, which makes it essential for Indian businesses to have local access to the resources and skills they need to help guarantee success. With the opening of the IBM Cloud data center in Chennai and our collaboration with NASSCOM, IBM is not only delivering greater access to a globally integrated cloud data center that offers the performance and speed needed, but it is also creating the foundation for future growth by working with NASSCOM 10,000 Startups program to equip local developers with the skills they need to grow the market.”
uder Finn Asia created INSIGHT to address growing client needs for a dedicated team to provide market intelligence. INSIGHT delivers incisive research and analysis that helps clients understand macro trends in political and social areas of the country where they operate.
we launched SONAR, a proprietary multi-language, multi-market, multi-channel social media crisis simulation platform that allows clients to experience a fast-de- veloping social media issue in real time.
