The use of AI for security solution or threat ?

Yesterday I had the honor to be present to an event hosted by UCD having topic " The use of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity. Having huge interest on artificial intelligence field, I didn't want to miss this opportunity to be present to such an event.

Representatives from many organizations have gathered at Moli Newman House to listen the speakers:

• Dr Marguerite Barry - UCD School of Information and Communication Studies
• Dr Giovanni Russo - UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Dr Mathieu Sinn - IBM  Research Staff Member -Cognitive Data Science
• Ian Trinder-  PwC  Director Cyber Security

I will try to make a short description of the main points of this topic. Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities are growing at unprecedented rate. These technologies start to be used in absolute all domains. There are not fields in  which AI are not implemented or will be implemented soon or later.  However AI models can possess some treats which I will present in the following moment:

1 Malicious use of AI

Building machine learning and AI models rely heavily on big data. These models are incredible accurate if the data they are using are correct. To understand how important is data I will give an example.  A certain bank decide to implement a machine learning automation system to try to prevent credit card fraud detection system.  A system to be reliable must contain accurate data. We can imagine what will happen if the data contains errors, the system will automatically give errors because the models are trained to make predictions based on that data.

2 AI Regulation

Is not yet know, how artificial intelligence will be regulated . Wisely will be that regulators should collaborate with researchers to prevent or investigate potential malicious use of AI.

3 Digital Security

One of the reason why automation systems are implemented or will be implemented is that make our job more easy, more fast and better. The example that I gave with credit card fraud detection is representative.

4 Fake News

We are continuously bombarded with fake news and propaganda via media channels . AI systems will be able in somehow to make distinction between a fake news and a good one. However the expansion of automated tasks can lead to expand threats associated with social manipulation. Authoritarian states can take huge advantages using these tools in order to manipulate their own people.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

                                      Why we do what we do and how to change

Playing video games, watching TV and spending time on social media are one of the habits that are popular among us ,which are considered bad. People are influenced by habits and become what they are because of their own habits. We can define a habit like the process in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine.

Having said this, we can ask few questions like: How do we know which are good and bad habits ? Can we change or replace them?  To find out answer to that questions I recommend the book " The Power of Habit" written by Charles Duhigg.

Charles Duhigg examine how habits can be ignored, changed or replaced in real life. In his book he has discovered why some people and companies are struggling to change despite years of trying , while others seem to remake themselves overnight. Creating new habits is not an easy process. One of the first person who explained how habits are created among consumers is Claude Hopkins.

                         Two basics rules of  how habits are created among consumers:

1. Find a simple and obvious cue
2. Define rewards

Figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier. New habits can be adopted to organizational structures. Starbucks is an amazing and well know company that discovered how to turn self discipline into an organizational habit. Facing problems like: customers complaints, screaming customers and long line cash register, Starbucks has introduced a set of rules of how to respond to specific cues. This is know like Starbucks " LATTE " Methotd
L- Listen to the customer
A- Acknowledge their complains
T- Take action by solving the problems
T- Thank them
E- Explain why the problem has occurred

Introducing this new set of rules, Starbucks not only changed the company habit, but also gave employee a greater sense of authority and how to use more efficient their intellect and creativity.
For an organization to become successful, the leaders must cultivate habits that create a real and balanced peace.

LATERAL THINKING SKILLS BY PAUL SLOANE

Unlock the creativity and innovation in you and your team

There are many reasons that business are failing in today environment, one of the reason perhaps the most important is the lack of innovation. Business owners must encourage themselves and empower their people to take creative and entrepreneurial approach to exploit new opportunities.

The best way to create value is to innovate your organization and to stay ahead your competition in order to create temporary monopolies where yours is the only in town.

Innovation can be bring in your team by harnessing the creative power of your people. The goal is to turn them into opportunistic entrepreneurs or lateral thinkers.

Lateral thinking is a new approach of doing business which is emphasized in Paul Sloane book " Lateral thinking skills". Lateral thinking means approaching business challenges from new direction in order to create better solutions.

According to Paul Sloane the key elements of creating a truly innovative and entrepreneurial organization can be summarized in the following steps:

1. Paint an inspiring vision
2. Build an open, receptive, questioning culture
3. Empower people at all levels
4. Set goals deadlines and measurements for innovation
5. Use creativity technique to generate a large number of ideas
6. Review, combine, filter and select ideas
7. Prototype the promising proposal
8. Welcome failure and manage risk
9. Analyze results and roll out the successful projects

STEVE JOBS BY WALTER ISAACSON

" My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary.   -  STEVE JOBS


There is a saying that " All people can be replaced at work place" which is not true in case of Apple. Steve Jobs has proved that saying is not true. Apple become what is today only because of him and he has proved that Apple could not exist without him.
Life wasn't fair for him when he was kicked from Apple after 10 years by the man who was hired by him. Jobs wasn't only a visionary who made great products but also a good entrepreneur who build companies. After he was fired from Apple he has proved again that he can build successful business like: NeXT and Pixar.
Reading the book, written by Walter Isaacson I discovered important parts of his life, but also so important business lessons that I didn't learn in school. We been taught that before to launch a product is important to do a market research to discover what people might want. However this had not applied in his case. He later explained: " People don't know what they want until you show it to them".
In conclusion I firmly recommend this book, for those who want to discover the his life. He didn't invent many things, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art and technology in ways that invented the future.

AI AND THE RACE FOR WORLD SUPREMACY US VS CHINA

" The nation that leads in AI would be ruler of the world"  - Vladimir Putin President Russia Federation

"I am telling you the world first trillionaire are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives that applies in the ways we never thought of  - Mark Cuban

It's obvious that AI is not only a race between companies ,is also a race between nation.  I consider what Putin said is perfectly true. The nation who will lead in artificial intelligence will lead the world from decades from now. Unfortunately for Putin and russian peoples, I will not put Russia in this equation.  The race for AI supremacy is between United States and China. I don't underestimate Russia achievements in matter of science and technology.  Yesterday I was reading an article on CNBC about an AI startup in Russia  " Promobot"  which producing humanoid robots and I was completely impressed by this achievement. However Russia is far behind like countries like: US, China, E.U in matter of AI.

In today article, I will present some ideas about how I see this race between the two super powers. US is the world biggest economy . It's achievements in matter of science and technology has shaped our lives. Having Silicon Valley like the main hub for technology and breakthrough innovations, US is the main player in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2018 according to PwC AI startups in US raised 9.3 billion USD. Startups like: "Nuro" -developing autonomous vehicles,  Data Robots-automated machine learning platform , "Stem" -help organizations to automate energy cost, "First cloud Robot" developing support connected smart machines and so on.
For more information Top Ai Startup US.

On the other hand China, which aims to become a leading on AI field. In 2017 the Communist Party of China set an ambitious plan that by 2030 to become a leader on AI.  Some of the most important chinese startups on AI field are:

• UBTECH Robotics -commercialize humanoid robots
• Mobvoi-    voice recognition and natural language processing
• SenseTime- image pattern recognition
• and so on

For more information Top Chinese Startups


Let's look at both and try to compare US has of his side technology innovation and breakthrough science on the other hand China has on his side large data set which is important in process of creation and training.

1. Us has another big advantage in tools which enable people to create and train machine learning models. Free open source tools like: TensorFlow , Microsoft Azure and Caffe are very popular. In stead China has PaddlePaddle developed by Baidu
2. Shortage of scientist US having Sillicon Valley enable to attract talented people from every corner of the world even chinese!!!  To close this gap The Communist Party of China invested huge amount of money trying to repatriate chinese people from US, providing them good conditions
3. One big advantage that China has over US is big demographic and huge amount of data. Having those is essential in the process of creating AI breakthrough technologies. To understand this well will take chinese startup SenseTime they are using huge amount of data to create and train deep neural network in the process of image pattern recognition.

HOW TO SELL ANYTHING TO ANYBODY BY JOE GIRARD

Sales are the foundation of every business. We can call an entity "Business" if is not making any sales. It is simple concept if you can't sale, you can't make any money that is the true. If you are in the situation to start your own business, having good sales skills can give you a huge advantages.

To reinforce what I 've said before , I will give an example "Steve Wozniack" was creative genius behind company "Apple". He was the man in charge with designing and creation of first Apple products. He couldn't achieve alone what "Apple " is today, very creative and intelligent person, but he has one lack, we couldn't sale, he wasn't a good sales person. Instead Steve Jobs was the opposite of him good business skills and entrepreneurship drive.

It become obvious how important is to have good sales skills. A book that I founded interesting is: "How to sell anything to anybody" written by Joe Girard.  It is not more a good example to follow in sales than Joe Girard. Is probably the most remarkable person ever to come along in the world of retail selling.  He use to say: " Working smart and being persistent could achieve wonders".

In conclusion I highly recommend this book, it provide valuable insights from the man with impressive track records. He is know like: "The World Greatest Salesman" , he entered in Guinness Book of World Records with 1,425 cars sold in one year and 13,001 in fifteen years of activity.

SELF DRIVING CARS FOR A BETTER WORLD

According with World Health Organization nearly 1, 35 million people die on road crashes every year, an average 3,287 deaths per day.  Should this statistics make us to worry?   The answer is Yes, the truth is that you are not safe when you drive a car or when you are in a car.

To reduce road accidents governments and non governments institutions have took some actions to try to prevent road crashes. In the following moment I will present some measures taken by governments in hooping to reduce car accidents:

• reducing speed limit
• reducing alcohol level and in some cases prohibiting alcohol
• raising awareness of legislation and increasing of fees
• making vehicles more protective for occupants

Unfortunately this measures wont work. Maybe I'm to critique and don't have enough conviction , it's very hard to educate people in general. In my view one of the best solution to solve this problem are self driving cars.

WHAT ARE SELF DRIVING CARS?

Also known as autonomous vehicle is a vehicle that is capable to move safely with no human input. That means that those cars have incorporated Artificial Intelligence based systems. We can enumerated here some companies which are developing self driving cars like: Tesla , Uber and so on.
A research made by IHS Markit predicted that installation rate of AI based systems for cars will increase with by 109% by 2025.


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SELF DRIVING CARS

To create a AI based for a car we need to implement some techniques like: deep learning, machine learning , algorithms like: linear algebra, probabilities, programming languages like Python. The process of creating a self drive cars can be split in three main stages:

Stage 1   Data Collecting  Input ( supercomputer, electronically radars, comunication systems, traffic light cameras, trifocal camera, Gps,

Stage 2  We train data set

Stage 3  We have the output which include :( object detection, voice recognition, speech recognition, Eye tracking, maping system, driver monitoring and so on)

In the end I would like to emphasize that even this cutting edge creations failed few times. Here I would like to mention that a women was killed by a self driving car tested by Uber and two Tesla pilots have died .  Despite of this isolated failures I still firmly believe that self driving cars are the best solution for decrease road accidents and to become a better world.