Kozminski Techblog

A new startup “Kea” invented a program which is using artificial intelligence. It will give restaurants an opportunity for upgrading taking orders. 

“Today, Kea is announcing that it has raised a $10 million Series A led by Marbruck,  with participation from Streamlined Ventures, Xfund, Heartland Ventures, DEEPCORE, Barrel Ventures and AVG Funds, as well as angel investors Raj Kapoor (chief strategy officer at Lyft), Craig Flom (who was on the founding team at Panera Bread), Wingstop franchisee Tony Lam and Five Guys franchisee Jonathan Kelly.” 1

Often restaurants do not manage to hire staff for less important tasks, which one of them could be answering the phone. Most of us experienced (especially in pandemic times) calling the restaurant and waiting unnecessary amount of time waiting for someone to take our order. Founder of Kea – Adam Ahmad seemed to find the solution for this problem.

The program which Kea introduced is based on an idea, in which the “virtual cashier” will do the initial intake with customers and process the orders. If needed, it can also bring a human employee. It looks like a perfect idea, but the experience might not be as satisfying as the company describes it. Often banks or private health care providers are using such systems on daily basis, and sometimes customers have to struggle with problems while using it. However, Ahmad claims, that most of the existing systems are not smart, and Kea’s AI do not have such problems, as it is strictly focused on ordering food in restaurants.

As customers, we all know that most of the programs that are making our lives harder, in general, should work perfectly, instead, they do the opposite. How Kea will manage the problems with such service if other companies seem to still could not improve it? Unfortunately, there is no specific answer provided by the company yet.

Adam Ahmad says: “We’re doing a very closed domain,”, “In the pizza world, there are only a couple thousand permutations. We’re not innovating for the whole dictionary — it’s a constrained model, it’s a menu.”

On the official website of Kea (https://kea.ai/) potential customers have the opportunity of checking the demo by themselves.

Some of the restaurants that are already using the system are Papa John’s, Donatos and Primanti Brothers. Overall, those restaurants claim that they recommend the system and it actually saves them (on average) 10 hours of work per week. This provides a 23% increase (on average) order size. The companies goal is to bring Kea to 1000 restaurants in the United States across 37 states, which might happen in 2021.

The idea is great, but would it actually help us, as customers, or will it only help restaurants with the problem of understaffing? And most importantly, if more companies will introduce such programs, wouldn’t that mean that fewer people are hired? Every time the Artificial Intelligence is used for new tasks, some people might lose their jobs. In this case, it seems to be a perfect solution for companies, which either way would not hire extra people for such a specific task such as answering the phone. However, what will happen to people who have such a position, and the company will decide to switch to the system using AI?

1.Techcrunch.com. 2020. Techcrunch Is Now A Part Of Verizon Media. [online] Available at: <https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/20/kea-series-a/> [Accessed 24 November 2020].

sources:

Techcrunch.com. 2020. Techcrunch Is Now A Part Of Verizon Media. [online] Available at: <https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/20/kea-series-a/> [Accessed 24 November 2020].

ZoomInfo. 2020. Kea Cloud – Overview, News & Competitors | Zoominfo.Com. [online] Available at: <https://www.zoominfo.com/c/kea-cloud-inc/466259157?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=6b75ea5736cb51a161fc8ecb085d9e25e0c62165-1606224631-0-AVtb4mRfwyk89cDA5xcoRp8vxqgBIlff8bFxUokfL81KENk9Og00FekGAkKGSoyz-F9EAsa3mjGuDwA-0gJtdOB15S8dCvmSPiKfD8eL4weqmiFBqdPFPHqldQcNFSIwlMXa2IwSPSyxZze5088vDlLlsPCcve4ZqiHGiwdJpUMx-oF_GunKIyg51RPxAwN4MWICGB-KC_KoWcNElTXJBqsn6ahu67y_XiqbDtNKdX8HGfmqhi7H4U_o8G2U11Uh8hYQnb4AdIxhBxxy_qKhvk12ZY4MAc-BtGIjLM7eVOcwaqcPFTJaHEUERf7KXVEpP8sD6n9tyHGS0JhOYcUwN6uv7W2bVwIH4zghIGjjBAhW35e4DddvXnI0mVIbDEBvmxNXJXBxGSb68hTCXDqJtoPj_IR4t_FZbGhY6BWyQwE_b8gAofhFJ5cvLu_FrWR6DE7DfDPlOgjNDstqDW6zOSTrG2qOMbTyCrdbVvpqdUdHPRMEKHZc6DxSxLoqVWAzPhtYRXRCtED_h7Mp-BgLQ2N4zEObRgTpOkhaRvOOdNghCEpHh3y8SpeEUxRyv_miS3O7SFryi0kfUb6kZo48mi8pFxdFbboje6kgt_OBcUZE> [Accessed 24 November 2020].

Kea.ai. 2020. Kea.Ai. [online] Available at: <https://kea.ai/> [Accessed 24 November 2020].

There are a number of tools that use machine learning to guide content creators through the writing process. Many of them are WordPress plug-in’s that have a wide range of features, such as text generation, image generation or mistake correction. In the content written by the AI, you will find images, as well as links to other sources. You almost can not spot, that an article was written by a AI writing tool. Some of these softwares are more comprehensive and more expensive than others, but there are some that you can get at an affordable price. This technology has evolved on a grand scale and many major brands have taken advantage of this. The “AI-writers” are much cheaper than human and can work without ever stopping. On the other hand, replacing humans here is not a good idea, because the content generated by the bot is mechanical and has no substance. It lacks the “human touch”, the algorithm cannot feel the emotions, so it will not share it with the reader.

Journalists, writers, and bloggers can get help from AI technology to generate content. AI reporters are also often used by companies to reduce pressure on editorial offices. Despite its ability to tell stories and correct mistakes, AI is unlikely to replace quality authors, according to a recent study by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Digital Media. The use of AI in journalism is not a completely new phenomenon and is regularly used to automate monotonous tasks and save reporters time. As researchers and companies increase their efforts to create AI authors, they will eventually become part of the writing industry.

Although the process is not yet fully automated, the technology is already capable of performing many of the same tasks that a human analyst would do. The algorithm is required to understand the source document and then distill the meaning and important details into a “liquid” summary. There are several automated journalism applications that are used to speed up research, fact-check and rationalize, eliminate fake news, and even write content. After a narrative design, the software can scan the data and determine which insights in the text are important for the reader and then suggest changes to the editor.

It may seem unlikely, but computers can attain diverse creativity to produce complex, coherent pieces of text that no human has ever created. Natural language generation is now being used to create almost award-winning novels such as “A Computer – Written Novel in a Day” and Jack Kerouac – inspired narratives. While there are still some small errors in what is written by machine, these developments make us wonder, not if the Ai will compete with the best writers, but when will it do so.

So a team of writing experts from EssayZoo decided to highlight some of the fundamental tasks that artificial intelligence can perform in the writing industry. Experts believe AI systems can write novels, poems and news reports that adapt to current writing requirements. Tools like Turnitin and Grammarly have had a huge impact on writing and it will even increase in the future. Whether it’s an essay, an article or a message, there are a number of tasks that AI tools can do for us.

Even if you get a little anxious at the thought of an AI author, it is not all negative: studies have been conducted to generate natural language that could eventually sound more and more human, on the other hand some have found that people have difficulty recognizing reports by AI authors and journalists. The scientists believe that an AI author will be able to create a writing that is pretty much identical to that of a human writer. In reality, it may take more than a decade before we get to the point where AI writing is taking over the world of writing. 

Sources:

https://staenz.com/content-automation-ai-tools/

https://edgy.app/top-ai-writing-assistants-for-seo-content-creation?pfrom=article

http://scribesyndicate.com/12-writing-assistant-software-apps-currently-using-artificial-intelligence-ai/

https://bigdata-madesimple.com/will-robots-ai-end-up-taking-over-the-job-of-writers/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/can-a-machine-learn-to-write-for-the-new-yorker

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2019/04/30/ai-writers-will-never-replace-quality-content-creators

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/03/29/artificial-intelligence-can-now-write-amazing-content-what-does-that-mean-for-humans/

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Samsung is known for producing a wide variety of phones each year, so they can attract more users with different budgets. As for now, the prices of their smartphones range from 99$ to 1 999$[1]. Although Samsung releases devices in so many different price points, the mid-range and budget ones (699$ and below) are the bestsellers.

Samsung saw this trend and launched the S20 FE (“Fan Edition”). It’s a budget flagship which means that the most important features, according to the feedback of customers, were kept, while the costly and less necessary were exchanged with cheaper alternatives. The price of this model is 699$ which means that it is 300$ cheaper than the original S20.

What was reduced?

Resolution from QuadHD+ to FHD+ – On such a small screen it’s very hard to tell a difference.

RAM memory – 8GB to 6GB of RAM – 6GB are more than enough for many people, but If you like to have 20 windows open in the background and multitask often, I would consider going for the S20.

Plastic back instead of glass – Most people wear protective cases, so they won’t even worry about it, moreover plastic backs are more resistant to cracking and scratching.

Flat screen instead of curved – That’s a personal preference.

Rear facing camera quality from 64 to 8megapixels – That may seem like the biggest sacrifice of the model for people taking a lot of photos for their social media, but thanks to 3 cameras located in the back of the phone the camera does a pretty good job, below is an example.

What has stayed?

Snapdragon 865 processor – fast core of the phone

120Hz screen refresh rate – feeling of smoothness of the display

5G connection – for future cellular networking systems

128GB of standard storage

Two of the features were even upgraded. First the battery, from 4,000mAh to 4,500mAh which is a significant change and a response to the growing customer’s needs. The battery is said to last two days of moderate use or six hours of screen time. Secondly, the front-facing selfie camera from 10 megapixels to 32. Although it’s an upgrade on paper, some users say that the selfie camera does not represent a credible, mirror-like picture.[2]

In my opinion the compromises made to the new device were very reasonable considering such a price difference. Many reviews on YouTube state that this is the best value-for-money Samsung phone from the Galaxy collection. Some put Galaxy S20 FE in the top 3 phones of 2020. I think it is a great choice for many people looking for a great bang for the buck device. Nonetheless I would emphasize that it wouldn’t be the best option for people using their front and rear cameras on the daily basis.

Bibliography:

Data from:

1. samsung.com/us
2. Heater, Brian. “The Galaxy S20 FE Is Samsung’s New $699 Budget Flagship.” TechCrunch, TechCrunch, 23 Sept. 2020, techcrunch.com/2020/09/23/the-galaxy-s20-fe-is-samsungs-new-699-budget-flagship/.

Article I base on:

Bohn, Dieter. “Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Review: the Right Price for the Right Stuff.” The Verge, The Verge, 8 Oct. 2020, www.theverge.com/21506470/samsung-galaxy-s20-fe-review-camera-processor-price.

External YouTube videos I am referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJKQdzopuco&t=2s&ab_channel=Mrwhosetheboss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azrdcp4yYas&t=325s&ab_channel=MarquesBrownlee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdh0LYSZ9Ak&ab_channel=RobertNawrowski

Reading Time: 3 minutesI probably do not have to say it but the Internet is useful. 

Unfortunately, nearly 50% of our population do not have access to the Internet. In Africa, only 28% of population has access to the Internet. But building infrastructure for Africa would be expensive. Hundreds  of billions expensive.

Access to the Internet – International Telecommunications Union

Right now every place with the Internet access is connected with those long, complicated cable net under the oceans. But what you can do to bring quite cheap the Internet to places and people where essential infrastructure is too expensive? 

Traditional satellite technology isn’t enough. it has limited data capability and connections speed. It results in huge lag in data transfer and slow connection. It’s expensive solution and it’s not that great over all.

You may also send thousands of smaller satellites and provide the Internet form space to every, event abandoned places. It’s the only way to speed up data transfer in areas where cables can’t reach. But sending satellite to the orbit is expensive. To sent thousands of satellites you have to figure out how to do it without throwing away every rocket used for liftoff. SpaceX figured it out how to reuse rockets. SpaceX can send satellites for 90% less than other institutions thanks to that. Megaconstellation of 40 000 satellites – project Starlink is possible mainly because SpaceX has acmes to this amazing technology.

Why? – the context

Elon Musk dreamt about colonisation of other since he was a child. When he got money from the sale of PayPal — 165 mln USD — he decided to do two things. First one was to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” — mission of Tesla inc. — second one was to “make mankind interplanetary” — mission of SpaceX. He invested every penny he has received having those goals in mind. 

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”  

~ Elon Musk on SpaceX mission    

 

Space X — true purpose of Starlink

SpaceX has been created to bring humanity to Mars. It’s complicated task. As You may think — to achieve it’s goal SpaceX needs money. Huge pile of cash actually. Elon Musk’s masterplan how to get this huge pile of cash is Starlink. SpaceX’s list of achievements is impressive so it seems like they are the only candidate to make mankind interplanetary and by the way give the Internet access to every person in the World. (And in the meantime became the biggest company in the world in therms of revenue).

At the end I want to share the list of my favourite SpaceX achievements:

1. The first privately funded rocket to reach orbit — Falcon 1 flight 4 on 28 September 2008 — (if this one went wrong, SpaceX or Tesla would be gone)
2. The first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft — SpaceX Dragon on COTS Demo Flight 1 on 9 December 2010 
3. The first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station  —Dragon C2+ on 25 May 2012.
4. The first landing of an orbital rocket’s first stage on land — Falcon 9 flight 20 on 22 December 2015.
5. The first landing of an orbital rocket’s first stage on an ocean platform — Falcon 9 flight 23 on 8 April 2016.
6. The first private company to send an object into heliocentric orbit — Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster on Falcon Heavy test flight on 6 February 2018 (also the best advertisement ever)
7. The first private company to send humans to the International Space Station — Crew Dragon Demo-2 on 31 May 2020
8. First company cutting costs of sending anything to orbit 90%
9. First self-sufficient space company ever
10. One of the coolest companies ever 

Sources:

https://www.spacex.com

https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars/

https://www.geekwire.com/2016/spacex-elon-musk-colonize-mars/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-passenger/spacex-signs-first-private-passenger-to-fly-around-the-moon-idUSKCN1LU04A

https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/science/spacex-starlink-commercial-satellite-network

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/07/130991/spacex-now-operates-the-worlds-biggest-commercial-satellite-network/

Reading Time: 2 minutesThis month interesting research appeared on the website of the scientific journal ACL Web. The paper describes a new AI capable of detecting sarcasm on Twitter and Reddit. AI compares a picture and its description, first tests showed 86% accuracy. It аlsо соmраrеs hаshtаgs tо twееt tехt tо hеlр assess thе sentiment а usеr is trying tо cоnvеy.

In modern society, sarcasm became a conventional form of humor, especially among youth. It’s commonly used in memes and sometimes we don’t really understand sarcastic subtext at all. Maybe 5 individuals that created this AI had the same problems and decided to become Kings of the Hill. However, their AI has the potential to become a really promising business idea. An application, based on it, could be, for example, used to analyze comments on the Internet and sort out only serious ones.

As inventors say: “Sarcasm is a pervasive phenomenon in today’s social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit. These platforms allow users to create multi-modal messages, including texts, images, and videos. Existing multi-modal sarcasm detection methods either simply concatenate the features from multi modalities or fuse the multi modalities information in a designed manner. However, they ignore the incongruity character in sarcastic utterance, which is often manifested between modalities or within modalities. Inspired by this, we propose a BERT architecture-based model, which concentrates on both intra and inter-modality incongruity for multi-modal sarcasm detection.”

It is also crucial to mention that the accuracy of this AI increased compared to a similar one created last year is higher on 2.74%. But the main question is “Why is it useful?”. Well, in my opinion, it’s a little step forward, and using this technology further researches can be conducted. Needless to say that AI usage could be expanded to minimize human work. Like Facebook did the previous year. They used AI to detect inappropriate comments and posts to delete them. I’m sure the same way is possible to get rid out of spam and fishing websites or at least reduce their number. Or instead of sarcasm developers will learn AI to detect inappropriate subtext. Humor and sarcasm are just a part of human psychology and AI keeps exploring us more and more…

Sources:

https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.findings-emnlp.124/

https://habr.com/ru/news/t/529106/

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe idea of virtual world in which you can do whatever you want has long kept dreamers awake at night. A plenty of films, books and games about this topic has already been made. The project called Decentreland is no doubt a breakthrough in this area because it has done something that no one has ever done before: created a decentralized virtual reality world completely owned by its users.

So, what is Decentreland?

Decentrеlаnd is а virtuаl rеality platform bаsеd on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can crеаte, tеst, аnd monetize content and аpps. The platform is fully governed by users through special system called DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). All apps created on the Decentraland network belong exclusively to their creators.

To start creating content user has to buy land on the land market using blockchain based token called MANA. The number of land plots is limited which creates an artificial deficit that affects the price of land plots. At the moment, the price of land varies from 500 dollars to several thousand dollars. About 80% of all land belongs to users. Part of the territory is rented out by the Decentraland team. Public objects such as squares and roads are not for sale.

According to developers, the main goal for them is to make virtual reality world in which creative people can easily realise their ideas. That is why they created special tool to make the process of creating content easier. As a result, everyone may create whatever he wants without any knowledge in coding.

As regards playing Decentreland, it is possible to play Decentreland through web browser or virtual reality helmet even without downloading app. In addition, Decentreland does not require registration, to join the virtual world user just has to have Ethereum wallet.

Unfortunatelly, even though Decentreland is so easy to join, the number of active players is low because of 2 main reasons. First of all, the game is still poorly optimized and has a plenty of bugs. Secondly, the game has attracted attention of speculators instead of declared target audience (creative people). As a subsequence of land speculations, the entry threshold for owning land is to high for ordinary people and no doubts that it pushes away some potential players.

In conclusion, even though now Decentreland has many serious problems, the potential of it is huge. In case, the team of development would solve main problems, the project is no doubt will be popular in the future.

Resources:

https://decentraland.org/

https://www.publish0x.com/cryptocurrency/what-is-decentraland-mana-a-comprehensive-guide-to-understan-xkxyrn

Reading Time: 2 minutes

We are living in an era of changes, the beginning of online teaching. Who has thought that this way of learning will take place so soon? It’s 2020 and we already are experiencing something that supposed to happen in 100 years as some people were assuming the beginning of Online studies. Here, thinking of new ways how to make students’ life easier, we are this lucky that a company like Notion comes with these solutions. And this is the future of work.

Nowadays, management is hipper important. But if you don’t know how to manage your time and your work how can you make things done? That’s where Notion comes in. As a first step, you are blending much of your workflow into an all-in-one workspace. Want a task list? A product roadmap? A design repository? Knowledge base? They are now all in one place. LEGO-style building blocks give you the possibility to solve your problems in your own ways, bounded only by your imagination.

Not far from now we were using notebooks, and probably still some of you do. We can even remember caring all those books from school or files from work on the way back home. When you wanted to share notes with your colleagues, you had to wait till the time you could have met or in the best situation you send some pictures of what you got!

Not anymore.

You can invite a single teammate or share documents with the entire company.

Even the biggest start-ups are using Notion, where they can easily onboard new employees, present the project, delegate tasks, and so on. Probably that’s also the reason why the San Francisco-based maker of management and work software raised 2Bilion of Dollars this year. It was founded in 2012 and now they have more than four million users. It charges users a monthly subscription.

Personally, Notion is a tool I use on daily basis, whatever it is Notion has my back! Planning, taking notes, and having everything organized it’s the first thing I have in my mind when I think about Notion. Despite all of the advantages, there is one thing important to mention – Notion is environmentally friendly, you don’t have to use paper anymore. That’s is why I really encourage you to take all this in mind and start working by using Notion!

Ps. Every student can have a free student plan, I just emailed the Notion team and all you have to do is register with your University email! Check the video below to get started 🙂 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/04/01/buzzy-work-app-notion-hits-2-billion-valuation/

https://www.notion.so/startups

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-only-app-you-need-for-work-life-productivity-1521640800/

And what about you? Are you using some similar tools to gather all your notes? Let me know in the comments below 🙂

Reading Time: 2 minutesIzera is the long-awaited first Polish electric car. The name of the brand, logo as well as two concept models were unveiled during online presentation which was held in July 2020 by ElectroMobility Poland. 

The brand name Izera is inspired by the Izery Mountains on Poland’s border with the Czech Republic. According to information gathered by Dziennik.pl, the company’s slogan, “a million reasons to drive on”, refers to an earlier statement by Polish government expressing hopes to have a million electric cars on Poland’s roads by 2025.

“The name is friendly and easy to pronounce and remember for people outside of Poland. Izera also has European ambitions and will be available outside of Poland,” explained Paweł Tomaszek of ElectroMobility Poland. The manufacturer ensures that Izera cars will be affordable and available in favourable monthly instalment plans.

ElectroMobility Poland, founded in 2016, is owned by the state energy companies: Tauron, PGE, Enea and Energa. The main idea of the project was to develop an electric car that uses components from Polish suppliers wherever possible. Unfortunately, as the presentation showed, this was only partly achieved. The prototypes were designed by a team of Polish stylists working in collaboration with designers from Italian company Torino Design. As reported by Bartłomiej Derski from the Polish publication WysokieNapiecie, the vehicle developers will purchase an existing electric car platform on which the electric car is to be based. According to EMP representatives, this is the only way to meet the tight schedule. EMP President Piotr Zaremba said that the company is under negotiations with two potential partners, and although he does not share the details, it seems clear that it will not be a Polish company. Automotive journalist Marek Wieruszewski emphasised that Izera would be a Polish electric car brand rather than a Polish electric car as such. 

However, only very limited information is available regarding specification and technical details. ElectroMobility Poland announced that the Izera would come with two battery variants of 40 and 60 kWh. The cars should be able to charge to 80% at a fast-charging station in 30 minutes and should have a range of 400 kilometres. Izera should be also capable of accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h in approximately 8 seconds and reach the maximum speed of 160 km/h. There is no specific parameters of electric motor or platform yet.

ElectroMobility Poland plans to open a factory and production line in mid-2021 in Silesia in southern Poland, with the first cars hitting the roads two years later. It expects to create around 3,500 jobs and a further 3,000 at a later stage. 

As for now it’s definitely too early to make any predictions regarding the Izera future. However, the competition within electric car industry is strong and constantly growing. It will be really hard to enter this market successfully in three years time, unless prices are actually very competitive.  

https://izera.pl

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izera_(marka_samochodów)

https://www.motofakty.pl/artykul/polski-samochod-elektryczny-co-wiemy-o-marce-izera.html