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Augmented humans: Would you be hiring them?

Mohammed Fahad
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Augmented humans: Would you be hiring them?

Bengaluru: Would you hire a superhuman who has enhanced his ability using artificial intelligence? Majority of the CEOs believe that augmented humans could soon be a reality, and are also open to hire such talent.

‘Augmented Humans’, as per Gartner is when some people – sometime in future – might opt to use technological body implants to acquire abilities beyond what is natural for a human.

The announcement comes even as Elon Musk plans to announce an important update from his company Neuralink – that’s trying to understand whats really going on in the brain and sort of enable it to incorporate artificial intelligence to attain superhuman intelligence.

The result of cognitive augmentation – which includes some technology in the brain augmentation category – for example will enhance a person’s ability to think and make better decisions, achieved through exploiting information and applications to enhance learning or new experiences.

In its annual CEO Survey 2020 which it termed as the Year of Recession, Gartner asked more than 400 global CEOs and senior business executives if they would be hiring for augmented human abilities and a majority of 59 per cent answered in the affirmative, while about 19 per cent said they were not aware of it.

Physical augmentation could either be sensory augmentation (hearing, vision, perception), appendage and biological function augmentation (exoskeletons, prosthetics), brain augmentation (implants to treat seizures) and genetic augmentation (somatic gene and cell therapy). 

Human augmentation

For example, the automotive or mining industries use wearables to improve worker safety. In other industries, such as retail and travel, wearables are used to increase worker productivity. 

“The technology is still part of fiction, but a large majority of CEO’s were open to the idea of hiring the ‘people of the future,” Mark Ruskino, a Gartner Fellow in the CEO and Digital Business Leadership research team said.

Gartner last year identified human augmentation as one of the key trends in 2020.

The 2020 CEO survey which was conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic set in also indicates some key trends that are quite significant, looking at the situation that has evolved over the past few months.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is all set to reveal the latest updates of his brain-machine interface company Neuralink.

Tesla’s Neuralink

The company wants to develop a high-bandwidth, implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) and it wants to do it by the end of this year. That’s where the Friday’s announcement becomes significant.

Neuralink which was founded in 2016 is trying to develop a system for recording the activity of thousands of neurons in the brain.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had announced about the update in a tweet in July.

Speaking during the Lex Fridman Podcast in July Musk had said that “Neurolink will definitely put a lot of information on how the brain works. Right now we have very limited information… In order to really know what’s going on in the brain we need to have high precession sensors that tell you what individual neurons are doing, and being able to trigger neurons to see what the response is in the brain, so you can see the consequences.”

“Wait until you see the next version vs what was presented last year. It’s awesome,” he wrote in February.

Wipro to roll out future proofed SIMM solution to financial institutions

TCN Bureau
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Wipro to roll out future proofed SIMM solution to financial institutions
  • The partnership with Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM) vendor, Quaternion Risk Management will allow Wipro to offer cost efficiencies and seamless integration with clients’ internal systems, while maintaining full control over sensitive trade information.
  • It also offers independent model validation of a firm’s own internal SIMM solution, AANA (Aggregate Average Notional Amount) calculation, and Initial Margin exchange threshold calculation/simulation.

Bengaluru: IT consulting firm Wipro Limited will unveil SIMM-in-a-box to financial institutions covered under Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) following its  partnership with Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM) vendor, Quaternion Risk Management.

The offering will allow financial institutions to calculate trade sensitivities, generate CRIF (Common Risk Interchange Format) file and calculate initial margin in-house.

The solution simplifies compliance procedures by including back testing, benchmarking and preparing documentation required for regulatory approval.

It also offers independent model validation of a firm’s own internal SIMM solution, AANA (Aggregate Average Notional Amount) calculation, and Initial Margin exchange threshold calculation/simulation.

The partnership aims to provide cost efficiencies and seamless integration with clients’ internal systems, while maintaining full control over sensitive trade information.

For smart execution

Keyur Maniar, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Capital Markets, Wipro Limited said: “The uncleared margin rules offering from Wipro demonstrates our deep understanding of our clients’ business imperatives, and our ability to combine strong industry knowledge with global best-of-breed technology solutions for smart execution.

“SIMM calculation is a complex area with a significant role in regulatory compliance. Our compelling proposition and partnership with Quaternion promises to abstract away these challenges and let our clients focus on their core business.”

SIMM-in-a-box is a “future-proofed” SIMM solution that uses the same high-grade analytics as the world’s largest dealer banks.

The solution is built on Quaternion’s ORE XML that has evolved as the market-standard for non-cleared derivatives trade representation.

The partnership also leverages Quaternion’s established quantitative library to determine trade sensitivity for CRIF generation and SIMM calculation.

“As companies prepare to implement the final phases of the Uncleared Margin Rules, the combination of Quaternion’s deep experience building one of the industry’s most comprehensive derivative pricing libraries and Wipro’s unmatched expertise in IT consulting can alleviate many of the traditional ‘plumbing’ and middleware headaches associated with analytics integration.  Clients will achieve quick and cost-efficient benefits from a proven solution to SIMM compliance,” Scott Sobolewski, Principal at Quaternion said.

Group-IB detects financially-motivated attacks by Iranian newbie threat actors

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Group-IB detects financially-motivated attacks by Iranian newbie threat actors
  • Hackers target companies in Russia, Japan, China and India.
  • Attackers use Dharma ransomware and a mix of publicly available tools.
  • Dharma has been distributed under a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model at least since 2016.
  • Operators scanned ranges of IPs for hosts with Internet-facing RDP and weak credentials.

Dubai: Cyber-security firm Group-IB has detected financially-motivated attacks carried out by Iranian newbie threat actors in June, targeting companies in Russia, Japan, China and India.

The attackers used Dharma ransomware and a mix of publicly available tools and all the affected organisations had hosts with internet-facing RDP and weak credentials.

Iran has traditionally been a land of state-sponsored attackers engaged in espionage and sabotage.

Group-IB researchers said the hackers typically demanded a ransom between 1-5 bitcoin compared to bigger hackers who usually ask for hundreds of thousands or millions of US dollars.

“The newly discovered hacker group suggests that Iran, which has been known as a cradle of state-sponsored APT groups for years, now also accommodates financially motivated cybercriminals,” they said.

Dharma, also known as Crysis, has been distributed under a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model at least since 2016. Its source code popped up for sale in March 2020 making it available to a wider audience.

During an incident response engagement for a company in Russia, Group-IB’s team established that Persian-speaking newbie hackers were behind a new wave of Dharma distribution.

“It’s surprising that Dharma landed in the hands of Iranian script kiddies who used it for financial gain. Despite that these cybercriminals use quite common tactics, techniques and procedures they have been quite effective. Therefore, we believe it’s important to provide some recommendations on how to protect against them and give a complete outline of the MITRE ATT&CK mapping,”  Oleg SkulkinOleg Skulkin, Senior Digital Forensics Specialist at Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, said.

Breaches via weak RDP endpoints

Even though the exact number of victims is unknown, the discovered forensic artifacts allowed to establish the geography of their campaigns and the toolset, which is far behind the level of sophistication of big league Iranian APTs.

It was revealed that the operators scanned ranges of IPs for hosts with Internet-facing RDP and weak credentials in Russia, Japan, China, and India.

To do so, they used popular software called Masscan — the same technique was employed by Fxmsp, an infamous seller of access to corporate networks.

Once vulnerable hosts were identified, the attackers deployed NLBrute to brute-force their way into the system and to check the validity of obtained credentials on other accessible hosts in the network. In some attacks, they attempted to elevate privileges using an exploit for CVE-2017-0213.

The researchers said the threat actors didn’t have a clear plan on what to do with the compromised networks.

Once they established the RDP connection, they decide on which tools to deploy to move laterally. For instance, to disable built-in antivirus software, the attackers used Defender Control and Your Uninstaller.

The latter was downloaded from Iranian software sharing website — the Google search query in Persian language “دانلود نرم افزار youre unistaller” was discovered in the Chrome artifacts. Other tools were downloaded by the attackers from Persian-language Telegram channels when they were already present in the network.

The Dharma source code has been made widely available and this led to the increase in the number of operators deploying it.

How healthcare sector can reap benefits from advanced connectivity?

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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How healthcare sector can reap benefits from advanced connectivity?
  • Improvements in advanced technology will add $250b to $420b to global GDP by 2030.
  • Governments must prioritise funding for innovations and insurers must implement clear reimbursement paths for digital offerings.
  • Remote patient monitoring, AI-enabled decision support and integrated command centres are top three use cases.

Dubai: Advanced connectivity has the potential to deliver big savings to the healthcare industry by improving productivity and outcomes that in turn will free up money to invest elsewhere in the business.

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and the McKinsey Centre for Advanced Connectivity (MCAC) estimate that the improvements will add $250 billion to $420 billion to global GDP by 2030, about 80 per cent of which can be realised with existing advanced connectivity.

For the past couple of decades, the emergence of electronic medical records, telemedicine, and big data have held the promise of revolutionising healthcare for both patient and provider, making it more efficient, effective, and affordable.

Yet so far, the payoff has been elusive, with technology arguably causing as many (if not more) headaches in the system as it cures.

McKinsey cites three use cases in particular—remote patient monitoring, AI-enabled decision support and integrated command centres—highlighting the massive potential value of advanced connectivity in healthcare.

Richard Bartlett, Associate partner in McKinsey & Company, said that these three use cases are just the most prominent examples of how advanced connectivity could dramatically benefit individuals’ healthcare, as well as health systems and even whole economies, within a decade.

“Connectivity-enabled remote patient monitoring and telemedicine will help people better manage long-term health conditions and gain access to preventative care. Advanced technologies will improve patient outcomes by delivering more accurate diagnoses or rapidly adjusted treatments while health systems will be able to deploy staff, coordinate patient care, and tap limited resources more efficiently,” he said.

However, he said that such achievements require more than advanced connectivity and smart devices.

Moving beyond traditional silos

Naomi Smit, Partner at McKinsey Digital, said that governments must prioritise funding for healthcare innovations, and insurers must implement clear reimbursement paths for digital offerings.

Healthcare systems need to hire a wide range of new roles, she said, including systems architects, data scientists and user-experience designers.

“Common data standards and governing regulatory guidelines will have to be set, just as clear, proven procedures for protecting patient data are paramount. Within and across countries, frameworks to guide investment in technology-driven healthcare services and to test and confirm the validity of connectivity-enabled use cases are essential,” she said.

However, she said that it is critical that all stakeholders—from providers and systems to payors, employers, and technology/connectivity providers—learn to collaborate, most importantly on solving the issue of interoperability across systems and solutions.

“Only by moving beyond their traditional silos and working together for the good of the entire system can all these varied players each reap the benefits of connectivity in healthcare while delivering the most crucial reward to patients themselves,” Smit said.

Dataiku raises $100m to extend leadership in enterprise AI market

TCN Bureau
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Dataiku raises $100m to extend leadership in enterprise AI market
  • Gartner predicts that artificial intelligence implementation will move away from the pilot stage toward operationalisation at 75% of companies by 2024.

Dubai: Democratising access to AI insights is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have in today’s world.

As the use of data science, machine learning and AI in the enterprise space is gaining traction and entities are trying to make use of their data and get insights from it, US-headquartered Dataiku is aiming to bring agility and preparedness to the business through the use of data by everyone from analysts to data scientists.

The data science startup has raised $100 million in a “Series D” round led by Stripes and Tiger Global Management.

It has been doing AI/ML work for over a decade, using a collaborative, cross-departmental approach to help their more than 300 customers integrate AI throughout their operations and offerings.

Untapped potential

Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku, said that its leadership in enterprise AI continues to attract world-class investors and they are positioned to help businesses realise the untapped potential for AI to transform the enterprise.

Gartner predicts that artificial intelligence implementation will move away from the pilot stage toward operationalisation at 75% of companies by 2024, which means that the next four years will see a five-fold increase in streaming data and analytics infrastructures adoption.

 “In a global business market rocked by the changes 2020 has brought, AI has proven to be a critical element of organizational success driving business growth in every major vertical market,” he said.

Dataiku was founded in 2013 by Douetteau and three fellow Frenchmen – Marc Batty, Clement Stenac and Thomas Cabrol.

The progression of AI in the enterprise has moved rapidly from experimentation to real-life implementations at scale in 2020, Ron Shah, Partner at Stripes and added that Dataiku is at the forefront of that shift with the most comprehensive, secure and enterprise ready product.

“What we’ve seen in Dataiku is not only a commitment to developing future-proof technology for customers ranging across nearly every major industry and geography, but perhaps more importantly, a team of dedicated professionals and global organisation working to ensure trust, safety and resilience through machine learning,” Paul Melchiorre, Operating Partner at Stripes, said.

UiPath to boost investments in MEA to meet growing demand

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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UiPath to boost investments in MEA to meet growing demand
  • Companies need to transform faster than ever and they don’t have an option anymore, regional head says.
  • Companies are stressed and automation, especially RPA, is one of the very few programs where the returns are quite quick.
  • Companies are using RPA and other intelligent automation technologies to address new business and market pressures stemming from Covid-19.

Dubai: The power of automation in today’s challenging times is becoming not just an engine to drive transformation and efficiencies but has now been elevated to an existential requirement, UiPath regional head said.

“Companies need to transform faster than ever and they don’t have an option anymore. They cannot do lip service to transformation. The interest from companies both big and small, already growing strongly, has increased exponentially since the start of the pandemic,” Karan Dixit, Vice-President for UiPath Middle East and Africa, told TechChannel News.

UiPath is one of the three biggest RPA companies in the world, alongside Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.

Dixit said the Covid-19 crisis has accelerated adoption of automation in the region. 

Organisations across the sectors have had to cope with activity peaks during the pandemic and the lockdowns without being able to rely on extra resources to answer citizen and customer demands. 

“The frontline industries, such as healthcare, public sector services and more, have turned to technology to cut down reaction time, while sectors such as retail, banking, education, have had to find the right channels and put in place the necessary framework to allow them to meet their users online,” Dixit said.

Faced with challenges, he said that many organisations have had to speed up the process of putting in place robust technological infrastructures that can support the end-to-end digitalisation of processes, paving the way for automation.

Dixit believes that automation is the future of work, and this belief is rooted in the present, which shows there is solid adoption across all markets and in workplaces and companies from all business sectors.

“Companies are stressed and automation, especially RPA, is one of the very few technologies where the return on investments is quite fast. Moreover, RPA implementations are quick to deploy and the gains can be quantified very easily,” he said.

However, he said that the Middle East is a unique region with its unique requirements.

The region has perhaps the most progressive Government, he said and they have been a huge proponent of next-generation technologies.

Opportunities far outweigh challenges

Given the strong integration between AI and RPA, “we are seeing them not just as a sponsor but also as a leading customer segment.

The opportunities today in the region far outweigh any challenges.

With a growing partner ecosystem, an established and fast-growing customer base and truly industry-leading technology, we are increasing our investments on the ground to support the growth that we are seeing,” Dixit said.

Today, he said that there is a strong consensus among the analysts surveying the automation landscape that RPA is a “central and essential component” of a larger automation ambition.

However, he said there is not yet a full agreement on the terms to be used, e.g. intelligent automation, intelligent RPA or hyperautomation.

Recent research from Zinnov puts together the ingredients of end-to-end intelligent/hyperautomation and they include – democratization, platformisation and ecosystem development.

While UiPath has made democratisation of RPA knowledge a core pillar of its vision, Dixit said the launch of the industry’s first platform built for end-to-end hyperautomation has placed UiPath in a great position to continue to sustain its leadership of the market.

Moreover, Zinnov’s analysis sizes the total addressable market (TAM) for hyper-intelligent automation at $65 billion, with estimated enterprise spend in 2025 at $42 billion—a 55% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2020-2025.

Zinnov’s research acknowledges that despite overall IT setbacks due to the ongoing 2019 novel coronavirus, customer interest and adoption for hyper-intelligent automation is accelerating.

Key areas that automation tackles

Dixit said that there are four key areas that automation tackles and they are key for ensuring business resilience and continuity:

  • It accelerates digital transformation, and companies are already well aware of their need to either continue at full speed or start already.
  • It enhances customer experience, and this is key for remaining competitive in the market.  
  • It improves employee satisfaction – focusing on upselling, billing, consulting value-added work. 
  • It removes risk & increases compliance. 

Dixit said that UiPath’s automation is built on a collaborative model that puts employees at the centre and empowers them to identify areas for improvement, and either create the software robots themselves or, for more complex automations, entrust their company’s Center of Excellence with developing them.

“We have customers who have UiPath Certification Graduations ceremonies and make sure their employees make use of the RPA training opportunities offered by the UiPath Academy, a free online platform to build these skills within the organisation,” he said.

According to recent assessments by research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), he said the rise of cloud computing could provide a buffer against the Covid-19 driven downturn, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Accordingly, he said that businesses are now focusing more on “sustaining operations” and are using cloud computing to do so.

According to IDC, flexible, scalable cloud services are among the few technology segments expected to continue clocking positive double-digit growth across SaaS, IaaS and PaaS [software, infrastructure and platform as a service] in 2020.

However, he said that UiPath’s cloud strategy is not just limited to AWS or Azure and it goes deeper than that.

UiPath offers its platform as a SaaS service that customers can use in the region.

One robot for every person

“Our goal is to have a software robot assisting users in their day-to-day tasks, taking away the tedious, repetitive work, and allowing you to focus on the most productive and creative areas,” Dixit said.

UiPath’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Dines shared the company’s vision to enable and offer “a robot for every person” in 2018. Referencing Bill Gates’ vision to deliver ‘a computer on every desk’, Dines then said: “Our vision is a continuation of this idea, to have one robot for every person.” 

One big pillar of that vision, Dixit said is UiPath’s commitment to democratise the access to automation and via its UiPath Academy, launched in 2017, and Academic Alliance program.

The UiPath Academy offers free online training in RPA to anyone interested in training and reskilling for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

Academy training courses prepare professionals for the roles required to build an RPA Centre of Excellence within an organisation, including RPA developers, solution architects, infrastructure engineers, implementation managers and business analysts.

Dixit said that more than 700,000 individuals around the world have enrolled in UiPath Academy since its launch in 2017.

Through the Academic Alliance, He said that they partner with leading institutions, universities and colleges, and together craft the global RPA knowledge ecosystem.

The hottest topic in the automation space is hyperautomation, he said and it is recognised by research firm Gartner as the top trend on its list of “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020”.

Strong annual recurring revenue

Keeping RPA at its core, hyperautomation brings together several components of process automation and integrates technologies and tools that amplify the ability to automate work, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), intelligent optical character recognition (OCR) and AI computer vision.

“UiPath has significantly expanded the scope and capabilities of what an RPA platform can deliver, new capabilities that support every phase of the automation lifecycle. We have all of these technologies in one platform and customers can pick and choose what they want to use and when they want to use,” he said.

The company is now speeding up its plans for an initial public offering in the US by next year.

The New York-based company raised $225 million in its latest fundraising and has now raised more than $1.2 billion to date.

Dixit said that it has more than $400 million, as of April 2020 and from over $200 million a year ago, in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a metric that measures its predictable revenue from subscriptions and returning customers.

In February, the company announced it closed 2019 with $360 million in ARR.

“At over $400 million in ARR in 2020, UiPath is one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies worldwide with a strong partner ecosystem,” Dixit said.

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