Tag: good

ITU’s AI for Good Global Summit 2024 puts tech to the test for people and planet

Global leaders and innovators in artificial intelligence (AI) will join the humanitarian community at the AI for Good Global Summit 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland on 30-31 May to explore how new technology can drive sustainable development.

This year’s edition of the AI for Good summit event will showcase innovations in generative AI, robotics and brain-machine interfaces that can accelerate progress in areas such as climate action, accessibility, health and disaster response.

Summit speakers, including some of the world’s foremost AI luminaries, will explore the latest breakthroughs in AI and examine actions to ensure that AI works to humanity’s benefit.

“ITU’s annual AI for Good Global Summit brings together a diverse set of voices to look at the latest AI developments and find ways to ensure this technology remains a force for good, driving inclusive growth and sustainable and equitable progress for all,” said ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin. “This summit and our year-round AI for Good platform are powerful tools for accelerating progress in our race to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.”

On 29 May, discussions dedicated to AI governance will explore the surge in global efforts to craft AI policy, regulation, and governance frameworks. AI Governance Day – bringing together representatives of governments, companies, academia, civil society, and UN agencies – aims to forge pathways to transform dialogue around AI governance into impactful action.

The UN platform for AI powered by ITU

AI for Good identifies practical applications of AI to accelerate progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals and connects AI innovators with public and private-sector decision-makers to help scale up AI solutions globally.

ITU, the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies, organizes the yearly AI for Good Global Summit together with 40 partner UN agencies. The event is co-convened by the Government of Switzerland. 

AI for Good discussions foster international cooperation and innovation to create equitable access to new technologies. The discussions support ITU in spurring timely policy exchanges, developing best practices and technical standards, and catalysing partnerships for AI solutions to contribute to sustainable development.

Thought leaders and thought-controlled machines

In addition to talks by AI thought leaders, this year’s summit will host machine learning masterclasses, curated by experts for experts, covering topics from deepfakes and climate change to brain-machine interfaces, AI for public services, explainable AI, and machine learning in communication networks.

Start-ups, young people and creatives will demonstrate their ideas at the AI for Good Innovation Factory Grand Finale, Robotics for Good Youth Challenge, and Canvas of the Future art contest.

The summit’s exhibition space will feature an array of cutting-edge demos, including AI for accessibility, collective drone swarms, bio-inspired rescue robots, a RoboCup robot football tournament, performance-boosting exoskeletons and AI-inspired art.

Exhibition highlights will include demos of brain-machine interfaces – an AI advancement that promises to open new frontiers for neurotechnology. A press conference on brain-machine interfaces will highlight new technologies enabling mind-controlled movement and communication for persons with disabilities, offering insights on how progress in the field could impact the future of human performance, mental health and wellbeing.

The 2024 edition of the summit comes in conjunction with the WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event. The World Summit on Information Society event brings together the world’s digital development community to discuss concrete actions to advance sustainable development.

The AI for Good Global Summit will take place at the International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG).

Registration for media accreditation for reporters wishing to cover the AI for Good Global Summit is open. Registration for the public is also open and is free of charge. Registrants can attend either in person or online to connect with an expected 2,500 participants in Geneva and over 25,000 professionals worldwide who are part of the AI for Good Neural Network. Capacity is limited and early registration is encouraged.

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Doreen Bogdan-Martin – ITU Secretary-General
  • Geoffrey Hinton – Advisor for the Learning in Machines & Brains, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (presenting remotely)
  • Sam Altman – CEO, OpenAI (presenting remotely)
  • HRH Princess Beatrice – United Kingdom
  • Abeba Birhane – Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI, Mozilla Foundation, Time 100 AI
  • Stuart Russell – Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley, and author of “Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control”
  • Daron Acemoglu – Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and New York Times bestselling author of “Why Nations Fail: Power, Prosperity, and Poverty”
  • Gary Marcus – Scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur, New York University
  • Nicolas Thompson – CEO, The Atlantic
  • Fatmah Baothman – CEO, Alothaim Investment AI and R&D Company
  • Vincent Vanhoucke – Senior Director of Robotics, Google DeepMind
  • Mo Gawdat – Former Chief Business Officer at Google X, and best-selling author of “Scary Smart” and “Solve for Happy”

 

See all of the AI for Good Global Summit 2024 speakers here. 

Demos of robots, drones, and brain-machine interfaces include:

 

The AI for Good Global Summit 2024 is supported by Immersion4 (Diamond sponsor), DLA Piper (Diamond sponsor), AWS (Gold sponsor), Alibaba DAMO Academy (Gold sponsor), ZTE (Gold sponsor), and KUKA (Networking sponsor).

Is Ethereum a Good Investment?

As blockchain technology aims to revolutionize markets, decentralize power, and enable broader transparency, Ethereum has rapidly emerged as one of the most promising crypto assets at the forefront driving this disruption.

Powering decentralized finance applications, non-fungible token marketplaces, decentralized autonomous organizations, and an array of crypto projects – Ethereum adoption continues accelerating at an impressive pace.

Yet like any speculative investment, potential downside risks remain ever-present alongside the substantial upside potential. Evaluating the potential long-term investment prospects of Ethereum entails a thorough analysis that goes beyond mere fluctuations in price.

This involves scrutinizing the foundational utility and real-world use cases that contribute to sustainable value. Furthermore, the evaluation of strategic options to sell Ethereum becomes crucial when assessing its long-term investment viability.

What Makes Ethereum Unique as a Cryptocurrency?

Unlike Bitcoin’s singular focus on peer-to-peer digital payments and store of value propositions, Ethereum operates as a more multifaceted asset powering an entire decentralized software ecosystem.

Ether tokens fuel a broader blockchain platform for building and running decentralized applications known as dapps. Programmers leverage Ethereum’s Turing-complete programming language to build self-executing smart contracts.

These autonomous lines of code get deployed on Ethereum’s blockchain, enabling dapp functionality to run exactly as programmed without risk of manipulation or censorship.

Decentralized apps span markets like finance (DeFi), digital assets and collectibles (NFTs), identity management, insurance, supply chain tracking, gaming, metaverse worlds and more.

Ethereum unlocks the capability to fundamentally rewire economic incentives and innovation potential across countless vital industries. Global enterprises and scrappy startups alike see these possibilities.

The Future Possibilities of Ethereum

While Ethereum already dominates as the leading smart contract blockchain network, further cutting-edge innovations look to improve speed, efficiency, and scalability even more.

Upgrades like sharding, proof-of-stake consensus, plasma chains, state channels and layer 2 solutions will allow the Ethereum blockchain to potentially process over 100,000 transactions per second at negligible cost.

This positions the network extremely well for supporting billions of users and trillions in value transfer long-term across decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible token marketplaces (NFTs), metaverse domains, and web 3.0 apps built on Ethereum.

As more decentralized apps get built and actively used on Ethereum by enterprises and consumers alike, this will continue providing fundamental value to the Ether cryptocurrency itself. The long term investment prospects shine brightly.

Key Drivers of Ethereum’s Growth Trajectory

Several key factors suggest Ethereum adoption will continue rapidly advancing:

Developer Mindshare – Ethereum now dominates developer activity in crypto, with over 4x more monthly active developers than any other blockchain project according to Electric Capital. The pace of building continues accelerating.

Enterprise Interest – Major institutions like JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon and others continue launching Ethereum-based projects and platforms to serve clients.

Consumer Apps – Between metaverse worlds, NFT digital collectibles, and DeFi protocols allowing earning yield, everyday users now have more accessible starting points for using Web 3.0 Ethereum dapps in daily life.

Institutional Investment – Major crypto investment products like Grayscale Ethereum Trust, Canadian ETH ETFs, CME Ether futures offer exposure to accredited investors, bringing billions of dollars onto Ethereum’s blockchain annually.

Upcoming Tech Upgrades – Scalability limitations currently hamper Ethereum, but foundational upgrades like sharding and Proof-of-Stake consensus to radically improve transaction speeds/costs remain ongoing, coordinated by the world’s top cryptographers and programmers globally.

As core protocol development and dapp innovation systematically address current platform limitations while granting broader access for developers and consumers to build/use Ethereum apps, the system appears positioned to see ballooning value capture.

Potential Downside Risks to Consider

Of course, prudent crypto investors must weigh both the short-term volatility and longer-term uncertainty that comes with an early-stage asset like Ether. Monitoring for changes in crypto policies, regulations, taxes merits consideration as the technology matures.

And while the pace of core protocol upgrades like the Merge to proof-of-stake continues aggressively, scope for further delays or security issues means conservatism around rollout timetables makes sense.

Yet Ethereum now has a substantial track record of resilience, security, and antifragility compared to past blockchain iterations. The global grassroots community of builders/users continues gaining momentum/maturity in parallel with technological evolution.

While Ethereum stands as the clear dominant leader currently in decentralized app platforms, threats still loom from competitive Layer 1 blockchain alternatives like Solana (SOL) aiming at its market share. The key contrast emerges in the immense transaction speed advantages of SOL to ETH – with Solana already proving the capacity to handle 50,000+ transactions per second (TPS) compared to Ethereum’s 15 TPS presently.

Solana prioritizes scalability and rapid innovation cycles to maintain its raw TPS edge over ETH. Yet the tradeoffs involve much lower security thresholds presently, higher network instability risks, and far fewer live applications or users compared to Ethereum. Still, as congestion persists on Ethereum until solutions mitigate costs and latencies, the window remains for SOL to syphon liquidity and mindshare from ETH.

The race contrasts the two project’s philosophies—Solana’s appetite for rapid composability and low cost against Ethereum’s patient emphasis on security, stability and gradual upgrades. For investors bullish on maintaining raw SOL to ETH speed advantages indefinitely, the massive upside from SOL’s still nascent $35 billion market cap compared to ETH’s towering $250 billion valuation may warrant including some Solana exposure alongside core Ethereum holdings if managed prudently.

Ethereum Price Predictions and Market Outlook

Based on growth trajectory, prominent crypto thought leaders and institutional analysts across Ark Invest, Bloomberg, Invesco, Galaxy Digital and more share an overwhelmingly bullish perspective on Ethereum price appreciation potential over 5-10 year timeframes.

Mike Novogratz of Galaxy Digital believes $7,500+ per ETH emerges by 2025 as financialization accelerates and platforms like DeFi built on Ethereum gain escape velocity in usage.

A Bloomberg analyst predicted Ethereum reaching a market cap between $20-30 trillion one day, which would translate to $14,000 – $20,000 per ETH.

ARK Invest analysts forecast Ethereum hitting $20,000+ eventually based on expectations for massive innovation and growth in DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, stablecoins, and Web 3.0 platforms over the next decade being built largely on Ethereum-based programming.

Clearly, industry experts see still 10-100x or greater upside in play for Ethereum prices over the next decade even from today’s levels. This requires the total crypto/digital asset market cap ballooning above $100 trillion over time.

Final Verdict: Bull Case Stronger Than Ever

Despite extreme volatility at times, early-stage computing platforms and cryptocurrencies involve monumental wealth creation potential. This matches the history of other revolutionary technologies like the internet, which compounded over decades.

Investors with enough vision, diligent analysis of utility and conviction in decentralized networks upending entrenched business models stand well-positioned to generate substantial returns over long time horizons.

Of course personal risk tolerance must always be evaluated with full transparency around crypto complexities before any investment.

But based on accelerating developer/enterprise traction, demographic/generational trends embracing digital assets, global institutional infrastructure maturing, and the mainstream awakening to money/power decentralization possibilities – Ethereum appears primed to emerge as the definitive Web 3 blockchain settlement layer and thriving decentralized application ecosystem over the long run.

The odds seem highly favorable that within the high risk, high reward realm of crypto assets, Ether and public blockchain innovations will deliver wealth creation on the scale of other revolutionary general purpose technologies like computers, the internet, mobile computing for believers in decentralized networks upending business paradigms over the next decade. Buckle up.

 

ZHIYUN CRANE M2S crowned GOOD DESIGN(R) Awards 2022 winner

ZHIYUN, the world’s pioneering gimbal innovator for cameras and smartphones, has been awarded the prestigious GOOD DESIGN® Awards for its CRANE M2S gimbal.

The CRANE M2S won in the electronics category of the 72nd edition of the awards. Approximately 4,000 shortlisted entries from 52 countries were judged by independent and international jurors with the awards given to products with the highest design quality and innovation.

The gimbal joins ZHIYUN’s range of award-winning products and offers a compact design that feels completely natural in the hand during use. With a built-in 0.66-inch display offering real-time status and operating parameters of the camera and gimbal, users benefit from an at-a-glance view while they shoot.

Another award-winning feature is ZHIYUN’s latest quick release technology, the V-shape design provides better working efficiency allowing quick interchange between any cameras used. While dual safety locks ensure the equipment always remains attached.

At just 549g, the CRANE-M2S impressed judges since it is as portable as a phone gimbal, but can  hold cameras up to the Sony A7SIII with small prime lenses. The super lightweight body is combined with stronger motors and extended axes, making it a must-have for high velocity, run-and-gun filmmakers.

GOOD DESIGN is the first, oldest and longest running design prize in the world that honors all design achievements in all its disciplines: from product, packaging, communication and service design, architecture and interior architecture to user interface (UI), user experience (UX), and professional concept.

The highly-prized, highly anticipated, and highly-publicized awards are bestowed annually by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The competition evaluates product design, communication design, packaging design and concept designs by the world’s leading brands and sheds light on current trends emerging in the international design and manufacturing sectors.

ZHIYUN’s Head of R&D, said:

“At ZHIYUN, design innovation is key to the success of our products, and we are honoured to be awarded this prestigious recognition for our continuous R&D efforts in gimbal technology. It is our intention to continue to deliver even more novel product experiences to video creators, whether amateur or professional from around the world.”

Further information on CRANE M2S at the GOOD DESIGN® Awards can be found here.