AI On The Rise Weekly: Artificial Brain, Fraud Buster, Portable ER, and Twitter Police

We survived the Mayan Calendar’s prediction of the world’s end. But, are we going to make it through the robot invasion? That hanging question may be taken in a good or bad light. But since this is the start of a new year, let us focus on the positive ones.

The Artificial Brain

Complex is an understatement when speaking of human’s brain. This challenges a lot of scientists and the reason why artificial intelligence R&Ds are being aggressively and massively funded. The latest round of promising results belong to Chris Eliasmith of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Eliasmith has created a brain model with 2.5 million spiking neurons. A normal human brain consists of over 100 billion; it’s still a long way to go, but this is a good start. The brain model is named SPAUN or the Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network.

SPAUN is equipped with camera-like eye and can formulate viable answers to questions. The neurons inside this machine communicate with varying voltages. These voltage “spikes” are the carrier of information from one neuron to another. SPAUN was provided with 6 unique tasks to test its ability to recognize numerals, recall from memory, add numbers and complete patterns. Initial findings were promising as the machine got 94 percent correct responses in numeral recognition.

“It’s not as smart as monkeys when it comes to categorization, but it’s actually smarter than monkeys when it comes to recognizing syntactic patterns, structured patterns in the input, that monkeys won’t recognize,” Eliasmith said.

“That’s actually part of an intelligence test, realizing that everything is increasing by one,” Eliasmith said. “Monkeys actually won’t figure that out.”

The report published in CNN noted that all of SPAUN’s tasks include numbers: “For instance, give it the pattern: 1, 11, 111; 3, 33, 333; 4, 44, _____. SPAUN could fill in the blank as 444.”

The research is dedicated to understanding the damage that the human brain can sustain and what effects it might have.


Want to know when people are tweeting about you (or not)? Social media marketer Solarix can do this for you and your business. Its updated analytics product, Amplify is an AI-powered machine learning program that does not only search for people who are talking about you or your product, but it can also dive deep into relevant conversations and marketing opportunities.

“It allows brands to build preapproved messages and target people that would be interested in them,” Salorix CEO Santanu Bhattacharya told me. “It enables them to maintain control over messages and avoid ‘Twitter fires.’”

The model of Solarix also makes advertising less annoying, since it targets interests of people.

Combatting Credit Card Fraud

Fraudulent activities involving credit cards have become very rampant over the last 10 years. The online space has fueled stealing of information from rightful owners. Now, Kount Inc. is deploying an effective AI technology to combat real-time threats. The instantaneous assessments for card-not-present transactions are made possible with the combination of artificial intelligence and highly accurate predictive models.

Portable Emergency Room

Every second counts during emergencies. Getting to the hospital from the place of incident is crucial. But with LifeBot 5, a lightweight portable unit that connects ambulances to hospitals with patient’s data and video feeds, saving lives are made easier. The machine’s electronic module is designed to monitor full physiological system of the patient while being transported to the emergency room of a tertiary hospital. Each unit costs around $20,000.

The world we live is constantly undergoing changes along with the growing demands of the populace. AI is going to be of great help to humanity to carry out tasks that can improve quality of living. This year, experts are predicting that artificial intelligence technology will reach greater heights and milestones.