Welcome again, and so my name is Roy. So I'm the director for IBM's accessibility research team and such a great honor to be here with you and also with the distinguished panel here and so the panel this panel is about the impact of artificial intelligence on the sensibility and What I'll do is I will give a short introduction and then we'll let the panelists introduce themselves before we dive into the discussions And I hope to leave about five ten minutes at the end the four questions So Peter when how much time do we have one hour? Okay, we have one hour. It's 10 30 now So I like to begin with you know accessibility. What does accessibility mean in technology, right? This is about reinventing the relationship between humans and technology to ensure that people with all abilities Have equal sex access to to technology and to information So I would say we're in a time Where accessibility is more important and full of opportunities than ever largely driven by three Areas three drivers, right? I wouldn't is essentially the Emergence of technology new technologies at record pace and many of you work in the technology field I don't need to say too much the second is the demand for accessibility has been increasing and Today we're talking about a 1.2 billion people with disabilities in this world And as the Asian Democrats shift is happening quickly that number is going to increase much faster Many of you probably already realize and we're at the tipping point where people 65 and older is Exceeding the population of young children five and younger for the first time in human history and among the You know the aging population people 60 and older 40% of them have at least one disability and many of them acquire over time multiple disabilities in coupled with Chronic diseases, that's a second driving force the third one. I like to add it is because I mean I would say More than ever people actually have the empathy Passion into the asthma accessibility because I just came from Grace Harper conference I was so touched by these young students their commitment and also they are Awareness about accessibility. I ended up with a stack of resumes for people want to work in accessibility research area So extremely exciting. So these are the three, you know driving forces reshaping the landscape of accessibility So that's essentially a short introduction of the topic and so now I like to have our distinguished panel To introduce themselves. How about we start a start with you sassy My name is sassy outwater, right and I am the director of the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired and My background is in UX user experience and I specialize in intersectionality disability and society and Technology and how those three things enter play with one another The social ramifications of using AI within user experience and within assistive technology, especially in the areas of instruction The Massachusetts Association for the Blind and the Visually Impaired just recently launched the Vibrant program Which specifically teaches seniors and those who are aging with vision loss to use assistive technology and The UX implications of this are huge and we're just now diving into all of it But AI is becoming one of the most important tools that we have to work with seniors with Vision loss and other disabilities, especially when multiple disabilities intersect. I have a mic I'm sujeet sujeet Kanaganti I'm the CTO at Ira. I have various Technological background right from robotics industrial automation networking cloud. I've been in the Hardware and software space for a while And now I'm with the Ira building Ira product I've been leading Ira for the past two years building the product right from its scratch and now leading Implementing AI in the Ira product itself to bring Greater services to the visually impaired Tom Hi, I'm Tom Newman. I'm the chief technical officer at Reddendever We are providing a virtual reality solution to senior living communities in order to help improve quality of life My background is in software development and computer science Well, good morning. Yeah, still morning. I'm Will Walker. I'm vice president of product at a company called open access technologies We focus on accessible content My past has been around developing new technologies for screen reading and for accessibility I was involved in the Early access of the API based approach to screen reading that got rid of virtual buffers that led to Various things such as the Linux accessibility product where we led the Orca screen reader, which is one of the best screen readers for Linux available today And so I come to this space with that kind of background and perspective Good morning. My name is Michael Altman. I'm director of research at the MIT libraries I'm a reformed computer scientist and then a reformed quantitative social scientist and now an information scientist My my research has focused on things like the role of information communication technology and politics and and the way that people participate in developing information and now focuses on Scully communication and how we managed and disseminate knowledge and in the university and through research I'm new to accessibility formally, although I've had an interest in accessibility technologies for for a couple decades for family reasons, but we last few years we've started to look at Learning and the the elements of learning and online systems and how that affects people with learning disabilities and We have a new very exploratory project on looking at library and information systems and what design principles make them more inclusive and accessible I Would have to say what an impressive panel you would all agree with me, right? And so yeah Let's waste no time to pick their brains. So I like to start with AI, right? Artificial intelligence, that's the main topic. It's it's a buzzword and exactly a month ago I BM announced two hundred forty million dollars of investment over the next ten years to have a joint AI lab with MIT and As you can imagine many tech companies are making huge investment in in AI So we're like to you know get your view because you've been accessibility for a long time and also AI is Is a new emerging thing. So what's your view in terms of AI and machine learning? How would they impact accessibility? Sure I'm gonna go back to some of the early work we did with which I call the API based approach to accessibility and What that enabled people to do and this was back in the early 90s and in mid 90s and so on It enabled screen readers to get inside the running application Okay, and it provided very compelling access to applications the screen reader no longer had to guess what was inside there It could clear the application directly I'm very proud of that work by the same time I think it's time to move on and it's potentially time to get rid of that and the problem that it led to Was that in order to get this API based approach Accessibility to work it required cooperation from the people writing the GUI toolkits and the people writing the applications And you'll see that with aria today. Okay, you'll see the Accessibility guidelines people have to implement the toolkit. They have to implement the API And what that causes is a big lag So new technology comes out and there's an accessibility lag between the time that technology comes out and it's made accessible Okay, so what I see is a potential here, and I'm not saying it's it's gonna come true But what I see as a potential is that artificial intelligence can now start getting rid of the need for an API to dig inside the application it can actually infer and and Determine what's being presented on the screen by artificial intelligence And do you have some examples of you know product and services already taken advantage of AI and also from your Development experience years of development experience how AI can be woven into The technology development process Well, let me let me say how I can imagine it would be okay So I think Kiyoko's talk was very very wonderful about real-world accessibility, and I think that's beautiful and wonderful and valid We're still gonna be sitting behind screens of glass that are presenting Information to us. Okay, so I can imagine now When the new cool kid comes along five years from now that says he's got a brand new technology And all that brand new technology is is another way to draw a push button on the screen Okay I think what we can do is have artificial intelligence be the thing to recognize This is a push button and they can help guide the user through the interface and not only be able to guide the user through Small pieces of the interface like individual components as a push button This is a checkbox but also be able to provide summarization of what's being presented to them on the screen Yeah, thank you very insightful very insightful now Let's also take a look at the reason we actually develop these new technology in AI is really to improve people's life Right, and we have some of the panelists like entrepreneur and working in on gadgets working on platforms Right to inform people's life And so I like to pose a question to you a suggest Tom and also sassy and how can digital and AI? Innovation enhance independence and improve quality of life And especially we're talking about the aging population 90% of those people say they want to age in place They want to age in their own home and they want to live independently So like to get your view about AI and digital Technology can enhance and improve people's quality of life who'd like to go first. Okay. Sure. I could go first So we use virtual reality with the aging population to do exactly that to try and improve their quality of life and the reality is that for a lot of people physical travel is difficult and rare and we can use VR to Open up the world for them again We can take people to places They may have always wanted to go but didn't have a chance to visit For example, we can take them on a tour of Paris or to the top of Mount Everest We can bring them back to places that are important to them like their child at home they can walk the streets of the neighborhood they grew up in and we can also let them be there for important moments in the lives of family members so they can attend say the granddaughter's wedding taking place on another continent and a lot of people think of VR as sort of inherently isolating but we've made it a Social experience you can do all of these things together and I actually think VR has a lot of potential to Bring people together. It allows you to have a sense of presence with someone You can sort of feel as if you are actually in the same space as another person who might be on the other side of the world Which I think can can make a huge difference for people Actually, I was sharing with him that thing I eat my father's in his 80s and now in his bed He know can no longer move and he actually always want to go Disney when Disney first opened in share I was asking Tom. Can you you know? Can you give me that kind of give my father that kind of experience, right? He's he's dreaming about it. Thank you Tom and And in sassy and suggest would you like to add? Yeah, sure. We at Ira. We provide We develop services for the visually impaired So what we do is like connect the visually impaired with a human in the loop like a sighted person Who is sitting behind a computer at a remote location be it anywhere in the U.S. as of now What we do is we equip the Visually impaired with a pair of smart glasses and do a live video streaming from the user space to a agent or I'd agent what we call sitting behind the computer and having the first point of video from the first point of view and Will be Hey, John. Yeah Yeah, John as of now is wearing ira smart glasses and he's an ira explorer Probably John. I think will you able to do a demo? But yeah, that's a last call in the last minute call, but we'll see But okay. Yeah, so what we do is like we connect the users to remote agents and remote agents will be able to relay information through the video that's coming in from the smart glasses and it they're like ample scenarios where user needs information from a Set person and they can rely on our service Say take the case of going for a shopping user wants to do his own shopping independently Isn't he wants to go to a grocery store pick up the items like brownies, whatever he likes the specific ones I rise and will be able to help using the video feed that is coming in Say user is traveling is it an airport? He needs to clear the check-in go to the gate I rise and will be able to again help the person in real time and AI is also playing a role in making this more accessible Both on the agent side and also on the user side on the agent side. We do provide more Enriched information to the agent so that agent need not search For that information specifically based on the need but it pops up automatically So that it becomes faster for agent to provide other relay the information and from user point of view There are a lot of other capabilities being added Which is like identifying Persons in front of them detecting their emotions like we use a lot of available AI technologies to bring this accessibility to the users Be it IBM Watson. We are which we are trying and there are other providers In space of like facial recognition or image recognition or object recognition. We also enabling the system To have a voice-based interaction where user can interact with the system using speech and System will be able to provide the information and if in case it unable to Find that information it can automatically connect to an agent and agent can relay that information Thank you and sassy. Would you like to provide a your view? Yeah, so For the aging population you have physical disability and cognitive disability in the intersections in pretty unique places that don't Often happen in the rest of the population and you see AI stepping in whether it be from a neurological point of view Tom brought up a very valuable tool that helps recover from dementia and stroke memory loss triggering Memory and cognition skills through the use of sensory input is a valuable use of AI And when combined with EEG monitoring and functional magnetic resonance imaging you can be looking at what the brain if the person say with dementia is is going through and the virtual reality can respond to that using AI algorithms and can Continue to feed a person a certain experience or memory or something that is triggering a sensory response Turning into a memory response or an envisioned response of a future event and it gives neurologists a whole new viewpoint of dementia and Brain recovery and traumatic brain injury. This is used a lot with At least from the research standard right now with veterans That have TBI traumatic brain injury and is a valuable tool for Neurological recovery for Patients who have lost the ability to speak or the lost the ability to move certain parts of their body memory experiences can trigger You know the beginnings of nerve Responses in limbs things like that So there's a whole bunch of research in the medical side of disability that especially intersects with seniors and the other piece of AI that intersects here is what will touched on with screen readers for the blind and low vision population we see a lot of Screen reader lag from accessibility and a senior comes in and they want the same experience that they had a year ago as a Fully-sighted individual now they've lost a significant amount of vision and can't have that experience or they haven't used technology and they're entering into that Space now that they need to rely on technology to Do things that their vision used to accomplish for them And there's a lot of emotions that get brought up with that experience anger frustration fear sorrow and and AI I Call it the smart screen reader theory. It's not Completely in practice yet, but certain certain spaces. You're starting to see screen readers Do that inference process that will was talking about where they can look at a web page or an app And infer things that the coder maybe didn't get in there correctly from accessibility guideline perspective so the screen reader is now Evolving away from the traditional screen reader model and turning into something that can infer context and infer action based on what it's seeing and I think this is brilliant because it's starting to eliminate that accessibility lag that we've Traditionally dealt with and that need for somebody to remember to include me in the process of creating an app or a website and That is a huge Benefit for seniors because they're going to be included in more and more and feel less and less isolated And can continue to feel like they can still thrive without having to go into skilled nursing thus reducing you know Medicare costs and AI can be used to monitor homes to Interface with caregiving professionals so that seniors can stay in their homes longer and thrive and use autonomy and choice to continue to Self-direct your care later and later in life Well, thank you. And so we touched how new technology special AI can impact people's lives What about culture because I mean this group of people here We are all here to cultivate an inclusive and diversity culture, which is extremely important so like to also hear your view in terms of The panelists in terms of how AI and also need these new technology can really cultivate The inclusive and also the diversity culture So I have one I think really good example of how this can be possible. So Google has very recently released headphones that can Translate in real time to 40 different languages Which makes it easier to travel to communicate and to understand one another and I really think that's incredible progress One other example is that virtual reality is being used in empathy training So the basic idea being that you can see what it's like to be in another person's shoes You can experience a scenario from their perspective or even the ability to virtually see where they're actually from is powerful I think yeah So he says he that's a great example to him like even for the hearing impaired the speech to Text translation the AI system that's involved behind the technology. It will help them Go to any person and even talk to a person who is not Conversant with the sign language that way he can interact with more people and It I rather we do Have agents which are like diversified spread across and we bring in like multiple kinds of people with connect to the agents That also kind of makes them include inclusive using their technology Facial recognition is a huge part of this conversation, especially for the deaf blind community because the blind population can rely on hearing somebody's voice For most of our social interactions and the deaf community can use Just looking across the room But if you are deaf-blind and you walk into a conference space like this and you're trying to identify somebody you are pretty much reliant on them identifying themselves to you So facial recognition is a huge as that begins to improve and evolve will will continue to become a huge defining moment for deaf-blind, especially in employment situations The other thing that I see and I'm doing kind of my panel on this later this afternoon or my workshop on Assistive technology and AI where they intersect as far as social and diversity needs with regards to ethics and with regards to inclusivity in best accessibility practices, so where do we say That web developers are responsible for continuing to code using WCAG to standards and You know making things accessible and where do we say oh the AI can pick up? Facebook is a classic example of this where Facebook is launching this AI tool to describe photos But it can't capture everything and it's taught to filter and identify certain parts of a picture I always call it the Facebook beard quandary Facebook likes to identify people with beards, so you'll hear picture Two people standing beard feet outdoor water Just these list of random Adjectives and and nouns and you're going okay, so there's a beard and some feet in this picture and some what I don't what It's helpful to an extent, but we're not there yet And we're reliant on the filters that are built into that AI so we're going to later this afternoon I'll get really in depth as to how that can affect real life situations for a disabled person Yeah, thank you says he I think you also heard I mean from Chiakos talk this morning and some of the facial Recognitions already there. She demoed right? It's awesome So now let's take into of some specific technology area Werewolves and robots and where do you see the kind of role they will play in accessibility and some can be controversial like a robot Right, it's it's new, but wearables already here So like to hear hear the panelists view about you know specifically on wearables and robots Sure, so I think there are already a few things on the market in terms of robotics that can help make life a little bit Easier you can have a robot to clean your floors mow your lawn. There are some things coming out that can cook for you Which is is interesting. It's great, and I think we're seeing Robots that can do more and more of what a human caregiver would do and I think for the most part This is is great robots are infinitely patient. There's no feeling of burden. They're available 24 7 365 I do have one actual concern in this space, which is that the truth is for a lot of people a Good portion of their human interaction is with their caregiver and as Robots do more and more we may see the sum total of human interaction for some of these people decline Yeah, we still have to charge them I Get the the savior complex I call it I get approached Monthly or more by people who have designed the latest wearable that will help blind people see Which I think is a valuable contribution in and of itself to research and understanding But devalues a the travel skills that are innate in a blind or low vision person be the power of a mobility tool So there are wearables from t-shirts to helmets with lasers to Different belts with different haptic feedback There's all these different pieces of technology, and I think collectively they do represent Advance means in what we can learn from our environment, but they are not going to cure my blindness as of yet They would have to do eyeball transplants to do that and they're not going to Replace a mobility tool in any healthy context yet Maybe we'll get there in five or ten years But it's not like we need a cure saving we need enhancements So I think as we move forward in designing AI, how can we enhance until we get to the point where we can be talking about a cure or a Device that can replace the robo guide dog or the robo cane or something We're not there yet, and I think we need to be cognizant of that, which is why I love era. I rescue me because It combines human centered assistance and autonomy with enhanced mobility function and doesn't replace a cane Or a guide dog or any other travel skills and tools it enhances, and that's where we need to be focused I also want to jump in a little bit in that I think AI offers us the opportunity to start addressing new disability populations Okay, so we had a lot of focus on blindness here But I think there's also people with pervasive development of disabilities people with autism people of Aspergers That can benefit from this technology Not only because it's because it's getting smarter because it's getting smaller and more portable and easier to manage Okay, so for example people with autism may have trouble Understanding normal visual cues okay normal social cues from people And I've seen research of this was like maybe 20 years ago or 15 years ago Where somebody came up with a big headset for a person with autism to wear that went over their head and it was on their chest And it gave them the Some some feedback about what somebody was thinking are they happy are they sad are they angry are they bored now? Anybody that knows somebody with autism would say this is absolutely nonsense because they have such sensory Disabilities that come along with that are sensory issues. I'm not gonna wear a helmet But we're now 15 years beyond that and things are smaller faster and smarter And I think it may be time to start looking at how to address new disability segments Yeah, as we'll say it in the space of like autism robots can definitely help interact with children Like and enhance their communication skills and make them understand better Robots can also help elderly As Tom said they can be a good companion, but it's still not there. So they need to be more reliable And in terms of wearable, I would say yeah, there is some momentum like a lot of wearable devices now Monitor elderly people and can provide alerts and feedback and even in the space of like hearing impaired Yeah, we can do and I would be integration into the various devices and provide a haptic feedback to the hearing impaired So that way a lot of information will be accessible Anybody else like to add All right, if not actually, I mean, let's take a look at we already looked at how new technology will benefit people and Cultivate help us cultivate a new culture, right? But on the other hand as anything new technology always face the adoption and so now also let's take a look at it Micah maybe pick your brain now because you haven't talked too much yet And so, you know what factors and both technological and and societal do you see it's going to either accelerate or hinder Adoption of new AI because I mean when talk about, you know, if you look at our population the millennials the young kids sitting here No problem with digital but your grandparents probably are not a comfortable with the smartphone even right let alone robots and AI and And actually quite interesting when I was at the the mobile water Congress and some people even talk about they fear about AI Are we going to controlled by aliens and so so like to hear you about your view in terms of adoption and you know What can accelerate such a new technology and what could it be barriers? I'll step back from AI particularly and just look at at technologies in general and look globally if you look at the The possible beneficiaries of of this technology and others they're all over the world and Most of them have cell phones and most of them don't have Computers they're far more. They're more have cell phones than have toilets And far more by orders of magnitude than there are our libraries though We like to help so thinking about Thing you know in a technical sense thinking that things that are accessible to people Well over the world where connectivity may be intermittent where they may be running on Previous generations of devices that will certainly increase diffusion institutional factors like Government support for that sort of dissemination to people who who who need the technologies but are not Not in the wealthy industrial countries, but even within countries things like Intellectual property so are these are these technologies open our can we Can we build on them? Are they standardized and we heard about AI as a sort of a way to eliminate standards and that's great at bridges where we're no standards are available But it also builds on so many standards for for information communication for even even for the electricity to plug in your system so you need a whole set and to be able to build on and Finally, I think empowerment is a key in in diffusing technologies Supporting people's ability not just to you know ingest information but to communicate to communicate with each other to then To collaborate to produce things together to advocate and to collect information on their life experience and their needs And and I guess I'd end with one is that the more valuable we can make these technologies to everyone the faster this is going to be Diffused and when we we're increasingly looking at things like autism or HDA ADHD not as binary disabilities, but as characteristics on a spectrum of In which we we all have Different characteristics to these degrees and the extent to which we can have our Systems adapt to us We in my research we look at the building blocks of root learning You know everybody when they learn they have to get things into memory long-term memory into short-term memory And have the right level arousal have the the right cognitive load pay attention These are all building blocks that we can start to detect and adapt to they may differ in different populations I'm paying attention with my eyes other people may pay attention in different ways But they they are all things that if our systems adapt to them, we will learn better. We will communicate better Anybody like to add go ahead. Yeah, I would like to echo the the reliability part like yeah The systems needs to be more reliable. We cannot have an AI wheelchair climbing a stair Steer stair stair stairways and then tripping off and there needs to be more standards and interoperability So that AI as in standalone doesn't kind of work It needs to be integrated to a lot of their systems So these needs to be proper standardization and interoperability within these systems and number three definitely the government regulations Like if you have to have support for autonomous cars that are going on roads Then we need to have proper regulations and it might take a while for it to come out And I think IBM is already working towards that Yeah, that's one of the key factor I would just like to add one thing So there's a bit of a virtuous circle in AI development and AI needs a lot of data to do a good job and In order for AI to be adopted rapidly it needs to do its job very well And I think it would be very helpful if a lot of the larger organizations that are accumulating huge amounts of data Would be willing to share it because that helps people Innovate it helps them compete and we end up with more and better systems faster Yeah, totally agree I think and people sharing data is a very important aspect because now they were saying the data is a new natural resources Everybody want to hold on to that resources, right? I think Tom touched such a good point How can we essentially make people more open-minded? share the data and I think where you also like to add something I do have one and it's Related to it. What's the risk of AI is it's the risk of what if it doesn't work, okay? And I think anybody in here doing work right now on accessibility And you're doing mainstream product. Don't stop right? Don't say I'm just gonna wait for the AI guys to solve the problem That's a huge risk. It's a huge danger. Okay, so anybody coming into the space and doing AI research keep going All right, we want it. We want it really bad, but don't depend upon it being The magic the silver bullet. Yeah, I would say good point as it comes to the innovators dilemma You have new things coming out Do I stop working on the current stuff continue work on it because it's gonna take a while for AI to be mature And so this essentially also touched another point in terms of you know AI Do you see any of the downside when it comes to AI and robotics and for accessibility? Because I think we need to be aware of that as there are a lot of benefits But like everything else right you always have the you know flip side and What are the flip potential flip sides and how do we prepare for that? building on what will said I Call it bring your own ramp So if a wheelchair user went to a restaurant and there was no ramp to get into the restaurant You can't look at them and say oh you're supposed to bring your own You can't carry equipment Constantly with you that would bridge accessibility gaps in every situation So it goes directly back to what will is saying we look at the digital and the technological space and we're as AI advances more and more and this touches back to what I made in my last point You know we can't substitute good accessibility guideline best practices With AI at this point we have to keep doing both So I see the pitfall being that companies are releasing AI and they're saying okay So now that this thing is out in the world functioning. We don't have to continue to Uphold accessibility standards. We can just let the AI do it and we can take the people who were on our team doing Accessibility and put them towards something else now. So you see accessibility fall off in some pretty significant ways When AI steps in in some companies and in some situations and we need to be hyper vigilant on that because people lose out In some pretty significant ways. I've seen this in the financial sector. I've seen this in Social media certainly I've seen it in educational environments And it's really detrimental because you start making these huge advances in accessibility best practices and Implementation of them and then you release a tool that's supposed to automate it and do it for you and people turn their attention away and Across the disabled disability population. It doesn't matter what disability it is Someone's gonna get it someone's gonna suffer for it. So we cannot do that yet. We're not at that point yet. I See several of them just tried in the jump in I was only going to say really that I think there is a risk in Being too dependent too quickly as you say I think you know We're making incredible progress and in computer vision, especially and some tools can actually If they make mistakes be dangerous. So if an object is misidentified, you could hurt yourself if Street isn't a street. It's a hole. That's the problem. So I Think we will get there, but we need to be careful about timelines Just like Pepsi for beer, right exactly Yeah, Pepsi for beer is good But if it is something else if it is a one person to another person, it will be a tricky situation Yeah, definitely that way we are thinking towards having human in the loop Till the technology is like kind of mature enough and say it's like 100% foolproof Which might take years and a lot of innovation Goes into that and definitely I would request the youngsters who are working on the technology to be at par on that and Make it more mature So I'll quote Melvin the historian Melvin Cranburg whose first law of technology was that Technology is neither good nor evil neither is it neutral and and what it means is that Technology is disruptive and the more powerful the technology the more potentially disruptive. This is AI is really powerful and if we Look at the the potential Although, you know, we're not techno utopians. We know that The telegraph didn't usher in world peace neither did the radio to telegraph. I mean telephone Etc. Etc. The last 200 years of technology have been Incredibly impactful in terms of our our well-being range of choices information. We have in health, but There are all sorts of systemic effects if we're relying on AI We're relying on AI to make decisions for us not right now. They're simple decisions They're going to be increasingly complex. Who governs that? How do we how do we understand what those are? Who's accountable for it? What happens if it we it makes a decision that? In retrospect causes you to do something that hurts someone We we have we need to make AI governable We also need to make sure that the impacts are equitable Of course the results are going to go first to to to people who have money and resources to use this technology But we need to make sure that we continue to think of the impact on the rest of the world And all of this information this data that we put into it. We need to manage that. This is I study information privacy and Even with a little bit of information you can learn a lot and with the AI translator translating everything You can you can learn everything about someone and so could your neighbors and the government So how do we make sure that people have autonomy over their their information that's collected and that it's it's secure So that that embedded device doesn't leak your All your conversations that you've ever had I think you bring up a really valuable point about autonomy Seeing AI was launched recently by Microsoft and I decided to take it for a test drive Literally, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car sticking my phone to the window Taking pictures when we pulled up at stop lights going I never knew what was on that corner I just drove by it And I never stopped to think about it. I never You kind of Glance at it in your imagination, but it's never a real-world experience and suddenly what was going on in the streets around me outside of a car Went from something that I could only imagine to an actual experience that I could partake in and I had that autonomy to choose that But you run into situations, especially in my work with seniors where you see people being Made to feel like they have to use technology when they would rather use person-centered care They would rather have a volunteer or care personal care attendant or an Ira agent or something person with a human touch Now I'm never going to have the experience of getting into a car getting cut off by a truck in front of me and flipping the driver off If AI comes to fruition to the point where I can drive which it will because that's just my life goal um then I Will be able to get into a car, but it will be driving itself And probably at that point in society no cars will cut each other off because AI will be doing all of the Navigation driving and accidents will go down and people will be happy and there will be no such thing as road rage And that's history in progress Lives change people change things change Technology is leading that change and you're right. It's neither good nor evil, but it's definitely driven by Motive money gain knowledge greed Hope there's so many ways that you know technology can be applied in society that we have to keep the ethics front and center We have to keep the implications of technology at the forefront of our consciousness as we develop it because It's only as good as its creator and all of our biases and all of our filters are collected in this technology and used All right, thank you such a good discussion and I also Peter's reminding me We're running out of time and so before we wrap up and I think we would definitely want to hear from the panelists about their View of the future because I mean we not only want to know what's going on today But a very important how do we imagine tomorrow right the future? So I think I'd like to invite a panelist to share their view in terms of where do you see the greatest opportunities for AI? technology and accessibility Whoever want to volunteer to go for us is fine Yeah, from my point of view like if I were to put in my context of Ira, I Need AI to be in the edge devices like running a seeing AI in Smartphone because smartphones are powerful enough think back like around Six ten years back when the iPhone got released. It's not that powerful enough, but now we can run Seeing AI in your iPhones in your Samsung devices. They're like powerful, but all other Variable technologies also needs to be like more powerful for running AI at the edge That's one futuristic thing which I am expecting Thank you, Suji is and anybody I mean the rest of panelists also you have your tend to talk about your your view about a future I'll just say just a few words because I tend to be short. I think independence and equality Okay, are the most important things to strive for Tom sassy and Micah Yeah, sure I mean, I think there there are some great things on the horizon and I think self-driving cars are a perfect example I think you know, we're seeing incredible progress in some of the foundational technologies like computer vision And we're starting to see databases of data built up to the point where These algorithms can identify a huge number of objects in the world and can also understand Human language and help us communicate. So I think there's a bright future ahead of us Anybody who knows me knows Kind of one of the stories that led me into working in user experience and accessibility and it was tampons I Needed to go to the store and get tampons and when you go in and you say may I have a female assistant Help me and the female assistant tells you I'm busy. There's a guy over there. He'll help you And you're like, no, I need a female and they're like, no I'm busy and the guy turns out to be a teenage kid who's working a summer job and really bored And suddenly he has to help this blind lady go get tampons and I didn't know blind ladies You know needed stuff like that So he yells out to the entire store the brand of tampon that I want to type and where are they and he's yelling at His boss and his boss is yelling back and I'm like, okay Mordification now I can pull out One of four or five apps or devices walk into the store Quietly say to the device what I need hold it up to the store shelf pick up what I need and leave with no human Help so when you ask me what the future is you come already there Assistive technology and AI are already a daily part of my life and it's only going to increase I'm always going to be a disabled person comfortable in my own skin Because I have a piece of assistive technology in my hand helping me where my body cannot and that's just going to increase as AI evolves Go ahead And by saying it's it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future but there are again positive and negative forces I think on the The positive side there are so many ways that it can can help people now and the potential for Introducing this earlier and earlier in people's lives one of the the things that we've come to understand is how much Learning at early stages affects people's entire life course and how much that can be affected by by what we call disability and so where we have technologies that can affect Adapt to learning It will benefit everyone, but will particularly benefit people more equitably and on the on the Not so positive side. We need to manage the governance ethics security and privacy to to prevent others from Using this for their own purposes Thank you Mike any other comments All right, let's give our panelists a round of applause What I believe we have five minutes for questions, right? Do we have and if you have additional questions we can always you know ask the panelists or myself during the lunch break? And so I see Raise hand over there. I mean do we have Mike hand over? Yeah, there was one question over there This is Brian Charleston and I am the head of technology at the Carroll Center for the blind I've been teaching blind and visually impaired people to use technology for the past God help me 33 years so My question is and it's something that keeps literally keeps me up at night and that is the digital divide has not gone away My life is filled with technology, but it does not describe the lives of The 70% of people with disabilities who are unemployed and can't afford any of it and the programs That continue to fund virtually everything except services for older people So the question is Do you think AI is going to drive down the cost of accessibility? Do you think the system is ready to accept that? AI and things associated with access technology are just as important as The pharmacopia that we're fed on a daily basis Yes, I think that AI is stepping in for instruction Acquisition I think eventually we need to be looking at technology as medical I think how we do that falls under the governance of AI and technology as a whole and so it's a conversation and a policy change Will it happen immediately? No, but it's definitely a conversation It needs to be forefront in all of our minds and we need to be pushing for it as Brian said This is a huge gap in service We are the ones who have to step up and deal with it And I hate to put that burden on us But we've looked at the government for 70 plus years asking them to do it hasn't happened. We've got to do it Yeah, definitely AI is going to bring down a lot of these costs Even at AIRA we always encounter this question of like why the service is costly and We are working with government agencies on bringing on this cost But the same time there is a person sitting behind a computer and who is working Who is always people are costly So we are relying on AI technologies to bring down that cost by offloading some of the agent tasks so that it becomes more affordable and From business perspective also there are some initiatives that are happening to get this funded by organizations or By the government itself via insurance so that it becomes more affordable and Adding AI technology is also going to bring down the cost but I this is my card also add that as We Use AI to develop things that adapt to everyone and they become integrated into consumer technology You have less of the pathology of medicalized technology that is Orders of magnitude more expensive than perhaps it should be so having had experience with voice transcription systems and trying to obtain devices That were labeled as medical devices versus now they're built into the smartphones and the Marginal costs have dropped not just because the technology change but because it's been integrated and and labeled into something everybody has My name is Narayan Bhatia and I'm echoing further on this Seen cost to the seniors. So I will leave that person item there, but I'll pursue something else I live in a retirement community Where the average age is 86 and the median age is 89 at that age group people have multiple Disabilities they cannot see well. They cannot hear well. They cannot walk well Will the AI at least put a filter ahead of it saying can you hear well before they start using the screen reader? because the person cannot read well and So the disabled multiple disabilities in the senior set is an important issue along with the cost of how do you introduce any of the AI related Solutions to them. That's just my comment. Yeah More and more sensory input. That's the population that I specialize in training and working with and the answer is The more types of sensory feedback that we can give for output and input of information and the more that AI can customize and Use that information and get to know the person that it's working with The thing that we're seeing right now is You know iPhone technology is the thing that everybody wants to learn But it's becoming so complicated because they keep cramming features in and cramming features in So we keep coming back to them and saying give us the ability to filter features out Give us the ability to customize accessibility even more More more more customization is what's needed to make I AI be able to function with this population to a degree where it can help to bring down costs keep people at home and comfortable and autonomous and shift the care from a medicalized model to a social rehabilitation model where possible Yes, and I think I agree with you says the personalization is really the next frontier when it comes to accessibility It is not really one category is how can you personalize for individuals need? Any other comment? I just had one thing to add with respect to cost AI is software It isn't a physical product with the same level of intrinsic cost so Smartphones are becoming ubiquitous as was mentioned earlier. There are more people who have smartphones today than have a toilet and It'll be in large part up to the people who create these Intelligent systems to figure out what kind of pricing model works But the truth is a lot of access to Intelligent systems today is is free and I hope it continues to be for example Siri is free Google Assistant is free and I hope that many new technologies will be as well Yeah, I know there are more questions among audience So we do have to break for lunch and so I mean if you have questions as I said It will be there on the fifth floor and we'll continue to answer questions there So now let's give them another round of applause and we wrap up here


This is JSA TV the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals. I'm Dean Perine and welcome to JSA TV We are coming at you on location from ITW 2018 in the windy city of Chicago, Illinois And I have got quite a group with me at this at this time for this interview this JSA TV interview And so let's get to some introductions. First of all, I've got mr. Victor Tria and Victor is the At PLDT alpha he is the Excuse me, but easy for me to say he is the first vice president and head of corporate business solutions I have mr. Richard Ortega for PLDT US He is the managing director and senior advisor and then last but certainly not least my new friend mr. Wade Chen Wade is with Zen layer and he is the director of Global Alliance so just so that we kind of set the stage gentlemen Why don't Victor? We'll start with you. Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about PLDT enterprise? Well, thank you the PLDT enterprise is the B2B arm of PLDT Which is the leading ICT and digital service provider in the Philippines our mission is to empower and And enable businesses of all sizes With the latest technologies to keep them competitive in this in this very competitive Technology environment. Thank you very much Victor and Richard anything to add there. We represent also the global enterprise client base those that are currently doing business in the Philippines and New enterprise clients that could be new to the Philippines new to Southeast Asia in general We service those clients out of the US basically North America the UK Amia and other parts of Asia So I represent the global arm of the enterprise business And we have somebody that also manages that group out of Asia. So we are a global company Very good. Thank you Richard and Wade. It's your turn Wade with Zen layer. Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about Zen layer? So Zen layer We have a software-defined platform that we allow for a bare metal to go on demand layer 2 connectivity on demand Dynamic acceleration and then that's kind of why we're working with some of the cares to provide this platform to them and enable them to get to market quicker and Basically, you know catch up with everything that you know the cloud is doing and things that are on demand very good Thank you Wade. So the reason why we're all here together is because their companies have just made Some just dropped some very exciting news. So who would like to talk about that? I could tell them all I want, but I prefer that you guys talk about it Who wants to talk about that first? Yeah, how about you Victor? Go ahead. Go ahead. We are actually partnering with with Zen layer To roll out the software-defined wide-area networking solution. This is for the growing base of PLD these Global enterprise customers. The intent is to to give options to Customers who would like to wanting to have connections between US and the Philippines and China and the Philippines and vice versa and and we hope to launch this By the end of this quarter or by the start of third quarter. Awesome. Thank you Victor Wade, why don't you tell us a little bit about your involvement? So as the director of alliances, you know I work with PLDT to let them know what our software-defined networking does working with their entire team to put the POC together So they can test this and then also getting it ready for the production environment So that their customers can start leveraging this and then also helping You know educate their team on what exactly our software-defined platform can do to help them achieve the goals that they're trying to reach Very cool. Very cool. But you mentioned customers So let's stay on that theme and I'm gonna direct this to you Richard, why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about what this what this partnership actually means to your customers? Well a lot in PLDT on the global front and domestic front are looking for services that are relevant to the client base We don't want to develop a technology. It's not useful. Obviously SD WAN is very relevant And we found Zenlayer in some of our discussions many many months ago maybe two years ago wait now Yeah, yeah, and so we thought it's perfect to look at you know future technologies that really augment what we do globally and We're attempting to do globally, but you know the customers benefit in many ways our customers Our customers are ones that work 24 by 7 Sometimes they need to have network spun up in a matter of minutes hours days So the agility and provisioning agility and managing application security concerns when you look at maybe interfacing in a global network In a global network when you think about internet connections So SD WAN solves so many of our issues as we look to the future and Zenlayer was the perfect partner as they're growing. We will grow globally with their technology Supporting us so outstanding Richard and that was the perfect segue for my next question because I know that that Wade The the partnership really kind of extends your capability and your reach Why don't you tell our viewers about that? So what's in there? We have about 80 plus pops and that's growing where we work in the data centers We have the local IP transit and also we procure a lot of the backbone network. So partnering with PTT is great because they have a very strong Philippine and Southeast Asia network and also going to the US London as well So they're also very global and that ties in perfectly with what we're doing So because we're able to have that network in place already Areas where we're weak or we're working with the carriers we can actually bolster their network So not just Philippine the LA they can reach anywhere in the US where we have a presence They can reach from into China where we have a presence they can reach into India and Indonesia Southeast Asia's there's a lot of people that are you know looking on their mobiles growing the internet landscape is You know just exploding there, right? So the ability to tap into like you know six more data centers in India another five in Indonesia Amsterdam London like with a touch of a button. So you're not kidding. That's that's real expansion there, right? That's awesome. So guys the the underlying technology that we're talking about here is SD WAN SD WAN is obviously very topical very buzzy, especially around the ITW show floor, but that's that's what's happening now and and we haven't really Discussed what's happening in the future. So here's for the last question what I'd like to do is just have each of you tell me Where you think SD WAN is going the future of SD WAN as it relates to your companies Victor will start with you Well, the good thing about SD WAN is that it gives you the flexibility, especially its bond on-demand capability so business can just a scale connectivity up and down For peak and value requirements. So that's the good especially now with explosion of data with most of our customers wanting or sending video data In their circuits or in their in their in their bond with our connectivity So this is an opportunity for for PLDT. We have a growing base of customers This is our this is our mission, which is to to give available technologies or Enable our customers with these new latest technologies to make them competitive in this in this in this environment Thank you very much Victor Richard It's something that exists today, but it's so critical when you look at the speed of provisioning global networks So where are we going in the future as an industry as? Businesses things are happening at light speed as we know so we need to make relevant services and products to make sure we assure The fastest provisioning possible SD WAN within layer allows us to do that Unlike we've seen in global networks So you can compare it to a lot of different technologies layer three layer two, but what it does it really helps us define Global networks faster better security actually improves in some way. We won't get this. He's the technical guy here, but it really does Fulfill so many things that are future issues. I mean we're talking now five ten years down the road That's what we have to do as technologists in our industry We have to look five years from now and say what is it going to be obviously? We want to be relevant, you know, right? We don't want to produce a product and and say oh gosh, you know, we hope you use it, right? Yeah, that happens or obviously, but you know, we want to support our global community of Customers and future customers and I know that speed provisioning assurance of application Applications plural is so critical so you can say whatever technology is going to be down the road But those things are so important to whatever we do and I think it allows us to have this capability As far as SD when it's something that is really relevant now and in the near-term and long-term future I'm standing. Thank you Richard and Wade. You have the final word. Let's say you buddy. So we're Really excited to work with them on this because obviously In that space that the SD wine is helping them provision stuff instantly and right now We're kind of catching up with everyone that's already using cloud and being able to turn stuff open up on demand And they're used to that right so by allowing them to do this And then doing this across the entire vertical from the bare metal that can be turned up on demand to the circus I can be turned up on demand to dynamic acceleration that they can turn up on demand and then allowing them to do this globally You know imagine being able to turn up a global network and like 80 some odd pops with all the backbones Local IP transit, you know with a touch of button, you know within a day They can provision that and it can scale, you know, it lets them scale up and down So that's like something that is very unique Outstanding gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us and for your time today Hopefully you were having a great show and you will enjoy the rest of the show. Thank you Thank you, but you bet and thank you viewers for watching JSA TV. We'll see you soon


Hi, I'm Ken Hellevang, extension engineer at North Dakota State University, and as we're building sandbag dykes, it's very important that we build them correctly, and so what we're going to be walking through today are some of the basic steps on how to construct a sandbag dyke. The first thing is to create a clean base. Snow and ice need to be removed because they will melt and cause leaks. Planning is a key step. In terminal high, the dyke will need to be based on the flood prediction and ground elevation. The next step is to make sure we have properly filled sandbags to build our dyke. Fill the bags about one half full and tie the bag near the top. This permits the sand to move easily in the bag to create a good dyke. Overfilled bags and bags tied too low cannot be properly formed into the dyke and will leave gaps, allowing water to seep through. Bags do not need to be tied unless they are transported. We're going to just lay out some bags so that you can see how that process is done. Let's just say that the river is running this direction, and so we'll lay the bags in side by side. What we do is that the bags should run in the direction of the flow, so the closed end is into the water that's coming. So we go the direction of the flow. And then when we come in with the next row, there's two different ways to do it. Some will alternate rows and some just go the same direction. We'll go ahead and alternate with today's, but it's important that they be lapped so that we're building like bricks. And it's important to keep tamping them into place so that we get that tight, tight seal. If we have frozen material in the bag, and this is likely a piece of sand that is frozen, that we can't pack into place. And so that bag needs to be discarded rather than going into the sandbag dyke. And as we're working with this, what we want to do is to make sure that the width is at least twice of whatever the height is. And so as we're putting these bags in here, what we'll typically look at is if we're going to go with a two-foot high, we need at least four feet of width. We want to go to a three-foot high, we'd have to go to a six-foot. We'll just go here, I think, about a two-foot high just to show the process. So now as we come in with the next layer, again, we're coming in at an offset so that we're keeping this slope in here. This bag is covering up in between those others. We're ending up with a dyke then that is approximately two feet tall. When we start out with a dyke, that was a little bit over four feet. And so that then gives us that triangular shape that we want. The triangular shape is important because not only does that give us a wide base at the bottom where we have friction that can keep those bags from sliding, but that triangular shape then allows the water pressure to actually push down on that dyke so that it helps hold that dyke into place. Once the dyke is all built, then what you will do is to come along with plastic over the top and you want to try to create as tight a seal as you can between the soil and the plastic. The goal would be to get the plastic down on the ground on as clean as surface. Ideally, you would put down a layer of sand or clay or something, put the plastic on it and then put a row of sandbags over the top of the plastic and that then will seal the bottom. We drape the plastic up over the bags and hold it in place at the top again with a row of sandbags along the top. We put the plastic on because that really presents the water from entering into the sand. Particularly in our area where we're going to have water on these sandbags for days to weeks, sealing that surface becomes very important to help keep the water from getting into the dyke so that the plastic is the first line of defense for keeping the water from getting in. The sandbags are providing the stability and the support to hold the water back.


Welcome traders for another intraday wave analysis session with me Patrick Mundley want to take a look here at the euro Young on the four-hour time frame we're tracking a third wave extension to complete Ideally in and around this one thirty three fifty area We've got some nice momentum divergence developing which should set up a move to ultimately take out the 132 78 on the downside To play Shortside looking for a three-way corrected move into projected ascending trend line support The weekly pivot weekly range and monthly projected range support will come in around this one thirty one forty We watch there for bullish reversal patterns to set long positions playing for that five equals one upside objective Which will have us up trading into the one thirty four handle before the next corrective phase develops Australia's plan to trade trade the plant manager risk


Glenn Clark with Stevenson coach Dominic Dawes after a 3-1 loss here tonight the Hobart coach You said last night you knew the big boys were coming in and they certainly were big boys The result aside, what did you think about your team's effort against a tough Hobart team? I mean, I think we proved we belong I think we proved we can play I think we proved that we're young and immature and that's that's what got us tonight is the mental part of it We need to be mentally tougher. We need to handle the highs and lows You know, that's a that's a good team over there They've been a good team for the last last few years and you know their maturity showed when they could handle tough situations handle a little bit of adversity because you know we had our chances. We just We're immature You know obviously more than anything the end of the game is where you saw some of that come out and the game That was still a one-goal game at that point How frustrating is that to know that you got all these looks and you just can't get one of them in and then It sort of just comes unglued It's frustrating But the part of the game is you know, you're not gonna score every time and you got to be able to stay with that and you know Stick it out to the end and I mean we were trying there. There was no lack of of trying It's just a matter of you need to be disciplined and you need to know what you can and can't do General how much have you learned about this team four games in all at home before you head on the road for the first time next week I would think largely you have to feel good about where these guys are for an almost entirely freshman team I think we're yeah, no, I think we feel very good about where we're at I mean, you know, this is all about establishing what our foundation is and However, though a big part of our foundation is gonna be the culture the maturity how guys are able to handle Situations so we prove we can keep up and we prove we can play We got to prove we're mentally tough on the positive side How about Colin Woods chasing down that puck at the end of the first period and knocking that one in he's deserved When he's worked hard for for four games, he's had his chances and I'm glad he got it coach Again three and one after four games a lot to like best of luck as you head out on the road next week Thank you coach Dominic Dawes. I'm Glenn Clark for SFM sports net


In the last session, we looked at the structure of TASMOD, how it was comprised of systems that themselves were comprised of policies, and that these policies were both definitional, which define the structure of the model, but also tax benefit policies, which were part of the model that does the simulations of taxes and benefits. So in this session, we are going to gain an understanding of how tax benefit policies are constructed, distinguishing between the building blocks of functions and parameters, and then we're going to conclude by looking at how to run the model and access the output. Now, before we start, it's worth taking stock and looking at how systems relate to policies and how policies relate to functions. So systems, such as the system for 2012 or the system for 2015, contain groups of policies. The policies themselves are constructed of functions, and it's these functions that perform the calculations to create the model output. If we look at this diagrammatically, we can see that with TASMOD 1.0, as I said, we have systems for 2012 and 2015, and these systems have the following policies, tax benefit policies, income tax of various kinds, the productive social safety net policies, the fixed basic cash transfer and the variable conditional cash transfer, and then indirect taxes, such as value added tax and indeed excise duties. If we just pick one of those, the fixed basic cash transfer, it's comprised of functions, policy functions, and these functions perform eligibility tests and the amount calculation. Now, we will go through that particular policy in some detail later in this session. But to continue, functions are the building blocks of all policies in TASMOD. Different combinations from the full set of functions allow the construction of almost any policy. Functions can be classified into three categories, policy functions, which is what the main focus of today will be, for the implementing of tax benefit policies, system functions, which we looked at last time, which are useful for the definitional policies and implement the framework of the model, and then special functions, which we don't use in TASMOD as such. There are, in fact, 12 functions only within TASMOD. There's four policy functions, the Elige, BenCalc, Arithot, ShedCalc, and we'll go through all of these in detail. System functions are things like up-rate, def var, def input, def income list, income list var op, def tax unit, def cons, def output, which we touched on in the last session. Each function consists of a header displaying the name of the function and a switch defining whether or not the function is activated, and a function is then divided into a series of parameters. Many parameters appear within multiple functions and some are specific to particular functions. Most of the policy functions and some of the system and special functions provide common parameters. There are compulsory and optional parameters. For example, the parameter tax unit must be included in all policy functions, otherwise TASMOD will issue an error message and simply abort. TASMOD is told how to calculate the policy by setting the parameters of the functions to appropriate values. Let's look first at a very straightforward function. It's called Elige and Elige determines eligibility. It sets an internal variable to 1 if an individual is eligible or 0 if they're not, based on one or more conditions. The Elige function must contain the parameters Elige, Cond and TAS unit. Of course, all policy functions have to contain TAS unit, but the function Elige has to contain Elige underscore Cond. Conditions may be quite straightforward. For example, age greater than equal to 60, or using built-in queries such as isDepT child or isHeadOfTaxUnit. Each condition you'll note from the bullet point above is enclosed by curly brackets, and conditions may be combined with and using the ampersand symbol and or using the vertical line symbol. Just like in Stata. The components of the conditions can be variables, income list, numeric amounts, functions, and things called footnotes, which we will talk about. Conditions can be assessed at different levels. Again, that's something which we'll talk about later. But let's look at a very straightforward case, which is the eligibility for public works. Here we have the function Elige, the Elige parameters, Elige, Cond, Output, VAR, TAS unit, the switches, so both the policy itself turned on and the Elige function turned on. Okay, I'll actually go to this on the model itself and talk you through it what it actually means. So let's see, we were looking at Bunn. This is the eligibility for public works, which is a kind of unemployment benefit, and hence the acronym that we use is B for benefit, U-N for unemployment. Though it is under the Productive Social Safety Net Scheme an eligibility that only goes to the head of household and allows the head of household to be eligible for employment under the Public Works Program. So this whole eligibility condition is taken at the household level because if a function, the eligibility function is at the household level, then it's the head of household who is awarded the output variable, which is BUN underscore S. So basically how it works is if the household is entitled to BSA, what's BSA? BSA is the Productive Social Safety Net Fixed Basic Cash Transfer. So if the household actually receives fixed basic cash transfer, then the head of household is entitled to undertake public works. So the first condition is BSA underscore S is greater than zero. In other words, there is some fixed basic cash transfer payment in payment and is head of TU. This is a built-in query, which is, is this particular person the head of the tax unit? If so, then the BUN underscore S is awarded. It's really quite straightforward. Let's go back to the presentation. So that's the eligibility function. The other simple function is Arithop. This is a simple calculator. It must contain the parameters formula and tax unit. The formula can include variables, income list, numeric amounts, queries and footnotes. And the main operators are, as with most formulae, brackets, the plus sign, minus, multiply and divide. Queries automatically calculate particular conditions, e.g. number of children in household, or carry out tests whether or not a person is married. So you can actually use queries in Arithop because they are, some of the queries are a calculation type query. And you can use footnotes, for example, applying upper and lower limits to a functional variable. And the footnotes are denoted by hash. Again, when I walk you through the model in the last of these videos, that will become clearer. Okay. A good example of an Arithop here is the calculation of the amount of VAT. It's a simple formula. It works on the VAT income list. And that formula that you see is simply a calculation of the amount of standard rate VAT, which is included in an expenditure amount, which includes VAT. I'm not going to go through the formula in detail, but it's just a standard formula for calculating the amount of that when the expenditure amount includes VAT. Okay. Now, let's talk about combining Elige and Arithop, can we? Because Elige and Arithop are often combined. Let's take this hypothetical case. Let's say we're constructing a new social benefit for all people over 60. Excuse me. All people 60 or over who are food poor. And let's say they're eligible to a pension benefit of 170,000 Tanzanian shillings per month. Such a benefit could be straightforwardly implemented using Elige and Arithop separately. Here's how it would look. So, here is the policy, BOA underscore TZ. Next function is BenCalc. And that's turned off. I'll tell you why in a minute, because BenCalc is the way that we would actually usually model such a policy. But in this particular case, we're turning it off just so that we can see how it would be implemented using Elige and Arithop first. So, let's just look at the function Elige. That's turned on. And it has an Elige ability condition as the first parameter. And that's DAG greater than 59, i.e. the person is 60 or over. DAG being the variable name for age. And in their second condition, DFP equals 1. Now, in the base dataset, there was a separate piece of research conducted which defined who was food poor. And there's a flag in the input dataset alongside all people who are food poor. So, because our benefit is going to simply those who are 60 or over who are food poor, there has to be two parts to the eligibility condition. In other words, older people in food poor households. This is a calculation done at the individual level. So, the parameter tax unit is tu underscore individual underscore tz. Now, that function, the eligibility function, creates a system variable which is set to 1. If the person is 60 or over and food poor. Now, the Arithop function, which succeeds it, has its first parameter who must be eligible. And one person must be eligible from that eligibility function above. And one person is, if the person who is being considered by the policy is both 60 and over or over and is food poor. And then the formula, it's a simple formula, it's not even a formula really. It's just the allocation of an amount, which is dollar, old, underscore age, underscore benefit, underscore amount. Now, you'll know that anything beginning with dollar is actually a constant. So, we've actually put the 170,000 shillings per month in a constant called old, underscore age, underscore ben, underscore amount. And so that allocates to the individual who is over 59 and food poor the monthly amount agreed upon. And that amount is then put into the output variable boa underscore s. So, that's the, if you like, the long-winded way of modelling an old age benefit of that type. Now, I want to talk about BenCalc because BenCalc provides a more straightforward way of undertaking the modelling of a social benefit such as that old age benefit. So, BenCalc combines the functionalities of Elig and Arithop, particularly useful for social benefits, often referred to as the benefit calculator, hence the name of it as BenCalc. There are eligibility conditions, comp underscore cond, which is equivalent to the Elig underscore cond of the eligibility function, and formulae to calculate the value of the benefit assigned to eligible individuals or tax units. That's the comp per Elig or comp per Tu, which are equivalent to the formula in the Arithop function. So, the same rules for syntax apply as for Elig cond in Elig function for comp underscore cond, and same rules as apply to formula in Arithop apply to comp per Elig or comp per Tu in the function BenCalc. And BenCalc can have multiple conditions with different amounts being assigned for different conditions, and I'll show you one of those in a minute that we've actually used within TASMOD. Eligibility conditions and corresponding formulae are specified in separate parameters. Okay, let's look at this old age benefit that we looked at before implemented using BenCalc. Remember before it used two functions, Elig and Arithop. Here with BenCalc, it's just got the one much more straightforward function, BenCalc. The comp cond, remember that's equivalent to the Elig cond, is exactly the same as the Elig cond in the Elig function. DAG greater than 59 and DFP equals 1. Okay, the comp per Tu is exactly the same as the formula in the Arithop function, and this time just simply puts that old age benefit monthly amount, which is contained in that constant dollar old underscore age underscore Ben underscore amount into comp per Tu, and the output variable at the individual level is BOA underscore S. And that should actually be on, because we want that to be on, and these two should be off on this occasion. So that's how that should work. Okay, I've talked about three of the four functions, policy functions that are used in TASMOD. This is the final policy function that is used, and this is ShedCalc. And ShedCalc is used to apply schedules of rates, for example, income tax bans. Now, many countries have their income tax graduated in bans, a base amount of taxable income is taken in this screenshot, it's TTP underscore S. And then the bans are specified, the band rate, there's a lower limit to a band, so from 0 to 2,040,000 is 0%, and then 2,040,001 to the next limit is 11%, etc. And these tax bans, as they're called, are specified within ShedCalc like this, makes it much more concise than a complicated BenCalc or a series of arithops that could be otherwise employed. Now I'm going to go back to the model now, having gone through all of the functions, and before we go on to running the model, to actually look at both BenCalc and ShedCalc in a bit more detail. Let's first look at BenCalc, I promised I'd show you the fixed basic cash transfer, which is BSA, because first of all there is a DEF file which is a system function to define an internally used variable I underscore BSA underscore individual, that's simply set to 0, that just defines the variable. Then the first BenCalc, now I said that BenCalcs might be quite complex in that they have more than one condition allocating more than one amount, this is a classic case here, because the fixed basic cash transfer allocates amounts to individuals within a household, but it's different amounts for children than adults. So the first comp-cond is for children. DFP equals 1, it's got to be food poor, and age has got to be greater than equal to 0 and less than equal to 17, i.e. the child's got to be between 0 and 17. The amount allocated is to that individual, because this is all done at an individual level, is going to be the child amount. Now if it happens not to be a child, but it's a food poor adult, the second condition kicks in, DFP equals 1, so food poor, but this time somebody greater than equal to 18, i.e. 18 or over, and this time they're allocated the adult amount. And whichever it is at the individual level, be it child amount or adult amount, it's put into this output variable I underscore BSA underscore individual. And then the next BenCalc effectively aggregates, at a household level, all the individual amounts allocated by the first BenCalc. So the condition is that anyone in the household, as it were, has I underscore BSA underscore individual greater than 0, and the amount allocated is I underscore BSA underscore individual, but at the household level. That has the effect of aggregating all the individual amounts within the household and allocating them to the output variable BSA underscore S. Okay, I hope that's clear. Again, I'll talk through the whole thing in the model again in a different video. And finally, I wanted to show a ShedCal connection. It's actually used in two policies. I'll show the turnover tax one, first of all. For turnover tax, which is called presumptive income tax in Tanzania, there's an eligibility condition that says that the turnover has to be greater than 0 and less than the presumptive tax upper limit. And you see, when I hover over it, it actually gives the presumptive upper limit value. And the person mustn't be earning. Yeah, must equal 0. And they mustn't be working in agriculture. Yeah, equal 0. That's the eligibility condition. And if that is the case, who must be eligible? One, that's person, so at the individual level, has to be eligible. And the tax base becomes YTN, which is the turnover tax amount. And then there's a schedule which is based on lower limits, depending on what the turnover actually is. And if the turnover is under, let's get the decimal points in the right place, under 4 million, then there won't be any turnover tax payable. But between 4 million and 1, and 7.5 million, it's 3%. And then between 7.5 million and 11.5 million, it's 3.75%, etc. And that's how it works. And then the schedule adds all of the liabilities under each of these bands up and puts them into the output variable TTN underscore S. Okay, now to conclude by talking about running the model. TASMOD outputs based on two inputs, as you know, the Household Microdata, the HBS, and the rules on how to calculate tax and benefits, which are what we've just been going through in terms of the tax benefit policies and the functions and parameters that comprise them. Using these two information sources, the model calculates all tax and benefits that have been implemented. The calculations are carried out for each individual and household in the data set, and the result is written to an output file. And that output is an individual level unless otherwise specified. So, if you click on Run on the Countries tab, it actually says Run Euromod in the top left-hand corner, and that activates the Run TASMOD dialog. It doesn't run it straight away. And here you get the Run TASMOD dialog. And then, first of all, there's a list of systems which are ready to run. So you have to select a system for running or a series of systems by checking the box to the right of the system. So you could run all three together or just a couple of systems or just one. Okay. The list under data set provides a drop-down box for each system which contains all available data sets. There's only one actually in TASMOD at the moment, so there's nothing to select there. The output path at the bottom defines the folder where the model stores its output, and then finally pressing Run here starts the actual simulation process. And that generates another dialog, but this time it's running. So that's the dialog it creates. The system data set combination selected for running listed in the configuration part of that dialog. The status of the Run is the next column in the dialog. The first dialog shows it running. The second one is it finished. There's another status, Aborted, which is if something goes wrong with the process. Looking at the finished one, the time taken is then completed in the finished dialog. At any point you can actually stop the Run by pressing the Stop button. You see that's not highlighted in the first dialog, and that would just abort the Run by the user. But a Run could actually be aborted if there was a fatal error in the coding, in which case you would actually get information in an error log, which is another text file. However, in this case there are no errors. But if it does run and finish, but still produces an error log, the error log will contain non-fatal errors, which are actually warnings and assumptions, which the model makes. But this runs through quite straightforwardly and clearly. Okay, when Tasman's finished its calculations, the output stored as one or more text files at the storage place defined in the field output path. The main text file is called, for example, TZ underscore 2015 underscore STD, and that's defined in the output policy. And the file contains the variables defined in the output policy. Let's just quickly go back to the model to look at that. Close, first of all, all policies or collapse them. And then look at the output. So the file, TZ underscore 2015 underscore STD, is specified by the first parameter of def output. There it is. And then the actual variables contained are specified below. You can actually use wild cards. So var group followed by id star outputs a group of variables individually, all with id as their first two letters. So id person, id hh, id partner, will all be output by var group id star. Similarly, all the demographic variables will be output with var group d star. And these include, and obviously are in these cases, the variables from the input file as well as simulated variables. So for example, if we look at var group b star, that will output not only the benefits that were simulated, but also the benefits, if there were any, that were reported in the original file. Similarly, you can output the total of income lists by an asterisk. All the income lists will come out with that using the wild card and indeed information on tax units, et cetera, and queries. So it's very good for diagnostic purposes to actually have quite a comprehensive series of variables in the output policy. Output files can be viewed in a text editor program or imported into any statistical analysis package, for example, Stata for more detailed analysis. And the model also produces a header text file relating to the output file as well as error logs, et cetera, as text files. I think at this point it's worth actually, again, going back to the model because I find very helpful the application open output file in Excel. You have to have Excel installed on your machine, but if I can just look through my various outputs and runs I've had, there you go, tz2015std.txt. If I open that, it will launch Excel and produce a very readable file with these variables in it specified as headers to these Excel columns. Very good for testing out and checking whether a policy does what you think it's going to do. Okay, let's go back to the presentation. And in fact, the activity is the final slide here and these are reflecting the activities that we're doing class together, which is exploring the benefit and tax policies and looking particularly at the functions earlier, Gerrithoff and Ben Kalk. And then the model will be run and the output is explained. And that's it, thank you very much.


Greetings Myself Dr. Srujan to play Consulant Pediatrician at Maniwal Hospital, Kharadi. So we will be talking about Allergic March also called as Atopic March. This is a group of Allergic Disorders which starts in childhood and progresses into adulthood. So basically it starts in newborn period. You have Atopic Dermatitis also called as eczema. So it progresses into food allergies during initial few months of period and then it progresses into respiratory allergic disorders such as allergic rhinitis and asthma. The question is do babies outgrow these allergies as their age increases? Yes. Atopic or Atopic Dermatitis or eczema usually goes away by the one year of age. Food allergies up to 70% of the food allergies like egg allergy, milk allergy they go away as the age increases. Allergic rhinitis it starts after 3 years of age and asthma also frequent visiting episodes. During childhood they also disappear by the age of 5-6 years in up to 90-95% of the cases. So how will you prevent these allergies from occurring? But it starts during your pregnancy, avoid smoking, your diet should be healthy diet. You try for vaginal both. It has a very good microbiota in your vagina which carries on to your baby. It helps in the establishment of gut microbiota which are good bacteria and it decreases the incidence of allergies in the newborn period. Try breastfeeding as early as possible and do breastfeeding as long as possible. Even in our anaesthetic use we do give them with breast milk, we try to give them through nasogastric tube whatever minimum is required first milk should be of mothers milk that is the best thing to avoid allergies. Then these food allergies start around 6 months of age with variety of foods you should start. Avoid smoking in the house, tobacco smoking, smokes this has to be avoided avoid respiratory infection as far as possible, house molds these are also a trigger for allergic disorder this has to be avoided. Avoid antibiotics as far as possible whether we really need those antibiotics that is the question if they are not needed we should avoid that. There is a role of prebiotics and probiotics, prebiotics are the good bacteria which help in your immunity and also decreases your allergic disorders. Prebiotics are the foods which help in the growth of these good bacteria which are those foods curd is a very good prebiotic, vegetables are very good probiotics these are and healthy diet this has to be given. It helps in building your immunity and decreases allergic disorders so the take home messages are try to breastfeed as early as possible and as long as possible offer variety of foods around 6 months of age offer them lot of allergens take them around and you should be good about it. Thank you so much.


Happy Friday, trade hackers! February 19th. Another positive green day, plus 925 on the day for the week, plus 2513. So 2005-13. Let's cover the trades for today, then I'll come back and recap the week. So three mighty 90 trades today, two of which were winners.  MU plus 80, Disney plus 161. Can't my position size really small today? For whatever reason, just wasn't feeling, just wasn't feeling the flow of getting big. So I kept my stuff small, but still booked 925. So that's always a good thing. On the runners, three winners, one loser.   So good stuff there. Let's go over these trades and then I'll come back and recap the week. Let's start with the mighty 90s and Disney. So Disney had this, initially started out strong and then had this little flush lower. Oops, let me expand this for you. Started off strong, had this little flush lower and nice volume spike here. So we got long right in this area here, took a little bit of heat and then boom, it popped up and closed that out for 161. I actually, I was paying attention to another trade. I was trying and I wanted to get out right at the close of this bar or shortly after and then this thing just fell apart. So I didn't, I didn't get out until about down here. So booked a, booked less profit, got a terrible fill, but still booked a green trade anyway. So plus 161. In MU, plus 80, this was a little bounced up, broke through the highs of the day, a little bit higher volume, not much. We got short right here. When it came down, I just closed it out. I didn't even wait till the end of the second bar. Reason being is MU was right under its all-time highs and I was a little bit skeptical that it wasn't just going to pull back and then rip higher on me then. So I didn't want to get caught in something like that. A lot of times when these stocks are kind of hovering under all-time highs, it's kind of like a magnet. They just want to bust through and take off and so ended up just closing that out for a small winner of 80. And then in Twitter, Twitter was a little bit interesting today. We were talking about this in the, in the live stream. You know, so what happened here is initially Twitter was pushing, pushing, pushing, got a nice volume spike here and started to take a short right in this area here. And then on the couple bars later, excuse me, I got short right here and then the next bar had another massive volume spike higher than the first. And so actually when this pulled back, I basically just got out of my mighty 90 Twitter for minus 40 bucks, basically a scratch with that massive volume spike. I was looking for a potential continuation to the upside. And, but then we got another massive volume bar on the way down. And so this is something that doesn't usually happen. Usually if something's pushing in one direction, you get that massive volume, you might get a little pullback and then it rips higher. But in this case, got big volume on the way up and then big volume on the way down. And so instead of adding, normally in this situation, it would have come down, I would have potentially added right here, but I didn't just held my original position. And so when it pushed up here and then started chopping around, I just got out, took a tiny loss in the mighty 90 and then a tiny loss on the upside runner. So minus 128 total on Twitter between the two. Next trade on to the runners AMD had a nice runner in AMD, where we, you know, just kind of chopping around kind of push lower, tried to go negative on the day a couple times and then bounced up near the highs of the day, consolidating over yesterday's high, we got long right here and then caught this up move there for plus 141 riot plus 290 hits a massive volume bars in the beginning. On this pullback here, we got long tasty works platform was acting up and so I was shutting my platform down trying to get in and it's a little hairy at the beginning, but still got filled and caught this move here. And when it price pulled back, I jumped back in and caught another move higher. So ended up closing out right, I think right here is where I shed my last contract. So booked 290 in riot. And then lastly, when when was actually my biggest winner for 381. And when we had this big volume spike higher than the first bar here, waiting for this pullback back to yesterday's high and then shot right up closed out. I just closed all my positions out right here at this pivot. And it ended up being a pretty good close had had a little more meat on the bone, but ended up kind of falling off after that. So nice winner for win for 381. So those are all the trades for the day plus 925 on the day. Let's take a look at the week. So on the mighty 90 side plus 1664 green every day this week. Remember Monday was closed for president's day. Red Tuesday, red Wednesday, red Thursday and red Friday on the mighty 90s. And then on the didn't take any pairs trades this week. On the runners total PNL plus 849 had a red day on Tuesday on the runners. Nice bounce back with just one trade in Zoom green day on Wednesday and then Thursday slightly red and then today. Nice, nice day. So it's interesting in here is so these two positions here zoom and Roku, these are positions that I went a little bit bigger in and they just happen to be the losers. So that's part of trading. You know, sometimes you think you have confidence in a trade and it works against you.  So that's the way it works sometimes. But if we look at the summary for the week, so 1664 on the mighty 90s nice winning percentage plus 81.8% only had two losing mighty 90s this week out of 11. And then on the runners plus 849 with a nice winning percentage over 60% there. Total profit for the week. 2005 13 pushing our total profits going back to the end of August till up over 47,000. So continuing to do well look forward to next week. We'll be streaming every day next week live. Look forward to seeing you then have a good weekend. Cheers.