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Category: business – Page 272

15 years ago, Ray Kurzweil published one of the most significant essays in the history of futurism: “The Law of Accelerating Returns.” This piece showcased the immense power of exponential technology versus linear technology and became a pivotal concept for anyone trying to anticipate what the future held.

The essay predicted advances in business and technology with eerie precision, including how exponential growth would ripple through any technology that became an information technology, such as computing, biotechnology, or energy.

[ Go here to learn more about the law of accelerating returns ]

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Nice job Harley-Davidson when can I have my discount for my new wheels?

Harley-Davidson Says Artificial Intelligence Drives 40% of New York Sales Lookalike modeling is a key component of lead generation, and for motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson, the tactic now goes hand in hand with artificial intelligence (AI). In March 2016, the company began working with machine learning technology provider Adgorithms to grow its ecommerce reach and hasn’t looked back since. Asaf Jacobi, president of Harley-Davidson’s New York City division, spoke with eMarketer’s Maria Minsker about the brand’s experience with AI and discussed the results he has seen so far.

EMarketer: What are some of the business challenges that drove you to try artificial intelligence?

Asaf Jacobi: One of the biggest challenges of having a business in New York City is that it’s a very competitive environment. To get the response rate brands want, they have to reach as many people as possible. That’s where artificial intelligence comes in. I started reading about how artificial intelligence boosts online marketing reach, and contacted Adgorithms. We started using their platform, Albert, for our ecommerce ads in March.

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Tough times lay ahead for human workers. With the advent of automation comes a much smaller job market and an ever-shrinking work force. Jobs traditionally held by humans are now being taken over by robots and computer software. Now, another job sector is being threatened by automation: the public sector.

A study conducted by Oxford University and Deloitte, a business advisory firm, found that 850,000 public sector jobs in the UK are at risk of being lost by 2030 due to automation. The report also mentions how more than 1.3 million administrative jobs in the public sector have a 77% probability of being automated. These jobs include highly repetitive jobs like clerical work and transportation work.

–This report comes as good news to fiscal policy makers who wish to cut costs. It shows the government can save up to £12 billion in public sector wages by 2030.

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Leading Australian engineer and physicist, Professor Andrea Morello, was today named inaugural recipient of the Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in Quantum Computing by the prestigious American Physical Society, the world’s leading organisation of physicists.

Morello, a professor in UNSW’s School of Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications and head of the Quantum Spin Control group at the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, was awarded the prize “for remarkable achievements in the experimental development of spin qubits in silicon”.

The prize, endowed by the International Business Machines Corp, is named for two of the founding fathers of modern information science, both classical and quantum.

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Rocket Lab is dedicating itself to launching small satellites cheaply and efficiently — a capability the American company thinks the burgeoning private spaceflight industry desperately needs.

Small satellites, some no bigger than a lunch box, are revolutionizing how people gather data about the Earth, and they might be the future of global communications.

Rocket Lab’s business model is a bit like Henry Ford’s was when he started selling Model T’s: keep the machine simple, produce a lot of them and keep them affordable. Peter Beck, the company’s owner, told Space.com that he’d like to reach a point where Rocket Lab launches one of its custom-made, small-satellite rockets about once per week. And similar to Henry Ford (who didn’t even want to make different colors of the Model T), Beck said that until that basic goal is met, he has no plans to diversify the company’s services. [Satellite Quiz: How Well Do You Know What’s Orbiting Earth?].

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By now everyone has heard of Google’s RankBrain, the new artificial intelligence machine learning algorithm that is supposed to be the latest and greatest from Mountain View, Calif. What many of you might not realize, however, is just how fast the SEO industry is changing because of it. In this article, I’ll take you through some clear examples of how some of the old rules of SEO no longer apply, and what steps you can take to stay ahead of the curve in order to continue to provide successful SEO campaigns for your businesses.

So what is artificial intelligence?

There are generally three different classifications of artificial intelligence:

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